Canvas Support & Procedures

Canvas integrations add extra services to Canvas. For example, many textbooks have Canvas integrations that allow students to do textbook assignments, and faculty to grade them, within Canvas.

Adopting a Canvas integration involves several campus departments, including CAFE, IT, the Bronco Bookstore, and Procurement. Every potential integration must be evaluated to ensure that the technology is secure, maintains user privacy, is accessible to users with disabilities, and does not place Cal Poly Pomona at risk in some way. Many integrations require payment. In short, adopting a Canvas integration is a significant decision.

Integration Evaluation and Adoption Procedure

The integration evaluation and adoption procedure may take several months and will require significant input from the person or group requesting the tool. For questions about this process, please email Ann Loomis (CAFE LMS Administrator).

Part 1: Consultation

1. Cal Poly Pomona faculty or staff request a Canvas integration through the CAFE Request Form. Questions on the form include:
   • Indicate the name of the integration.
   • Provide website for the integration
   • Provide the vendor name and contact email if possible
   • Provide any cost information if possible (eg cost per student or institutional cost)
   • Describe the need for the integration, including its institutional benefits. What benefit is there to integrating with Canvas? If you have been using the tool outside Canvas, what has been the benefit? If you have been using a different tool or strategy to meet a similar goal, please describe.
   • Estimate how many instructors and/or staff would use the integration.
   • Estimate how many students would be impacted.
2. A CAFE staff member reaches out to the requestor for consultation. The consultation will include:
   • Explanation of integration process
   • Discussion of any other solutions
   • Discussion of equally effective alternative access plan
   • Provide a template letter to indicate department and/or college support for the integration as a necessary technology. Letter will include explanation of the cost model (e.g., commitment of funding from department or college, estimation of license fee, cost to students, etc.)
3. Requestor must submit department/college support letter to CAFE to move the process forward into the evaluation and testing phase.

Part 2: Evaluation

1. CAFE staff gather information from requestor and vendor to support reviews:
   • Accessibility (Voluntary Product Accessibility Template, accessibility roadmaps, Equally Effective Alternative Access Plan)
   • Security (Higher Education Cloud Vendor Assessment Tool (HECVAT)
   • Procurement (End User License Agreement)
2. CAFE staff will notify relevant groups:
   • The Bronco Bookstore is notified if the potential integration is publisher-related or requires student payment.
   • IT project management is notified
3. CAFE submits request for IT security review. If security is acceptable, IT configures the integration in a Canvas test environment and CAFE performs basic functionality testing.
4. CAFE submits request for IT accessibility testing.
5. If integration passes IT Accessibility testing, permission is given to proceed to Procurement step.
6. Requestor works with Procurement to identify funding (if necessary), review the End User License Agreement (EULA), and approve purchase. CAFE can support Requestor as needed in this process.
7. All integration evaluation results and supporting documentation are brought before the IT Change Management committee for approval.
8. CAFE and IT perform final usability testing and schedule the integration to “go live” in Canvas.

Integration Evaluation Criteria

1. Integrations must provide institutional benefit beyond one class or faculty member. This is because evaluating and maintaining integrations demands significant human resources.
2. If the integration costs money, funds must be identified before the evaluation process starts.
   Students may be expected to pay under certain circumstances such access to textbooks or for specific classroom tools. Requestors are urged to carefully consider cost/benefit when proposing an integration to be paid for by students.
3. Integrations must meet Cal Poly Pomona IT standards for security and accessibility.
4. Integrations must not have negative impacts on other Canvas functions (i.e., the tool does not “break” Canvas).
5. Procurement must approve End User License Agreement terms. This limits Cal Poly Pomona’s risk and the requestor’s risk.

Typically performed over two days following grade submission, Canvas will undergo a planned maintenance period to perform course backups and remove old courses from Canvas, per the course retention policies (below).

The IT Service Desk will notify faculty via email before each scheduled End of Term Maintenance.

New Course Creation

All courses offered through BroncoDirect are provided with a course shell in Canvas automatically. Course shells for the current term and two future terms are always available within Canvas at any given time. New sections and instructor changes in BroncoDirect will be reflected in Canvas the following morning.

New Canvas courses are created as unpublished. Instructors must publish the course to allow student access.

Combine Course Rosters

Faculty may request course rosters in Canvas to be combined for the purposes of delivering content or allowing cross-section interaction. Such a request must meet the following criteria:

• Course sections to be combined are of like subject
• No student submissions have been made in the separate Canvas sections (e.g. Assignments, Discussions, Quizzes, etc.)

Upon approval, course enrollments will be combined into one of the requested courses and all other original separate courses will no longer be usable by the instructor or the students.

Instructors can easily discern the originating section of each enrolled student by referring to the Grades or People section of the course.

Course combinations can be requested through our Request Services page.

Bronco Accounts

All Cal Poly Pomona faculty, staff, and students with a Cal Poly BroncoName and password are also granted Canvas accounts. This is the same username and password used to log into BroncoDirect and CPP email.

Faculty not currently teaching will be restricted from accessing Canvas. If access is needed, please email us at canvas@cpp.edu. Your Canvas account will be re-enabled the morning after we receive your request.

Students will have access to Canvas for one year after leaving Cal Poly Pomona.

Faculty Leave Access

Canvas access is disabled for faculty who are not teaching in the current term. Those wishing to regain access to Canvas must:

• Ask their department to complete and submit paperwork for the following term
• Email canvas@cpp.edu to request temporary access to Canvas

Sponsored Affiliates

A sponsored affiliate is an individual who is not a member of the Cal Poly Pomona community but is affiliated with the University in a way that provides value to the University or meets a business or academic requirement can be sponsored as an affiliate to obtain access to Cal Poly Pomona information technology (IT) services, including Canvas.

View the sponsored affiliate eHelp article to learn more about the process and to request a sponsored affiliate account.

Student Course Access

Once a Canvas course has been published by the instructor, students may access the course 5 days before the official CPP term begins and will continue to have access to the course until 5 days after grades are due. 5 days after grades are due, that term’s Canvas courses will automatically convert to a read-only state and will be removed from students’ Canvas dashboards. Students may continue to view these Canvas courses in this read-only state for the purpose of viewing past course grades and submissions.

Learn more about Section Start and End Dates.

Automatic Course Enrollments

Students who have officially enrolled into courses using BroncoDirect will be automatically synchronized into Canvas courses for the upcoming term 5 days before the official start of the term. After which, enrollments are synchronized daily ~2:00am for the remainder of the term.

Note: Students cannot be manually added or removed in official Canvas teaching courses. Students must add or drop through BroncoDirect to be added/removed in Canvas courses.

Manual Course Enrollments

Instructors may manually enroll users who are not registered through BroncoDirect into their Canvas courses, including teaching assistants, other instructors, and sponsored affiliates.

You may manually enroll a user with a CPP email address by following the instructions to manually enroll a user.

Course Copy

Canvas allows copying of materials from one course to another, using one of two methods:

• You may follow the instructions to import materials into your Canvas course.
• Faculty may request the copying of course materials using CAFE’s request form. Once submitted, the process will take up to two business days.

Course Quota

Each Canvas course is given a quota of 700 MB. This quota is used for content uploaded by the instructor.

Quota increases are available upon request. Quota increase requests that push a course’s total quota over 1 GB must be approved by IT Systems.

Recycle Course

Faculty may request to have all content deleted from their courses by contacting the LMS Support team at canvas@cpp.edu.

Copyright

Material uploaded by Cal Poly Pomona faculty, staff, or students is expected to fall within copyright guidelines.

Retention Practices

Courses remain in Canvas for 4 years. Beyond those 4 years, an additional 3 years of courses are backed up to a repository and can be restored to Canvas upon request. This time frame is adhered to for the following reasons:

• To allow easy access to course material that will be used again
• To allow easy access to Canvas grades for grade appeals
• To allow incomplete students to complete courses at the faculty member’s discretion

Course Restoration

Canvas courses are backed up weekly, allowing instructors to retrieve a copy of their courses from the most recent Saturday. Please send restoration requests to canvas@cpp.edu.

Course Content

Material uploaded by Cal Poly Pomona faculty and staff is expected to fall within Section 508 compliance.

Learn about making common file types accessible at CAFE’s Creating Accessible Materials page.

Canvas Accessibility Resources

Canvas’s Accessibility Resources provides best practices, usage guidelines, and system features regarding accessible compliance.