Customizing Canvas Settings

Notifications

Notifications are emails that are sent to your SPU email. These are fairly easy to change. Doing so will help students filter and receive important emails and not emails about small changes made to the course. 

1. Go to the user "Notifications" link (Second link when the SPU Picture is selected)
2. Select the frequency at which emails will be sent about Course Activities.
   
   

Course Dashboard Colors

Changing the colors for the specific courses on the dashboard makes them easier to find as well as to keep things organized. 

1. Go to your Dashboard
2. Click on the three vertical dots of the course boxes (Located on the top right corner of these course boxes.)
3. Choose the color desired.

Course Nickname

Creating a nickname for each course may be useful when students do not remember their courses by the course number, etc. This makes it much easier for students to keep their work organized. 

1. Go to your Dashboard
2. Click on the three vertical dots of the course boxes (Located on the top right corner of these course boxes.)
3. Enter a nickname in the text box provided.

Dashboard

Creating a nickname for each course may be useful when students do not remember their courses by the course number, etc. This makes it much easier for students to keep their work organized. 

1. Go to your Dashboard
2. Click on the three vertical dots of the course boxes (Located on the top right corner of these course boxes.)
3. Enter a nickname in the text box provided.

Settings that Do Not Change

Pictures

Profile Pictures do not change due to SPU policy. Students may be able to upload such images to Canvas however, keep in mind that these will be automatically deleted within 12-24 hours after they have been uploaded.

Names

Names do not change via making changes to Canvas. Though Banner creates changes to and "imports" information into Canvas, Canvas cannot change the information in Banner. So, making changes to Canvas will not affect anything except the content and information within Canvas alone. Therefore changing your name in Canvas will only be applied to Canvas and not SPU credentials, etc. 

Course Titles

Though adding nicknames to courses is permitted, changing the course title is not. SPU keeps these unchanged for various reasons. One being helping ETM find these courses when issue arise with specific courses. Unfortunately, many students find it confusing to have acronyms/letters and numbers as identifiers for their courses. The best solution for keeping these courses easily identifiable, change the color of the course box on the dashboard or give it a nickname. Both options are explained above. 

Arrangement of Courses on Dashboard

The biggest reason as to why re-arrangement of courses is desired is because too many courses are present on the user dashboard. Unfortunately, re-arranging the courses in a specific order in the dashboard is not an available option. However, changing the color of the course box in the dashboard, giving a nickname to specific courses, and choosing which courses are present on the dashboard are settings made available. Above we have explained how to change these settings in Canvas.

Additional Resources