Introduction

Canvas is a Learning Management System first launched by Instructure in 2011. It is now in use by over 6000 schools world-wide, including IU High School. You are using Canvas right now to view this tutorial.

Let's Get Started

Welcome to Canvas

All IU High School courses are taken in Canvas. Each time you register for a course, you will receive an e-mail confirmation. This e-mail will inform you of the name of the course, the instructor's name, and the course end-date. Be sure to schedule your time to allow you to finish the course by this date.

Your notification e-mail will also have a link to Canvas. When you click that link, you can then use your IU login information (your IU guest acct. username and password) to access the Canvas system. (You will use the same to login to our Student Information System, Genius Links to an external site..)

Anytime you login to Canvas, you will see an authentication page where you can enter your IU Guest Account username and password. The first time you login, it will look like the image at right: Notice that the word University is underlined by default. Instead of using University, however, you need to select the Guest tab. The next time you login to Canvas, your previous choice of Guest should be remembered by the browser, and you shouldn't need to select Guest again.
	After clicking on Guest you will see the view shown at left: Please always choose the "Log in with email" option.
Once you select the e-mail option you will see the login shown at right. Be sure to enter the e-mail address you used to create your IU Guest Account in the Email field. Then use the Guest Account password in the Password field. Finally, click on Log in.
	The next time you return to Canvas, you should see the login screen at left. Guest will already be selected, and it will note that you last chose "log in with e-mail". Click "Log in with email" to login - you will once again see the login option shown above. Enter your Guest Account email and password as before.

If this is the first time you are logging in to Canvas, you will see a notification like that shown below:

You can click the Notification Preferences button to tell Canvas how you want to be notified of different events. You can always change these preferences, though, as you will learn later in the tutorial.

Once you are logged in, it would be a good idea to bookmark the Canvas site in your browser to make it easier to return to later.

Global Navigation

Look at the colored band at the left side of the browser window. When you are logged in it will look similar to the image below:

The red band at left is the Global Navigation menu. At some point you may want to explore all of its features in the Canvas Student Guide, but we will go over the key features below.

The image above shows the default 'Dashboard' view of Canvas. The other icons in the menu are, as you can see, "Account", "Courses", "Calendar", and "Inbox".

Let's briefly go over the Dashboard first. In this view, you will see a 'course card' for each course you are enrolled in. The icons at the bottom of each card provide information about activities going on in that course, such as new announcements, graded assignments etc. A circled number next to an icon indicates the number of newly graded assignments, or the number of new announcements.

Below the Dashboard icon is the "Courses" icon. Clicking Courses will show you a list of all the courses you are enrolled in, with each title acting as a link. Simply click on the name of a course to go to that course's Home page. You may find it convenient to simply use your browser's bookmark feature to save course pages you frequently use, such as the Home page or Syllabus for each course.

The next link is Canvas' Calendar feature, which you are free to explore but will not be discussed here. No IUHS courses currently use the Calendar.

The bottom icon link is called 'Inbox'. Inbox links to Canvas's messaging system. Some of your instructors may choose to use it, while others prefer to use general e-mail.

The top-most icon is the 'Account' link. When you click Account you will see a 'Logout' button, then 'Notifications', 'Profile', 'Files', 'Settings', and several additional options. You are encouraged to explore all of these options with the help of the Canvas Student Guide, but you can learn more about Profile, Settings, and Notifications here.

Side Menu Navigation

When you click on a course card (from your Dashboard) or select a course from 'Courses', this takes you to the Home page of your selected course. At the far left you should see the course navigation menu, with links for Home, Syllabus, Assignments, Quizzes, and Announcements. (Some courses may have additional links.)

"Home" simply goes to the course Home page, where you will find your instructor's name, e-mail, and some links to general information regarding IUHS courses and instructions to begin your course with the Syllabus.

"Syllabus" goes to the course syllabus, which always begins with a block of standard information for every course, then lists any required textbooks and textbook purchase instructions etc, and then a list of links that outline the course. Links are provided to the first page of every lesson, plus there are links to Assignments and Quizzes.  Assignment links go directly to the specific assignment for that lesson and similarly any practice test or quiz link goes to the specific quiz. All exams are also found in Quizzes.

"Assignments" goes to the Assignments page, which is a list of every assignment for the course. Most assignments have a series of instructions and typically asks you to either download a PDF or Word file to complete, or else instructs you to write answers to questions in a Word file. When you are finished, you upload the file to Canvas and click a "Submit" button. Your instructor will then be able to download your submitted document and grade it. This tutorial course has a sample assignment for you to try out if you wish, and you'll learn more about Assignments in the Assignments page.

"Quizzes" goes to the Quizzes page, which contains all course quizzes and exams. You can take practice exams as often as you wish, while graded quizzes are normally only take once. All of your responses to quiz questions will be entered directly within the quiz, not downloaded (as in Assignments). Any multiple choice, matching, true/false questions are graded by Canvas immediately. Short answer or Essay questions will be graded by your instructor. Don't panic when you see your initial quiz score, since the instructor will soon be adding points for the essay and short answer questions. All course exams are found in Quizzes as well.

In very rare circumstances, arrangements can be made to allow a mathematics exam to be printed instead of done online. In such cases, the exam is downloaded and printed by the proctor. Completed exams are scanned by the proctor and uploaded to Canvas to be graded.

When you have completed this tutorial, feel free to evaluate your understanding of Canvas by taking the Tutorial Quiz found in Quizzes.

"Grades" is where you will see your grades, and where you will receive feedback from your instructor. This topic is discussed further in the Grades page.

"Announcements" is where you will see any announcements from either your instructor or IU High School. 

You can now return to the Syllabus, click any link in the text above, or click 'Next' below, to continue exploring this tutorial.