LibGuides: For Faculty: Instructional Continuity: Creating Content to Use Online

Creating Content in Canvas

All courses are automatically created in Canvas and all students are automatically enrolled based on their enrollment status in Banner. Adding content to your Canvas course is the easiest way to get content online for your students to access.

If you would like to test things out or create content in an empty course that does not have any students in it, do not hesitate to request a sandbox shell where you can start designing your next course or just experiment with Canvas. When you email Garrett Collins, please include course information, if applicable, in your request (e.g., ENGL 400 Literature and Ethics).

Creating Pages
Pages store content and educational resources that are part of a course. Pages can include text, video, and links to files and other course. Pages can also be linked to other pages.
Creating Modules
Modules are used to organize course content in a linear fashion, usually by topic, week, or whatever organizational structure works for you. You can add pages, files, assignments, quizzes, discussions and outside links to Canvas modules.
Uploading Files
You can upload PDFs, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, images or any other type of file to Canvas. You can link to any file from a page or module, making this an easy way to share course readings or your daily Powerpoints with students.

Creating Video-Based Content

You can easily create audio and video-based content to upload to your Canvas course using any of the tools listed below.

Audio/Video Tools in Canvas
You can record video or audio in Canvas anywhere you can access the Rich Content Editor (Pages, Assignments, Quizzes, Discussions, Announcements).
Recording Video in QuickTime (Mac only)
QuickTime is an Apple product for playing videos on Macs. It also provides a simple way to record audio, video, and screencasts.
Screencast-o-matic
Screencast-o-matic is an online tool with free screenrecorder that is available on Mac, Windows and Chromebook. It's easy to use and allows you to create videos up to 15 minutes in length.
Screencastify
Screencastify is a Chrome extension (no download required!) that lets you make simple screen recordings of up to 5 minutes, for free. Recordings are saved to your Drive, but can also be published to YouTube or exported to your computer,
Creating Narrated Powerpoint Presentations
You can create narrated presentations as a substitute for a lecture you were planning on presenting and share with your students.

And for those of you recording narrated PowerPoint presentations, here is a walkthrough guide from Microsoft on how to save your presentation as a video file.

If you are using a Mac, please note that you must update your PowerPoint application to the most recent version for the narration features to work correctly. You can do this by going to http://login.microsoftonline.com/, logging in with your Guilford email address and network password, and re-downloading the latest version of Microsoft Office/Office 365.

If you are using a Mac and are still experiencing issues getting the audio to work, you may need to "allow" PowerPoint to access your computer microphone from the "Security & Privacy" section of System Preferences. Here are instructions from Apple on how to do this.