CETL Virtual Support Services

If you are a returning lecturer without access, or if you are a BRAND NEW Cal State LA instructor, please reach out to your department and see if they can help you activate (or reactivate) your Cal State LA network account.  Departments should communicate with students regularly if the Canvas course shell is not ready by the start of the term.

Please confirm your course schedule with your department. This is to ensure that no course or department changes have been made. While you wait, please consider building your course in your Canvas Sandbox. You can request a new Sandbox to plan and build your course using the Canvas Special Shell request form.

Once you get access to your official course shell, you can transfer the contents of your Sandbox to your official Canvas course shell. Consult the Importing and Migrating Courses page for more information.

NOTE: The Sandbox should only be used for designing and building a draft of your course. Please do not enroll students in your sandbox!

Please see the Canvas guide on copying content from another Canvas course for instructions on copying course content from one Canvas shell to another.

Yes: every instructor is provided an extra Canvas course, called a Sandbox. When you log into Canvas, look for it on your Dashboard. Typically the Sandbox is used to explore and experiment with Canvas. You can request an additional Sandbox using the Canvas Special Shell request form.

Later, you can transfer the content of your Sandbox to your live Fall course. Consult the Importing and Migrating Courses page for more information.

Please see the Canvas guide on publishing and unpublishing modules for information on making content available to students, and making sure that each activity in the module has also been published.

Please see the Setting Up Your Course page for more information on making your Canvas course visible.

If the two sections are officially cross-listed, then you may complete the Canvas Cross List request form to combine the sections.

NOTE: This form should only be used if you need to combine official University cross-listed courses into a single course shell. Please note that due to FERPA regulations, courses that are not officially cross-listed and do not meet in the same class period and room location CANNOT be combined into a metacourse. Doing so is a violation of student privacy.

If you need to have the same content in multiple sections, you can now easily copy course material from one to multiple courses in Canvas using the copy content feature.

Class announcement(s) can be sent after the course is Published to only those students in each individual course. Please see our Announcements page for more information.

Dashes (-) in your Canvas gradebook represent missing submissions and are not the same as a zero (0). Canvas will NOT calculate a dash (-) into a student’s total grade. For information on handling missing submissions, please see our support page to ensure your student’s final grades are accurate.

We are able to extend course access for specific students if they need to work on an incomplete. We will need the course name, number, and section, along with the term in which the course was taught, and the name(s) of the student(s) working on the incomplete. Please fill out our Canvas Incomplete Course Access request form with the required information.

Yes, starting July 2021 these times are the planned maintenance window for Canvas. Maintenance windows: 1st and 3rd Thursday of the month from 1am to 3am (Thursday from 8am to 10am UTC)

Please see the Zoom guide on managing breakout rooms for more information.

Please see the Zoom guide on virtual backgrounds for more help and information.

Canvas has updated the Rich Content Editor to the "New Rich Content Editor." Check out the latest Canvas News. Also, we have guides and a New Rich Content Editor FAQ page you can visit for more information.

Once you publish a quiz, you can give students (e.g., students who need OSD accommodations) extra time on your quiz. Please see the Canvas guide on giving students extra time on a published quiz for more help and information.

Use Canvas Announcements to notify your students of any schedule changes to live Zoom meeting sessions. Please see our Announcements page for more information.