New Semester Checklist for Online Classes

As a new semester approaches, help your students (especially new students) get off to a smooth start by making sure your online course site in Canvas is ready and provides them with the information they need. 

If you have any questions about any of these steps, contact College of Education's Digital Learning support at digitallearning [at] umass [dot] edu (digitallearning[at]umass[dot]edu), or UMass Amherst IT's Instructional Media Lab at instruct [at] umass [dot] edu (instruct[at]umass[dot]edu). 

If you are new to Canvas, visit  Getting Started Teaching in Canvas for an overview of steps to take to get access and get started. Once you are in Canvas, visit the Canvas Training and Resources class (hosted by IDEAS) for documentation and an excellent self-paced introduction.

Summary (TLDR)  

▢ Mark your calendar for Preview Week.
▢ Request a Canvas site. 
▢ Import or create content. 
▢ Check and update content. 
▢ Prepare and send a welcome email. 
▢ Post essential information on the home page. 
▢ Remove any unused links from the Navigation.  
▢ Review Assignments page and Gradebook.

See below for more details about each step. 

Detailed Checklist

▢ Mark your calendar for Preview Week

Canvas sites open to students a week before classes begin. Students who log in during Preview Week are typically looking for the syllabus and a few weeks of content so that they can get ready. Make sure you have the syllabus, a few weeks of content, and/or an introduction to the course posted on the site. If you are still working on the site, you can hide anything that is not ready for students to see by unpublishing individual pages in the View All Pages view, or by unpublishing entire Modules.  

▢ Request a Canvas site

A new request is required each semester so that new students can be enrolled. If you do not request a Canvas site, one will be created automatically for you about a week before classes begin. Request your site as soon as possible to make sure it is set up properly—especially if you are combining sections. 

Summary of the steps: Log in to SPIRE; go to your Faculty Center; under “Learning Management Systems”, select “Canvas Course Requests”; select the term (e.g. Winter 2026), then select the class section (or sections) you want included in your Canvas site. 

If your course has multiple sections, and you want all the students to access the same Canvas site, select all of these sections when making your request. If your course has multiple sections, and you want the students in each section to be in separate Canvas sites, submit a separate request for each section.

For detailed instructions see: Request a Canvas Course Through SPIRE 

✪ If you are primarily using other tools to manage your class (such as Google Classroom or Teams), students may still end up looking on Canvas for your class. So include at least one page on Canvas with basic information about the class, your contact information, the syllabus, and a link to the other tool(s).

▢ Import or Create Content

New Canvas sites are blank. If this is a new class, or you want to start from scratch, go ahead and start building. If you want to import content from a previous class or another Canvas site, go to the home page of the new site and select the Import Existing Content tool. For instructions, see the Get Started in Canvas page or watch this video from IDEAS: Import Content into Your SPIRE Course.

If you are reusing content from another instructor, and you can see the course on your dashboard, you can use Import Existing Content to import all or part of the course. If you don't see the course on your dashboard, the instructor may still need to fill out this form: Grant Permission to Another Instructor to Copy Your Canvas Course.  

▢ Check and Update Content

Especially when reusing content, make sure to check details (such as dates). Review both the syllabus file and pages on the Canvas site. Check the home page to make sure basic course information is correct ( e.g. your email, office hours, links). Check dates on modules, pages, and especially assignments to make sure they correspond to the current semester. Test links to external readings and other tools to make sure they are still active and accurate. This is also a good time to think about common questions or misconceptions in previous semesters and add or adjust language about processes and other logistics. 

▢ Prepare and send a welcome email

A week or two before the start of class, use your UMass email (or the announcement feature of Canvas) to send a short note to your students that includes a short introduction to you and the course, your contact information, a link to the syllabus, the link to the Canvas site, and any other information they will need before the first day of classes. This is a good opportunity to set the tone for how you will interact with students in the class. 

▢ Post essential information on the home page. 

Make the front page of your Canvas site a quick reference throughout the class. Post links and information that students may need quick access to, such as your contact information, meeting times, major deadlines, and links to regularly-used texts and tools. If possible (and sustainable) consider updating the home page each week so that students know what they need to do that week as soon as they enter the site. (This can be done by directly editing the page each week, or by swapping in each week's page as the front page.)       

▢ Clean up navigation. 

Remove unused tools from the navigation menu so that students won't get lost following dead ends (e.g. If you are not using "Lucid" go to Settings > Navigation and disable the tool.) 

In general, you can help students navigate the site by making sure link names and page titles match, are clear, and make sense to the students (e.g. replace jargon or acronyms unless they are familiar to students at this level). Differentiate and make pages memorable by adding color coding*, images, and other visual cues such as icons and/or topic-related images. * Accessibility note: When using color coding, add another visual cue (word, icon, or symbol) so that students who can't see color will still get the information. 

▢ Review Assignments page and Gradebook.

Groups of assignments on the Assignments page correspond to the structure of the Gradebook. Check the grading scheme in your syllabus and adjust the groups to match (e.g. if Participation is 30% of the final grade, put all the graded discussions related to participation in the same group and set it to be 30%.) 

If you are not using Canvas to track and deliver grades, make sure to hide the Gradebook so that students do not get confused (or shocked) by what they see.

If you want to provide students with progress reports and a sense of how they are doing without focusing on grades, you can adjust the Gradebook to provide done/not done and other non-grade information. Contact digitallearning [at] umass [dot] edu (digitallearning[at]umass[dot]edu) or the IDEAS team at instruct [at] umass [dot] edu (instruct[at]umass[dot]edu) for ideas. 

Additional Checklists