If you are the official instructor of record for the course, you should have access to your Canvas course as soon as the official Time Schedule for the upcoming quarter is available. Courses are provisioned for each quarter of the academic year. As the Instructor of record, you will have automatic access to these courses. Students registered for these courses will automatically have access to your Canvas course. Using these courses will make grade submission easier for you in the long run.
The majority of departments at the University of Washington operate on the quarter system. However, some schools and colleges (e.g., University of Washington School of Medicine and the School of Law) have different start and end dates. In cases where you wish to teach a course for longer than an academic quarter, there are a few options for making Canvas work for you.
There are three ways for instructors to use Canvas when teaching a course that runs longer than an academic quarter. You can:
To assist in flow from quarter to quarter, you can easily import content from one Canvas course to another. See instructions that show you how to do this.
Note: Graded assignments and actual discussions do not transfer during the import process.
The assignment groups can help you organize your course in a manner that allows you to control your grading. For example, if you have a three quarter course, you would create one assignment group for each quarter. Then you can set one assignment group to 100% and set the remaining assignment groups to 0%. See instructions that show you how to set up weighted grades: /tools-services-support/teaching-learning/canvas/canvas-help-for-instructors/assignments-grading/weighted-grades/
Once you have set up weighted grades, follow these steps:
This solution allows your students to remain active even after the quarter has ended. It also provides cumulative grading from the starting quarter through the ending quarter.
Note: With this option, you cannot automatically import your grades to the GradePage tool. You will need to input your grades manually using an Excel or .csv document.