Summer 2023 courses are now ready to be set up in Canvas and Sakai! This includes courses from Maymester, Summer Session I, and Summer Session II. You may still teach in Sakai this summer but keep in mind the last term to teach in Sakai is Spring 2024. We recommend moving to Canvas sooner than later. Also now available is migrated content from Summer and Fall 2022 courses that were taught in Sakai, and instructors can find these archive sites on their Canvas dashboards.
Some things to keep in mind:
- Canvas: Course sites are automatically created.
- Sakai: Instructors must manually create their course sites.
- Maymester and Summer Session I rosters end in S123, while Summer Session II rosters end in S223.
- Migrated content from Summer and Fall 2022 courses taught in Sakai are now available in Canvas archive sites.
- Fall 2023 courses will become available in May in both Canvas and Sakai.
New to Canvas? Find resources on Moving from Sakai to Canvas and look for announcements on more training opportunities in the coming weeks.
Also check out this ITS News story on Canvas featuring our EdTech team to learn more!
Get Added to Your Roster in ConnectCarolina
Whether you will teach in Canvas or Sakai, your departmental course scheduler must list you as one of the following in ConnectCarolina to access your course in the learning management system (LMS). This must be done on each your course rosters.
- Primary Instructor
- Secondary Instructor
- Proxy
- Dean’s Designate
- Teaching Assistant
- Notes:
- TAs cannot create course sites in Sakai.
- If you are a new instructor, you must first complete FERPA training before the registrar can list you as the instructor in ConnectCarolina.
Once you are added as the instructor on your course roster, you should see your Class Roster in ConnectCarolina in the Faculty Portal. See these Faculty help guides if you have questions about ConnectCarolina. If you were recently added as the instructor of record in ConnectCarolina, you will need to wait a bit for the LMS to pick up this update:
- Canvas: Typically updates every few minutes but can take up to an hour.
- Sakai: Updates take several hours (run 3 times a day) but can take up to 24 hours.
Canvas
Access Your Course Site in Canvas
Course sites are automatically created in Canvas so this is one less step for instructors! Log into Canvas and access your course site on your Dashboard.
Cross-listed Rosters
Rosters that are cross-listed in ConnectCarolina will automatically be cross-listed in Canvas. They will appear as separate rosters in Canvas as they do in ConnectCarolina.
If you are teaching a course with multiple rosters that are not officially cross-listed in ConnectCarolina, you can combine those rosters onto one Canvas site. First determine which site you want to use as the main course site for the term and then go to your other section site(s) to cross-list it with the main section site. Note that the other section site(s) will disappear once the cross-listing has been made.
For example, you may be teaching DEPT101.001, 002, and 003. You decide to use the 001 section site as your course site and want to cross-list sections 002 and 003 with section 001. You would go to the 002 and 003 section sites to cross-list them with DEPT101.001.
Note: If you cross-list the wrong sections in Canvas, please submit a help request through help.unc.edu. We will need to remove the cross-listing for you.
Migrated Content from Sakai Courses
In addition to your Summer 2023 course sites on your dashboard, you should now also have access to archive sites that include migrated content from Registrar courses you taught in Sakai in Summer and Fall 2022. These have been shared with all instructors who were listed on the Sakai site.
Note: This migrated content was pulled on December 12, 2022, so any updates made after this date will not be included.
You are welcome to reuse any of this migrated content and copy it into your upcoming summer courses (see Getting Course Content into Canvas). We strongly advise thoroughly reviewing this migrated content before copying it into your official Summer 2023 courses. While Canvas and Sakai offer similar features, their underlying data structures are vastly different, which means there likely won’t be a clean and complete data transfer between the systems. Please review common issues we have found and then decide what content to clean up and reuse.
Give Students Access
Granting student access in Canvas is done in two steps:
In addition to publishing your site, student access in Canvas is determined by the dates associated with the course. By default, the term starts on the first day of classes set by the University Registrar and student access is through the end of the month that a term ends. Here are the student access dates associated with summer terms, but you can update the course dates to give students early access and/or remove access sooner.
- Summer Session I (includes Maymester): May 17 – June 30, 2023
- Summer Session II: June 26 – August 31, 2023
Sakai
Create Your Course Site in Sakai
Create your course site by clicking on the Sites waffle icon > Create New Site OR Home > Worksite Setup > New. Then:
- Select course site
- Set Academic term to 1st / 2nd Summer 2023 and Continue — Maymester courses are listed under 1st Summer 2023
- Check course roster you want to create and Continue — Check *only 1 roster* if you want separate course sites
- Edit Home Description (or later) and Continue
- Check tools you want to use and Continue — can add/remove later
- Leave as Draft and Continue — remember to publish site when ready
- Create Site
Note: If you want to reuse any old course material, you may do so before continuing in Step #5 through the “Re-use Material from Other Sites You Own” option. You can also wait until after you have created your site and use the Import from Site feature. See details on duplicating course content.
Managing Rosters
Here are things to be aware of if you’re teaching a cross-listed course or if you created your course sites but can’t find them all:
- Rosters that are cross-listed in ConnectCarolina will automatically be cross-listed in Sakai. They will appear under only one roster in Sakai, taking the name of the sponsoring department. We recommend comparing your class rosters in ConnectCarolina with your site membership in Sakai through Site Info > Manage Participants. If a student just added/dropped the course, give it a few hours to update in Sakai.
- The course creation process creates only one Sakai site at a time. If you checked multiple rosters in Step #3 above but actually wanted separate Sakai sites for each roster, you can remove the extra roster from the course site that was created through Site Info > Edit Class Rosters. Once removed from the existing site, the roster will become available for you to repeat this process and create a separate site.
- If you left off a roster, you can add the extra roster to your existing Sakai site.
Give Students Access
Click Publish Now in the top yellow bar of your site to give students access! You can also go to Site Info > Manage Access to (un)publish your site.