Announcements allow instructors to communicate with students about course activities and post interesting course-related topics. Announcements are designed to allow instructors to broadcast information out to all members of a course or to all members of sections within a course. Students may be able to reply to announcements, but replies are not considered to be a conversation and do not appear in the Inbox.

From Canvas Basics Guide > What are Announcements?

Assignments include Quizzes, graded Discussions, and online submissions (i.e. files, images, text, URLs, etc.). Assignments in Canvas can be used to challenge students' understanding and help assess competency by using a variety of media. The Assignments page shows students all of the Assignments that will be expected of them and how many points each is worth.

Assignments can be assigned to everyone in the course or differentiated by section or user.

The Assignments page supports keyboard shortcuts. To view a window with a list of keyboard navigation shortcuts, press the Shift+Question Mark keys simultaneously on your keyboard.

From Canvas Basics Guide > What are Assignments?

One of the challenges facing both students and instructors is keeping track of all of the assignments planned throughout the term. Instructors are teaching multiple courses and students are learning in multiple courses. Every course has its own timeline for when things need to be done. The Calendar helps everyone stay on schedule and up to date.

The Calendar in Canvas is a global feature, meaning users can see all courses assignments and events in one place. Calendars can be filtered by selecting or deselecting courses in the sidebar.

To help manage user calendars, courses customized in the courses drop-down menu as a favorite course will always be listed at the top of the user’s calendar list in the calendar sidebar. By default, the Calendar displays a maximum of 10 course calendars.

From Canvas Basics Guide > What is the Calendar?

Scheduler is a Calendar tool that creates appointment groups within a course or group. Students can sign up for a time slot within the appointment group. Some appointment time slots may only allow one student to sign up at a time, while others may allow an entire group to sign up.

Only students can sign up for appointment slots in the Scheduler. If a student signs up for an appointment slot, an observer who is observing the student can view the appointment in the student's calendar. Observers cannot sign up for an appointment on behalf of a student.

From Canvas Basics Guide > What is the Scheduler?

The Chat tool in Canvas allows students and teachers to interact in real time.

Notes:

• The Chat tool must be enabled for your institution before it can be used in Canvas courses.
• When Chat is enabled at the account level, it is enabled by default in all courses within the account.
• Safari 13.1 contains an update that may cause issues with chat alerts. You can avoid errors with files and images by disabling cross-site tracking prevention in Safari when using Canvas.

From Canvas Basics Guide > What is Chat?

Canvas leverages collaborative technology to allow multiple users to work together on the same document at the same time. Collaborative documents are saved in real-time, meaning a change made by any of its users will be immediately visible to everyone.

From Canvas Basics Guide > What are Collaborations?

Conferences are primarily used for virtual lectures, virtual office hours, and student groups. They can also be used to demonstrate technologies or troubleshoot technology issues online. For best performance, Conferences should be limited to 100 users or fewer. Canvas integrates with BigBlueButton.

Notes:

• Creating a conference is a course permission. If you cannot create a conference, your institution has restricted this feature.
• For more information on web conferencing options in Canvas, view Web Conferencing Resources.

From Canvas Basics Guide > What are Conferences?

Canvas provides an integrated system for class discussions, allowing both instructors and students to start and contribute to as many discussion topics as desired. Discussions allows for interactive communication between two or more people; users can participate in a conversation with an entire class or group.

Discussions can also be created as an assignment for grading purposes (and seamlessly integrated with the Canvas Gradebook), or simply serve as a forum for topical and current events. Discussions can also be created within student groups.

Discussion topics can be organized as focused or threaded discussions. Focused discussions only allow for two levels of nesting, the original post and subsequent replies. Threaded discussions allow for infinite levels of nesting. Focused discussions are relatively short-lived interactions, while threaded discussions allow replies within replies and may last for a longer period of time.

From Canvas Basics Guide > What are Discussions?

Files can house course files, assignments, syllabi, readings, or other documents, as well as profile pictures and user-specific files. Instructors can lock folders and files so they can only be viewed by direct links or only unlock on a specific date.

Files can be placed in Modules, Assignments, or Pages. Files and folders are put in alphabetical order and cannot be rearranged.

Canvas users will find access to files (documents, images, media, etc.) in three different places:

• Personal files, located in each user's profile (students, teachers, and TAs)
• Course files, located in each course (students, teachers, and TAs unless files are locked by the teacher)
• Group files, located in each group (students and teachers who are enrolled in groups)

To learn about specific file quota details for each user role, view the Course Files Quota PDF.

From Canvas Basics Guide > What are Files?

Grades can serve as a communication tool between students and instructors and allow instructors to track the progress of students.

The Gradebook stores all information about student progress in the course, measuring both letter grades and course outcomes. 

From Canvas Basics Guide > What are Grades and the Gradebook?

The Inbox is a messaging tool used to communicate with a course, a group, an individual student, or a group of students. You can use the Inbox to communicate with others in your course.

Notes:

• Users display in the Inbox once they have an active enrollment in the course, and users cannot join a course unless it is published.
• Once a course has concluded and its term date has passed, you can no longer message students in that course.

From Canvas Basics Guide > What is the Inbox?

Pages store content and educational resources that are part of a course or group but don’t necessarily belong in an assignment. Pages can include text, video, and links to files and other course or group content. Pages can also be linked to other pages. They can also be used as a collaboration tool for course or group wikis where only specific users can have access. Canvas keeps the entire history of the page to account for changes over time. 

From Canvas Basics Guide > What are Pages?

Groups are a small version of a course and used as a collaborative tool where students can work together on group projects and assignments.

From Canvas Basics Guide > What are Groups?

Profile and User Settings let you control your personal information in Canvas. 

From Canvas Basics Guide > What are Profile and User Settings?

Quizzes in Canvas are assignments that can be used to challenge student understanding and assess comprehension of course material. The quiz tool is used to create and administer online quizzes and surveys. Quizzes can also be used to conduct and moderate exams and assessments, both graded and ungraded.

Canvas has four different types of quizzes:

• A graded quiz is the most common quiz and rewards students points based on their quiz responses.
• A practice quiz is a learning tool to see how well users understand course material without providing a grade.
• A graded survey rewards students with points for completing a survey but grading is not based on right or wrong answers.
• An ungraded survey obtains opinions or other information without providing a grade.

From Canvas Basics Guide > What are Quizzes?

The Rich Content Editor provides a condensed, more intuitive toolbar that is grouped by common icons and interactions.

The content editor that is available anytime for creating new content. The Rich Content Editor is used in features that support the editor (Announcements, Assignments, Discussions, Pages, Quizzes, or Syllabus).

From Canvas Basics Guide > What is the Rich Content Editor?