Beginning of Semester Checklist

1. Course Creation

All courses that are managed in the OPUS system have corresponding course shells created automatically in Canvas. Courses become available on a regular schedule.
If you do not see one of your courses on your Dashboard, click on “Courses” in the Canvas global menu and then click on “All Courses” at the bottom of that list. You will see courses from previous semesters under the heading, “Past Enrollments.” You may also see courses for the upcoming semester listed under “Future Enrollments.”
If you need a course site created for a non-OPUS course, please follow the guidance and process at Requesting a Non-OPUS Canvas Course Site.

All student enrollments in OPUS courses are fed into Canvas automatically. Recently enrolled students may not show up in your class roster until the following business day.
TAs and co-instructors are not usually included in the OPUS feed. To enroll TAs and co-instructors in your course, click on “People” in your course menu and then click on the button in the top-right corner of the screen labeled “+People.” See How do I add users to a course? for more information.

If you are new to Canvas you may find it useful to review Getting Started With Canvas.
You can copy content from your other Canvas courses into your current semester's course. See How do I import content to a Canvas course?
Work with Libraries Reserves staff to share third-party copyrighted content with your students.
To ensure that your Canvas course is as barrier-free as possible for all students, learn about Universal Design from our Designing Accessible Canvas Courses resource.
Canvas can automatically check links in your course content to make sure they're working. See How do I validate links in a course? for more information.

Make an appointment with one of our Ed Analysts.
Join us for one of our many Canvas training sessions. We host live and on-demand sessions on a variety of topics throughout the semester.
Search the Canvas Guides for answers to your questions.

When you have your course content ready, be sure to publish all of the modules that you want students to be able to access. See How do I publish or unpublish a module? for more information.
You must publish your course for students to be able to access it. See How do I publish a course?
A course must be published for your students to receive Announcements and other notifications from your course. If you need to send a message to your students before your course is published, use the email tools available in OPUS.