Faculty FAQ

Problems viewing WyoCourses

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This can happen because the dashboard displays courses that are currently “active” within WyoCourses. If you want to display specific courses, you can use these instructions to display courses on your dashboard. All courses you are enrolled in can also be found under "Courses & Groups - All Courses." If you do not see a course you should be in, please contact wyocourses@uwyo.edu .

There are two reasons you may only see one section of a course that has multiple sections. The first reason is that it may have come across as a crosslisted course. To check this, go into the section you can see and click on the “Settings” tab. On the “Course Details” tab that should pop up, look at the SIS ID. If it begins with “XXLS” then the course has already been crosslisted. Double-check that all sections are present under the “Sections” tab if the course has an XXLS ID.

If the course does not have an XXLS ID and you cannot see the other sections, then you have most likely not been added as the instructor of record for the other sections yet. Please speak with the person in your department responsible for loading instructors into Banner and have them make sure you are properly loaded into all the courses you are supposed to be teaching.

The courses may not have been crosslisted as expected. This sometimes occurs as a result of your courses being crosslisted after the semester courses were finalized by the Registrar’s Office.

If you notice an error with enrollments, please contact wyocourses@uwyo.edu and provide the course titles and CRNs for the courses in question.

You can request WyoCourses shells be crosslisted/combined by submitting the request form called "Request a Combined/Crosslisted Course."

By default, courses open at 12:01am on the first day of classes. If you would like students to have access before this date, you will need to follow the steps explained in this tutorial to change the access date. Because adds and drops will cause this date to revert, you must check frequently to ensure the course stays open until the course start date has passed. If you only want to let students view materials but not participate, you can uncheck the box for "Restrict students from viewing course before course start date" and Save the settings.

To display your course in the index so students can view the syllabus through WyoCourses, follow these steps in the document How to List a WyoCourses Shell and Syllabus For Viewing.

adding and removing people and access

To add an instructor to a previous course you have instructed, go to the Request Forms page and select "Request Concluded Course Access." Fill out the form to request an instructor have access to a previous course you have instructed.

Please note that the person you wish to add must have a FERPA form on file with the Registrar’s office. The form can found at this link.

Once the person has a FERPA form on file, you can add them using the information and instructions on this page.

Visit the Request Forms page. Once there select “Request an Incomplete Section” link to be taken to the form. Once your request has been processed, you will be informed via email. You will need to let the student know they can now access the course again.

Note that if you want them to complete assignments that are already in the course, you will need to add a second due date to the assignment for them.

Assignments and discussions

Canvas has reported that Internet Explorer 11 and Edge may occasionally cause problems with users submitting assignments. Currently, these are the recommended workarounds:

Use a supported browser other than IE 11 or Edge to submit assignments. A list of the other browsers we support is available at this link. This is the surest, simplest solution for users who have access to a browser other than IE 11 or Edge.
Add Canvas to the list of "trusted" websites in Internet Explorer. This has to be done in Internet Explorer, because Edge doesn't have this workflow in its UI yet. Adding a trusted site in IE carries over to Edge. This process is unintuitive to a point where we hesitate to suggest it to less-than-quite-savvy users.

Attachments in discussion posts are a course-level setting you must change for each course. Unless you allow this setting, students will not be able to attach files to discussion posts.

To allow attachments on discussion posts, navigate to the “Discussions” tab in the course. On the right side of the Discussions window, you should see a small gear icon. Click this. Look under “Student Settings” for the “Attach Files to Discussions” option. Check this box then click “Save Settings” if you want students to be able to post attachments to discussions.

If you have an assignment marked as a file upload submission, you have the ability to specify what kinds of files are accepted. If a student reports issues with uploading a file, they may be attempting to upload a restricted file type.

Keep in mind that Canvas will only permit file types that exactly match what types you have specified. So if you restrict uploads to .docx, for example, .doc files will not be allowed.

When configuring an assignment, you have the option to set the assignment due date as well as the close date. Any submissions after the due date will be marked as late. The close date will “lock” the assignment and prevent any further submissions.

quizzes and general grading

This happens when multiple grading periods are enabled but the option to display all grading periods is disabled. A walkthrough on how to fix this can be downloaded at the following link to the step-by-step guide.

Per the Registrar's Office, grades and exams should be kept for one year.

There are a couple different ways you can get videos to display in a Quiz within WyoCourses. You can either upload media directly to the Quiz or you can set up a preview link if the media is hosted elsewhere, like on YouTube. To upload media, click on the filmstrip icon in the text editor when creating a quiz. You can either record or upload media.

If you are going to use an external link, you will need to do the following:
- Insert Link
- Highlight Link
- Select the 'Link to URL' button above in the text editor on the question
- Select the option to 'Auto-open inline previews for the link'

This should make a preview box available as another option.

Yes - Yuja provides instructions for creating and using a video quiz in Canvas.

General, accounts, communication, and training

If a course is not published, students will not receive notifications or messages sent through the course and will not be able to view any course content. Make sure you have published the course if students are reporting access issues or not responding to messages.

The ECTL offers many training sessions. Please visit their page for more information.

The Canvas Community contains many guides for common questions instructors have while developing their course shells.

If you do not have a UW account yet, we can provide you with a temporary account and access to test shells. You can transfer all content from your test shell over to your official course shells once your account is created and you are loaded in as an instructor to the course in Banner. To request a temporary account, please fill out this form in TeamDynamix.

All UW courses automatically receive a WyoCourses shell when the courses are finalized in Banner and you will have access to the course shell when you're added as an instructor of the course in Banner. You can experiment with an actual course shell or you can request a test shell be created for you by filling out the form on the Request Forms page called "Request a Test Course Shell." This test shell is simply for testing and experimenting with the platform. No students will be enrolled in the test shell. However, you can export content you create in the test shell to an official course in WyoCourses at a later date.