Posting Quizzes or Assignments on Canvas LMS

[MichelleCole88]

Hello there!

Our school will transition from our current LMS to Canvas this summer, before thoroughly implementing it with all our students in the fall. In our current LMS, in order to post assignments, reminders, or any content on the Student's Learning Plan, they have to be tied to a course that has specific content attached to it - for example, Grade 3 ELA BEST Standards. This is the only way we can actively post on their plans so they can see or redirect them to assignments. 

We also have an option to create a shell for a subgroup of students, but it does not allow us to post anything to their plans because it is not connected to the course content. 

My question is, in Canvas, does content (like a lesson, quiz, assignment, etc.) need to be connected to course content in order for you to be able to post it for students to see or interact with, or can it be an empty shell that students are part of and can interact with all the features Canvas provides?

Thank you!

[dbrace]

Hi @MichelleCole88,

We have students enrolled in "real" courses (what they are officially registered for), "fake" courses (for example, we have a "Student Life" course that faculty and current students are enrolled into so we can post announcements and link to general resources that exist in other locations like our College website ... we also have student clubs that Canvas users with the appropriate level of access can invite other Canvas users to join), and we have "public" courses (for example, courses that no one is enrolled into and they do not require someone to be logged into Canvas to see what is in it - mostly Canvas pages, files, and links - because they are general resources as a sort of common resources location or not mandated orientation).

I lay that as a foundation because in Canvas students need to be enrolled into a "course" in order for something to be "assigned" to them. But if you want to make something simply available to them you can either (a) enroll them into a "fake" course (but not assign anything to them in it) or (b) make a "public" course (meaning that even the general public course see it - this is not a problem for us because none of these items are sensitive/private - unless you set the course's visibility to "Institution").

Does that help you?

-Doug