Did you know that Free for Teacher provides all educators with access to an AWESOME resource called Canvas Commons? Canvas Commons is a digital library within Canvas LMS that allows educators to find, share and import content into their courses! This allows educators to save hours of time from creating course content, and allows for enhanced productivity.
How Do I Access Canvas Commons in FFT?
To access Canvas Commons on your Free for Teacher Canvas account, locate the ‘Common’s link via the Global Navigation menu, located on the left-hand side of your screen.
Note: You must be enrolled in at least one active, or future enrollment course with the Teacher, TA or Designer role in order to see the Commons link on your account’s Global Navigation menu.
Upon clicking on the Commons link from your Global Navigation menu, you may see an ‘Authorize Canvas Commons’ message box appear. You will need to authorize access to Canvas Commons before you can access the digital library of resources. This should only appear the first time you open Commons.
Once you have, or if you have already authorized Canvas Commons to your account, you will be able to access all of the publicly-shared resources from educators around the world!
How Do I Import Content Into My Course in FFT?
Free for Teacher Canvas users are limited to viewing, importing and sharing public resources only. There are a couple of different ways to import content from Canvas Commons into your courses!
Note: Commons can only import content into existing courses (courses you have already created). Commons does not have the ability to create new courses for you. Please ensure you have a course ready for the import!
1. Click the Commons link via the global navigation menu.
2. Find a resource you’d like to import. You can do this by using the search bar, or scrolling through the library. Once you find a resource, click on the title.
3. Upon clicking the title (link) of the resource, you are able to preview it before officially importing it into your course.
4. Once you confirm that this is a resource that you would like to import into your course, click the blue Import / Download button, located on the right-hand side of the page.
5. In the slide-out menu, select the course that you would like to import the resource to. Then, click Import into Course.
6. The resource will begin importing in your course. You can check the import status by navigating to your course's settings > import course content to see the progress bar.
If you are interested in learning more, check out How do I import and view a Commons resource in Canvas?
How Do I Share a Resource to Commons in FFT?
All Free for Teacher Canvas users are able to share course content (including pages, files, assignments, quizzes, modules and entire courses) to the public Commons account. Free for Teacher users do not have access to share private resources.
To share a resource with the Free for Teacher Commons, find the resource you’d like to share (in this example, we are sharing a page). Then, click the breadcrumb button on the right-hand side of the resource. Click Share to Commons.
After you provide all of the details about your resource, you’re ready to share it! Click the blue Share button located at the bottom-right hand corner of the page.
Your resource has now been shared to Commons! Do take note, your resource may take some time to process, depending on the file size. Processing will need to be completed before your resource can be imported into courses.
You can click the ‘Shared’ tab located in the menu at the top of the page to access all of your shared resources. Here, you can edit the title and description of your resources, as well as delete them from Commons.
If you are interested in learning more, check out How do I share a course to Commons?
Bonus Tips!
1. You can change your view from the default card view to the list view by clicking the Switch to List View link in top right-hand corner.
2. You can Favorite content so you can easily access it from the Favorites tab in the Commons menu (located at the top of the page). Clicking the button again will remove the resource from your favorites.
3. You are able to access all of the content that you’ve ever imported by clicking on the Imported tab from the Commons menu (located at the top of the page).
