Cognella Courses Glossary

Announcements

Announcements allow you to communicate with your students about course activities and post interesting course-related topics.

Collaborations

Collaborations makes it easy for students and instructors to create documents that can be edited by the entire course or any subset of the course roster.

Course Statistics

Course Statistics help the instructor to see which pages are being viewed most frequently.

Mobile Apps

Currently, instructors can use the SpeedGrader™ on their iPads. Soon, students will be able to interact with their Canvas courses on the iPad and the iPhone.

Profile

Each user can modify their Profile in Canvas, including setting their display name, changing the time zone, and uploading a profile picture.

Grades

Grades is the name for the Canvas gradebook. Students can calculate hypothetical grades on this page. Instructors can quickly edit grades for any course or section.

Settings

Settings allow instructors to customize the Course Navigation, add users, import content, and link to external tools.

Course Activity Stream

The Course Activity Stream shows you all of the recent activity from a single course.

Course Setup Checklist

The Course Setup Checklist helps a new user to walk through all of the steps required to build a course and invite students.

SpeedGrader™

The SpeedGrader™ makes it easy to evaluate student work. Instructors can use rubrics for fast assessment and leave text, video, and audio comments for their students.

Rubrics

A Rubric is an assessment tool for communicating expectations of quality. Rubrics are typically comprised of rows and columns. Rows are used to define the various criteria being used to assess an assignment. Columns are used to define levels of performance for each criterion.

Quizzes

Quizzes is the assessment tool used in Canvas.

Pages

Pages make it easy to build content inside a course. Pages can be editable by students and teachers.

Assignments

Assignments are any online activity submission that is graded by the instructor. Assignments include Quizzes, graded Discussions, and online submissions (i.e. files, images, text, URLs, etc.)

Rich Content Editor

Canvas has a simple, yet powerful, word processor that is available anytime for creating new content (assignments, announcement, discussions, blogs etc.) within Canvas.

Notification Preferences

Each Canvas user can adjust the Notification Preferences in their Profile to fit their individual needs. Some users will want to be notified of course events on a more regular basis than others.

Groups

Groups can be created for students or by students to enable efficient collaboration.

In-context Help

In-context Help links are marked with a blue question mark. These links open up short tutorials to help users get the most out of Canvas.

Outcomes

Instructors can specify learning outcomes for their courses and track how students are doing against those outcomes with Quizzes, Assignments, and graded Discussions.

Registered Services

You can register with a number of web services from Canvas, GoogleDocs, Skype, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Delicious, Diigo. By linking to the web services you will not need to log in every time you join the service.

Calendar

The Calendar makes it easy for students and instructors to see all of the events and assignments going on across all of their courses.

Dashboard

The Dashboard consists of three main elements: Global Navigation across the top of the page, a to do list with upcoming events on the Sidebar, and the Global Activity Stream that comprises the body of the page.

Syllabus

In the Syllabus there are three main parts: a calendar and grading scheme for the course situated in the Sidebar on the right side of the page, a list of dated items in the main body of the page that is automatically managed by Canvas, and a syllabus description at the top of the page that you can edit.

Support Ticket

A support ticket is a formal request to receive help or direction from Canvas Support.

Course Status

Canvas courses begin in an unpublished state. They then move to a published state. They can also be made publicly viewable.

Files

Canvas provides a file repository for each user, group, and course. Files can be public or private.

Conversations

Conversations is the messaging tool used instead of email to communicate with a course, a group, an individual student, or a group of students.

Modules

Modules make it possible to organize course content by week, topic, or day. Modules can be set up with pre-requisites or co-requisites that force students to walk through the material in a sequential fashion.

Breadcrumb Navigation

The Breadcrumb Navigation is at the top of the Main Body of the page and helps you to how to move up and down in the course hierarchy.

Course Home Page

The Course Home Page is the first page that students see when they click on "Home" in their Course Navigation. The Course Home Page can be customized to display a custom Page, the Syllabus page, the Assignment page, or the Modules page.

Course Import/Export Tool

The Course Import/Export Tool makes it easy to pull in content from existing Canvas courses and content packages from other LMSs and textbook publishers.

Course Navigation

The Course Navigation is a series of links on the left side of your screen that help you get to where you want to go within your Canvas Course.

Global Activity Stream

The Global Activity Stream shows you all of the recent activity from all of your courses.

Global Navigation

The Global Navigation menu, always positioned at the top of the page, allows users to quickly navigate to any courses or groups that they are enrolled in. They can also view their grades and calendar from here.

Help Corner

The Help Corner in the top right, is where you can ask for support, check your inbox, or modify your settings.

Math Editor

The Math Editor is a Latex-compatible toolbar that makes it easy for instructors to write math expressions and equations.

People

The People page lists all of the students that are enrolled in a course.

Sidebar

The Sidebar on the right side of the page provides the links and buttons you'll need to get stuff done in the Main Body of the page.

ePortfolios

ePortfolios allow students to showcase their best work to colleagues and prospective employers. They also make it possible for students to create light-weight websites or presentations.