Use Canvas Groups and Pages for collaboration

In Canvas, subject content and resources are presented to students on Pages. In addition, you can set up these pages to give open access to students, allowing them to contribute to and edit their own content – just like a wiki. 

Enable students to edit

To do this, go to the ‘Options. Can edit this page role selection’ menu underneath the Rich Content Editor. Select ‘Teachers and students’. Students get access to nearly all of the tools available in the Rich Content Editor so they can add text, links, images and videos but cannot create and insert H5P content from within Canvas (although they will see the option in the ‘Tool Menu’).

Add to-do

You can also remind students that you want them to contribute to this page by adding the task you have set to their to-do list in their Canvas Calendar. Select ‘Add to student to-do’ and, if you want to, choose the deadline date and time.

Page History

‘View Page History’ option, which is accessible via the page options menu at the top right of a saved Canvas page, allows everyone with edit access to see how the page content has developed and who has contributed, and to revert to previous versions if necessary.

Unfortunately, unlike a true wiki, Canvas doesn’t have an in-built comments and discussion section linked to each page. However, a good substitute is to set up a dedicated discussion thread in Canvas Discussions for students to share their thoughts on the collaborative page contents and its development.

By using Groups in Canvas, you can create discrete collaborative spaces in which students can work together on group projects and assignments. Within each group’s space, students have the ability to create and contribute to group-specific Pages and Discussions, and to share files and make Announcements. 

You can use Group spaces for wiki-type activities and/or assignments, such as glossaries, annotated bibliographies, case studies, timelines and research projects.

You can create and view all student groups by clicking on ‘People’ in the ‘Course Navigation Menu’ and then selecting the set of groups you wish to visit from the tabs near the top of your screen.

Set up a Group

Use ‘+Group Set’ to create groups for a specific activity or assignment. Use ‘+Group’ to create the groups themselves and the discrete spaces in which students will collaborate.

Visit a student’s Group

To visit students’ group spaces to see the work they are producing and to contribute to their pages and discussions, click on ‘Visit Group Homepage’ in the options menu on the right to the page.

Canvas Groups and Canvas Sections are often confused.

• Groups are collaborative spaces in which students can work together – you can set up groups yourself.
• Sections are used to break large cohorts into smaller lecture or tutorial groups; they allow tutors to interact with a specific subset of students easily and to mark their work – ITD will need to set these up for you (log a request with them here)