Today’s guest contributor is Hannah Lovett. Hannah is the Program Specialist in eLearning who I like to call our “Canvas Guru.” Hannah has helped so many of us with Canvas questions, and is always so gracious and generous with her time. Thanks Hannah!
Reach out to eLearning with your questions! We are here to support you.
We have all had those moments where technology seemingly betrays us or maybe we mistakenly do the damage ourselves. There is a myriad of reasons for reaching out to the eLearning team, here are some ways to get the best, quickest assistance possible:
Include as much information as possible. This will eliminate some of the back and forth information gathering needed for us to look into your conundrum or query. Include the name of the course(s), names of the students/faculty/staff involved or experiencing the issue, the name of the affected assignment/quiz/discussion, etc. Examples give us something to look into and prevent us from having to sift through the entire courses and user logs. If you can, screencasts and screenshots help us tremendously.
Email us. Even when we are on campus, email is the quickest way to get in touch with eLearning as a student, faculty or staff member. This allows us to assist you on the go and prevents a traffic jam of phone calls and walk-in (even though we love seeing you!). It also allows us to look into the issue or question before responding.
Use the digital forms. For some of the tasks that must be completed every quarter we have digital forms that you can use to request that an eLearning staff member completes them for you. We have forms for merging, blueprint courses, adding and removing people from your courses, as well as for requesting that new software be integrated into Canvas. This helps us gather all the necessary information and keep track of the many requests that we receive in a day so we can complete them as quickly as possible. eLearning Forms can be found by searching eLearning Information for Faculty and Staff.
Maintain your browser. So many of the issues we hear about can be resolved by simply keeping your browser up to date and clearing your browser’s cache and cookies regularly. If Canvas looks wrong, it might be your browser. Switching browsers to see if the issue persists may give you and us some clues to solving the problem that you are encountering.
Surf the web. In a hurry? Often doing a web search of your question or issue will bring you to pages in the Canvas Community and Guides with the answers. Did you know there is also a page where you can check if Canvas is down? Check out the Status Page.
We are here to support and assist you! Don’t hesitate to reach out to eLearning.