Canvas Course Types
Learn about different types of courses in Canvas to support you!
ATS is doing its best to complete the high volume of org requests as soon as possible. Spring is our estimated time to have all of the org requests completed. We appreciate your patience, if you have any questions or concerns, please contact us at Canvas@csulb.edu
Development (Dev) Courses
Development (dev) courses provide a staging area to prepare your course layout and materials before copying them into your Live courses (see description on Live courses, below).
Dev courses:
- Have no content. You can copy content from another course or build new content in a dev course.
- Contain no students; students cannot see your development course. People can be added manually and assigned different roles (students, instructors, etc.) if desired. These people can see the changes you make to the course.
- Can be populated and organized with the content you are planning to use for your Live course in the future. When Live courses are released each semester, your content can be easily copied over. Dev courses are great for helping you prepare in advance.
- Will remain in your Canvas account indefinitely for reuse as needed.
Complete this Request Form to request a Dev Course:
Development Courses will appear in your Canvas Dashboard shortly after your request has been submitted.
You can request a development course for each of the Live courses you will be teaching if needed. Or, you can re-purpose one dev course for all future courses.
It is recommended that you use development courses to organize your course materials and layouts so you can efficiently copy them to your live courses before each semester begins.
Although live courses are typically released a few months preceding the next term, having a dev course gives you an extra cushion of time to work on course modifications well in advance.
During the year of transition from BeachBoard to Canvas, having a dev course will give you time to prepare your Summer 2023 and/or Fall 2023 courses when BeachBoard will no longer be available.
You can also manually migrate your entire BeachBoard course into a Canvas dev course (your mileage will vary as this is not a perfect 1:1 copy process; some editing will still be necessary).
Migrated Courses
Migrated courses are copies of BeachBoard courses from the past 2 years that have been transferred through an automated process conducted by ATS as part of the 2022-2023 transition period.
Visit our Migration Plan website for details and the schedule of courses to be migrated at CSULB.
Migrated courses:
- contain content that has been copied from your BeachBoard courses.
- do not contain students; students do not have access to your migrated courses.
- do not contain student data including student assignment submissions, grades, discussions, files, or quiz data.
- will not look exactly like your BeachBoard courses; the content may need adjusting to fit the Canvas environment.
Visit Review Your D2L Course to learn more about what to expect from the migration process from BeachBoard (D2L).
Use your migrated BeachBoard course in a variety of ways:
- leave it in its original state as a reference/source.
- copy the migrated content into your live Canvas shell in preparation for teaching in the next term (similar to how you would use a Development Course).
Follow the instructions in the BeachBoard Course Migration Job Aid [PDF] to migrate your BeachBoard courses.
Live Courses
Live courses are those released through the CSULB enrollment system and are populated with your enrolled students for the next term. For the transitional semesters of Fall 2022 and Spring 2023, live courses are released in both BeachBoard and/or Canvas; instructors can choose to teach in either system.
Live courses are:
- Populated with students who have enrolled in your class for the next term.
- Devoid of any course content; instructors can copy content from migrated courses or dev courses, or develop new content before the semester begins.
- Not available to students until they are "activated" (BeachBoard) or "published" (Canvas).
During the transition semesters of Fall 2022 and Spring 2023, live CSULB courses will be released to instructors in both Canvas and BeachBoard on the same schedule.
Course Release Schedule
Live courses are released a few months before each term so instructors will have time to prepare:
- In late Fall 2022, all Spring 2023 courses will be released in BeachBoard and Canvas.
- In late Spring 2023, all Summer and Fall 2023 courses will be released in Canvas only (BeachBoard decommissioned).
Faculty will be notified when live courses have been released via BeachBoard News announcements (through Spring 2023).
Instructors planning to teach in Canvas have the following options for building content in their Live Canvas courses:
- Develop content from scratch inside the Live course.
- Copy and paste content from BeachBoard in parts to the Live course.
- Copy migrated BeachBoard courses into Canvas (see Migrated Courses).
- Copy content from a Canvas Development (Dev) Course that you have requested from ATS.
Consult with an ATS Instructional Designer for best practices to copy migrated BeachBoard content into your live Canvas course shell.
Sandbox Courses
A sandbox is an empty Canvas course where instructors can explore ("play") and get familiar with the technical features and navigation without concern for messing up a course they will be teaching.
Sandbox Courses:
- Can be reset back to default settings for a "clean slate" to try new layouts and features (see instructions below).
- Contain no content. You can copy content from another course or build new content to test out the functionality.
- Contain no students; students cannot see your Sandbox course.
- Can be manually populated with students or other course roles (students, instructors, etc.) as desired by the instructor. These people can see the changes made to the course.
A sandbox is not intended as a course-building space. If you would like a space to build courses, please request a Development Shell (see Development Courses).
Complete this Interest Form to request a sandbox:
After submitting your request, the Sandbox course tile will appear in your Canvas Dashboard.
Once you've been assigned a sandbox, it will be yours to keep indefinitely. Not only will it help you learn Canvas as a new user, but it can be used throughout your tenure to test functionality and new tools that come along.
A sandbox is best used for the following purposes:
- Try out the navigation!
Explore the navigation panel and change the settings to see what happens! A sandbox allows you to get familiar with the system without concern for "breaking" your course. - Experiment with different settings and features:
There are many ways you can customize your courses to meet your needs. For example, you can control which of the Course Navigation links appear for your students. - Copy content from another course and make edits to see how it looks and feels.
For example, you may want to see what the quizzing experience looks like for your students before launching your next exam. - Test tools that you've never used before, or new ones that become available in the future.
Many software tools (such as Zoom, Teams, Poll Everywhere, Blackboard Ally, etc.) will be integrated into Canvas. Give them a trial run in the sandbox to become familiar with all the nuances.
Reset the Sandbox to the Defaults
After using your sandbox for testing, you can then wipe the slate clean and return it to the default settings, if desired.
Resetting course content will permanently delete all associated assignments, discussions, quizzes, modules, rubrics, pages, files, learning outcomes, question banks, collaborations, conferences, or any other content. This action is irreversible, and the data cannot be recovered.
To reset:
- Select the "Settings" link on the left navigation panel of your Canvas Dashboard
- Select "Reset Course Content"
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Manual Organization (Courses)
Manual orgs can be used to create a centralized place for department staff and faculty to connect as a community, much like an "intranet" site. Manual orgs are similar in layout to a Canvas course but can be designed based on the goals and vision of the department or college.
Manual orgs will remain open indefinitely; they are not limited by semester.
Cases where Canvas Manual Organizations are a good fit:
- If your organization site is an academic organization that provides information, announcements, and/or surveys to participants.
- If your organization site is a course of some sort, i.e. student orientation, professional development, job qualification or test practice, etc.
- If your organization uses any of the following features:
- Announcements
- Surveys or quizzes
- Discussion boards
Cases where other platforms are more suitable
- If you would like your organization to be mainly used to store and/or share documents. Canvas course sites have limited storage, so consider these options instead:
- Using your own external storage drive
- Using OneDrive to store and/or share documents with colleagues.
- Using Microsoft Teams to share and interact with group members.
- Using SharePoint to store and share documents with your department.
- Asking your department technical support for a folder set with user permissions on a shared drive to store and/or share documents.
Complete this Interest Form to request a new Manual Org:
Transferring BeachBoard Orgs to Canvas
If you already have an existing BeachBoard org that you would like to transfer into Canvas, select "Request to Migrate an Existing BeachBoard Manual Org" on the form. You will have the option request the transfer of all enrolled members from the BeachBoard org to Canvas. If you decide not to have the existing enrollments transferred, only the requestor will be added into the migrated Canvas org.
Upon verification and approval by ATS, the organization will be made available to the designated leader(s).
Manual Organization General Guidelines:
- Membership in any manual organization is only open to CSULB students, faculty, staff, alumni, and other users already present in the MyCSULB Online system.
- Limited guest accounts are available and must be requested via the guest account request form.
- Manual orgs will be sponsored by a dean, department chair, director or instructor member (leader), who assumes responsibility for the organization’s site including its content and activities. There will be no delegation of this responsibility to a student representative.
- Managing the organization's enrollment is the responsibility of the leaders. However, ATS can assist with bulk enrollments via an electronically generated list of campus IDs in Microsoft Excel format. The file should be emailed to canvas@csulb.edu with a 3-5 day lead time.
Manual Organization Leader Responsibilities
- Organizational leaders are responsible for maintaining and monitoring their organizations.
- Note: Anti-spam filters or incorrect email addresses could keep email from reaching users. As an alternative, consider using the Discussion Board or Announcements to contact organization members.
- Email messages sent to large sets of organization participants could take up to a week for delivery.
Policy Violations
All manual organizations are subject to the university policies and any violation may result in the removal of the organization and possible account suspension of those involved. See Student Regulations and policies for more information. A violation of university policies by a student and employee, including faculty, in a Canvas organization, shall result in disciplinary action according to the CSULB Campus Computing Policy.
Examples of these policies are the following:
- User access to computing resources is contingent upon prudent and responsible use.
- You may not use computing resources for any illegal or proscribed act.
- You may not use computing resources for any commercial purpose without prior written authorization from the appropriate Vice President.
- You may not use any computing resource in a way that is harassing [spamming] or threatening to another individual.
Archived BeachBoard Courses
Since only course content and not student data is copied during the migration process, ATS will maintain a separate archive of past BeachBoard courses where student data can be accessed for a limited period (see Time Limits, below). Archived data will be available upon request (see instructions, below).
Student data contained in archived BeachBoard courses includes:
- Enrollment Information
- Student Submissions
- Discussions & Replies
- File Attachments
- Assignments
- Quizzes Data
- Feedback
- Gradebook Data
- The archive will commence in Summer 2023.
- Only official BeachBoard courses administered from Summer 2018-Spring 2023 will be archived.
- Archived courses will be stored for a five-year window only.
Contact canvas@csulb.edu to request access to specific data. The Canvas team will vet the need for retrieving the data and work with the faculty or staff member accordingly.
Data from Non-course-related BeachBoard Sites
If you need data from a "custom" BeachBoard site (i.e., manual or academically-related organizations):
- Submit your request on the Manual/Auto Organization (Org) Archive Request form with the course offering ID of the site that needs to be archived. The course offering ID can be found under Edit Course > Course Offering Information in any BeachBoard course.
- The Canvas team will follow up with confirmation as to whether the org qualifies to be archived.
