Welcome to the Course Clean Up Guide!
Can You Answer Yes to Any of These Questions?
Do you have multiple versions of your syllabus in your current course shell, the majority of which are out-of-date or obsolete?
Do you have multiple versions of past assignments, discussions, and quizzes, even though you don't use them anymore?
Does it take you too long to find your files and pages in your Canvas course because they're not named consistently, or organized into folders?
If you answered yes to any or all of these questions, you're not alone, and also this guide is a great tool for you if you'd like to take on cleaning up and organizing your Canvas course shell for our upcoming semesters.
Why Use This Guide
Many of us are teaching courses that we’ve taught many times in the past. The content in these courses has been copied forward each semester, and we’re often copying everything and working around the duplicates, and items that we don’t use anymore, because we don’t want to lose them.
This guide walks us through how to clean up our content to make it easier for us and our students to navigate our courses. We will start by making a backup of our current courses, so we can feel free to remove duplicate and outdated items without the fear of losing something. We’ll then import our current course into our new course shell, and move through the elements of the guide to clean up each area of our course.
This work is somewhat tedious and repetitive, but has great payoff for our time and energy and that of our students’ as well. I recommend pairing this guide with a hot cup of coffee or tea, a sugary snack and a pair of headphones playing some great music or a juicy podcast.
How to Get Help
I know this is a lot of information and it can get a little complicated. It can be helpful to see examples and talk things through with someone, and I'd be happy to chat with you about your course clean up process! Below is my contact information and some of the ways we can connect:
- Allison Hughes, Instructional Designer
- Office: 13-352
- Email: hughesa@smccd.edu
- Phone: 650-306-3213
- Book a consultation Links to an external site. if you'd like to meet to chat about course clean up adventures, or anything else!
- Visit my Drop-In Office Hours on Tuesdays from 2:30pm-3:30pm on Zoom Links to an external site. or in 13-337.