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Contributors:Misty Hamideh

This article outlines a few things you can do to make sure you’re ready for the new term.

1. Reflect on past terms

Before opening your course to students, take a moment to reflect on the last time you taught. How might you enhance your course for the upcoming term? Are there new teaching strategies you might like to explore?

Here are a few articles about ways to level up your teaching.

Supporting Students through Difficult Classroom Conversations

Prepare for challenging conversations and support your students effectively.

Flexible teaching strategies

Discover effective flexible teaching strategies for diverse classrooms.

Cultivating student motivation

Building choice & decision-making.

Cartoon illustration of a person working at a desk with a laptop, wearing a patterned sweater, in a cozy, artistic workspace.

Create engaging videos

Your guide to quality recording.

Create engaging online discussions

Participation and communication tips!

2. Pre-term Canvas checklist

You may want to choose which courses to display on your Canvas dashboard. Each term’s new courses are displayed there automatically, but you can customize the display each time you log in. Select courses to show or hide on your dashboard.

Copy course content and settings from a previous term into a new term to update the course for the new term. Some materials from prior offerings may be subject to Oregon University System Records policy. Making your changes in the next term’s course can help you keep an accurate record of the way the course was offered to students in a prior term. See: Copy materials between Canvas courses.

Along with updating due dates, you might make small or significant updates to content, discussions, quizzes, assignments, or even grades. Getting started with Canvas basics.

It’s also a great idea to review the academic calendar for the upcoming term. Take note of university closures and/or religious holidays that might impact your course plan. See the PSU Academic Calendar.

Don’t forget to publish your course at the start of the term. Students can’t get into your Canvas course site if you haven’t published it! Publish Your Canvas course.

Use the Canvas course checklist! This course design checklist outlines all of these and other important tasks to make sure your Canvas course is ready for students.

Prep Your Zoom Tech

Zoom, like most applications, runs best when you’re using the most up-to-date version.

Make Sure Your Zoom Application Is Up to Date: If you use the Chrome or Firefox browser plugin to schedule Zoom meetings through Google Calendar, make sure the plugin is up to date.

Reinstall the newest version for Chrome or Firefox.

Log into Media Space: If you’ve never used your Media Space account, be sure to log in at least once. This allows automatic copies of your Zoom meetings to be stored there.

Schedule your meetings from within Canvas: If you’re holding scheduled Zoom meetings with your class, you may want to schedule your meetings from within Canvas. This will create Zoom meeting links for your course that students can access directly in Canvas. See: Using Zoom with Canvas.