Course Names and Delivery Formats

[Chris_Hofer]

Hello!  I am a Canvas administrator at our college, and we currently format our course names similar to the following example:

• FALL 2024 COLOR AND LIGHT STUDIES (DFN-139-A)

Since the semester name/year appears other places in Canvas, we want to remove the "FALL 2024" wording from the front of the course titles, but we also want to somehow append the delivery type (ex: online, hybrid, etc.) to the course title.  We have many different modalities...far more than the ones available for selection via a course "Settings" page which include "Not Set", "On-Campus", "Online", and "Blended".

We are thinking of something like:

• COLOR AND LIGHT STUDIES (DFN-139-A) - ONLS

(ONLS = Online Synchronous)

To my knowledge, there aren't great ways to run reports out of Canvas to know which courses are online, hybrid, workshops, independent study, seminars, lectures, etc. I'm wondering what, if anything, you do at your school to better identify your courses in Canvas based on delivery method. Do you have some kind of indicator in the course title, in the reference number, in the SIS ID? Do you indicate this using sub-accounts as well? Looking for your ideas...thanks!

[paul_fynn]

Hi @Chris_Hofer 

Just to contribute our Schema which follows the local Tribals/SITS SIS conventions ;we use the following short code with the unit (course) name separate

2023 MOD099999 TRI2-1 B01CAM

Where

• 2023 represents the Academic Year (starting in September) - if it is started between January 2024 and August 2024 it is still a 2023 delivery, even if it runs past September 2024
• MOD099999 represents the unit schema - all aspects of the unit (outcomes, stuty hours etc) would be documented against this code, with potential variation for Distance etc. When a module is changed rather than revised it would get a new code
• TRI2-1 - this module starts in January (our TRI2) and is taught in TRI2 (Spring) and TRI1 (Fall) - if it was also taught across the summer it would be TRI231
  • Other possibilities include
    • TRI1, TRI1-2, TRI123, TRI2-3P (P designations are used within the SIS for national auditing purposes and represent a separate TRI2-3 module which completes in the first week fo the fall - this doesn't generate a Canvas site
    • TRI2, TRI23, TRI231
    • TRI3, TRI3-1, TRI312
• B- Blended/Hybrid delivery, D - Distance Learning/Remote, F - Face to Face delivery, W - Work based
• 01/ 02/ 99 represent separate instances where we need to have differentiation within the delivery (there may be a private employer cohort, some defining student characteristic, or we may need to have smaller cohorts due to specialist room requirements - these may still be crosslisted and co-taught
• CAM - Physical location - three letter acronym representing the Campus, or NON for distance learners

I'll be interested to see what others use ... but we don't get any say in ours !!

[Chris_Hofer]

Thank you, @paul_fynn.  Wow, that sounds quite complicated.  😲

[paul_fynn]

Actually @Chris_Hofer  we find it quite intuitive and efficient - our issues are that we have Faculty level sub-accounts but have not got to the point where the institution is prepared to sub-sub account to School level within Canvas, which would be quite useful....