[ARCHIVED] Pastoral/Year Group "Courses"

[denise_lombardo]

We are a high school in Sydney and have recently moved across from a moodle set-up to Canvas. On our moodle site, we had separate sections for overall Year Groups as well - ie, a space for Year Coordinators to communicate with the whole year group re important dates, meetings, reminders, etc. This is not a course in the sense of learning, but a communication space where permission notes and other documents pertaining to the year group as a whole could be shared. We were wondering if anyone out there has set up similar "courses" within Canvas for purposes other than teaching and learning, and if so, could we get a peek via Commons or other ways? I have also posted this in the Instructional Designers Group, but I did a search for a range of different related terms in the overall community site and came up with nothing. We are also hoping to set up "courses" for all our co-curricular activities... Thank you!

[kona · Accepted solution]

 @denise_lombardo ​, my recommendation is to check out  @Chris_Hofer ​'s blog post on Paper Pumpkin - Campus Clubs and Groups. It sounds like it would fit pretty well with what you are trying to accomplish!

[denise_lombardo]

Thanks Kona! Great suggestion.

[adam_abbate]

Hi  @kona ​, I've finally had an opportunity to play with groups (I work with  @denise_lombardo ​) and am struggling to decide between creating a Group or a Course for non-academic/coursework needs. I can see that Groups are simplified versions of Courses but otherwise can't see enough reasons to not just create a Course. Any tips?

P.S I did check out  @Chris_Hofer ​'s post and found it very useful but couldn't comment (with my same thoughts) for some reason. I'm assuming because I'm not in the Higher-Ed group.

[kona]

 @adam_abbate ​, that definitely could be. Even if you're not higher ed, feel free to join the group! We don't really stand on formality around here.

For us, we go ahead and just create everything as a course. It just seems easier for us and makes more sense to have the extra stuff available in case the group decides they want to use it. <-- What we found is that the people get use to using all the Canvas features in their real courses and want everything available/same for their group. Just my 2 cents and others might have good reason for not using courses.

[adam_abbate]

Thanks  @kona ​ that was pretty much my thinking too (regarding features). At this stage, not being able to set a "homepage" is enough for me not to use Groups.

P.S Will join the higher-ed group...once I have a chance to get my email notifications in Jive sorted out 😉

[Stef_retired]

Also,  @denise_lombardo , I notice that you posted this same question in the Instructional Designers group (Pastoral/Year Group "Courses"). Did you know that you can share a post in more than one community space?  Rather than having to create two copies with differing comment threads, you can create your post and then use the Share link in the upper right to share it into additional spaces. Because you are a member of the K-12 group, for example, you should be able to ask questions in the Start a Discussion/Question... area of the Instructional Designers group and then share it into the K12 group.