Centralized Database for Institution-Specific Documentation

[tdarrow]

Hi all!

I have a question regarding storing institution-specific documentation and tips for students in Canvas. Currently I have a "documentation" course where I place common documentation (which I give links to several other courses). My problem is that the link validator is saying that these documents are in a "different course", which will throw off people validating each course's links. Is there a better way to store data that is common or shared by other courses, or do I just need to deal with the false positive error message?

Thanks,

Tim Darrow

[kona · Accepted solution]

 @tdarrow ​, I tested this with a link and got the same "different course" results.

My thoughts for this are:

• Keep it the way it is and just tell/remind faculty that the links to these documents will say that and to ignore it
• Would Canvas Commons work? That way you could have all your documents uploaded there and then instead of a link you could just download the files to the course. Here are the guides for how to use Canvas Commons - Commons Guide
• Create all your files in Google drive (easy to keep them organized), make it so anyone with the link can view the document, then add the URL link to the courses. This way not only would the link show as valid, but all you'd need to do if you need to update/revise the document is to do it once in Google and it would automatically be updated for every course with that link. Side note, you could also embed the different documents on a page in the courses or (even more cool) embed an entire Google Drive folder on a page - that way instead of a bunch of links to documents, the students would see old page with all the updated and correct documents (I have to admit once I realized this would work it's one of my new favorite things!). How to do all of this can be found from this main resource - Using Google in Canvas

Hope this helps!

[tdarrow]

Hey Kona,

I am beginning to lean more and more towards using Canvas Commons as a usable resource. I may also settle on creating a "Student Resource Center" course where I enroll all Canvas students automatically. I am going to try to use this solution or Canvas Commons to store widely-used material in so I can broadcast it over several of my courses.

Thanks for the suggestion!

[jamely]

Here is a direct link to  @jacob_standish 's tutorial Embed a Google Drive Folder.

Not only do students "stay" in the course, but the embed will allow them to preview the documents from within the course as well!