Canvas: Rich Content Editor

The Canvas Rich Content Editor (RCE) is an editor for Canvas pages, assignments, discussions, quizzes, and announcements. If you’ve ever edited a Canvas page or added a description to an assignment, you’ve already used it! The RCE allows you to add and format text, insert photos and videos, and link web content in many areas of your course.

Table of Contents

Why Should I Use the Rich Content Editor?

The Rich Content Editor puts many powerful tools right in the fingertips of instructors. Besides allowing you to compose text, it also makes adding images, videos, documents, and links to many areas of your course incredibly easy. By using the RCE to keep relevant materials together in the same area, your students will also feel more confident in what they need to use and when. Consider how you might implement the following practical applications of the Rich Content Editor in your own course:

  • Link files in assignment descriptions. Avoid confusion from students over what materials are relevant to an assignment by linking them right in an assignment description. If your instructions reference a reading, link your PDF where you mention it. If you would like students to fill out and submit a Word doc you created, include a link to the file and then there will be no confusion over which file to use.
  • Update your course materials right in Canvas. Sometimes you may decide to change the details of a project or another course element. Rather than digging through your computer files to update a document and then reuploading it to your course, consider copying the instructions into the appropriate assignment, discussion, or page in your Canvas course where you can easily edit them anytime.
  • Make your course content easy for your students to access. Use the RCE to create your course content in Canvas pages instead of uploading Word or PowerPoint files. Creating your content within Canvas will ensure that your students can access it on all devices and ensure that the ability to view your content isn’t dependent on the installation of specific software. It will also prevent students from having to juggle many tabs and windows at once to switch between downloaded files and your Canvas course.
  • Use videos in new areas of your course. If you’ve taught online, you’ve almost definitely had a video embedded on a page before, but did you know you can also use the RCE to add videos to announcements, discussion threads, and even quizzes? If you’re one that prefers to communicate through speaking rather than written text, consider adding a video to your next announcement (while still including transcripts or a written overview for accessibility).

How Can I Use the Rich Content Editor to Make My Content More Accessible?

Use Built-In Text Formatting

The Rich Content Editor is a great tool for making your course content more readable. It is recommended that you format your text using Canvas’s built-in text styles from the dropdown menu in the Rich Content Editor. For example, Header 2 and Header 3 are great for page headers, while Paragraph is perfect for body text. Using these text styles will keep the appearance of your content consistent across your course, plus the text will scale correctly when a user zooms in on their browser. Canvas formatting also helps screen readers determine which parts of the text are headers and which are body text.

Add Alt Text to Images

Adding alt text to images is another best practice for making your course more accessible. Alt text provides a description of images that is readable by those that use screen readers. When you upload a new image with the Rich Content Editor, add a brief description in the Alt Text field.

Use the Accessibility Checker

The Rich Content Editor also comes equipped with a built-in accessibility checker that runs some basic checks and makes recommendations to improve the accessibility of the content you are editing.

More Detailed Information

Reveal Additional Tools with the More Button

To see additional features, click the three stacked dots in the top right corner of the RCE toolbar. Depending on the size of the window in which you have Canvas open, more or fewer tools will be hidden behind this “More…” button.

More options

There is a menu bar at the very top of the Rich Content Editor. From this menu bar you can:

  • Cut, copy, paste, and undo with the Edit menu
  • Toggle between rich text and HTML view with the View menu
  • Insert various types of media, as well as tables and equations
  • Format your text
  • Explore external Tools (this is also where you will embed Kaltura videos)
  • Manage Table properties

Animated demo of the RCE menu

Course content and external content can be linked through the menu bar or toolbar. Photos, documents, URL links, and course content links can be added through the “Insert” menu or the toolbar buttons with icons that match those found within the Insert menu.

Course Link Menu Item

Access Third-Party Tools Through the Menu Bar or Toolbar

Office 365 content and Kaltura/My Media content can be embedded with their respective buttons in the RCE toolbar.

Office and Kaltura Buttons

Other third-party tools like YouTube, Vimeo, and Films on Demand can be accessed through the “Apps” button with a plug icon. You can also access all external tools by going to Tools > Apps > View All in the menu bar. After you use a tool for the first time, it will appear under “Apps” without having to click “View All”.

Apps, My Media

If You Can’t Find What You’re Looking For…

To help you navigate this menu system, we’ve linked instructions below for some common features. Note that the process for each of these is the same whether you are using the RCE in a page, an assignment, a discussion, etc.

 

Exam Conversions Available

In response to the added challenges of the semester, CATL has procured limited access to a tool for converting and importing quizzes (or exams) to Canvas. The tool converts a formatted text document (.txt, .rtf, or Word) into a Canvas quiz. Details of the formatting required can be found in this document (downloadable PDF).

Use this form (instructor login required) to submit a link to the intended course and your documents of 20 or more questions for CATL to convert and upload. Note that depending on the volume of requests, it may take up to a week for CATL to process your document. Submitting an incorrectly formatted document may result in additional delays in the processing of your request, so please read the formatting guidelines carefully.

Once your request has been processed, we will upload your exam directly into your Canvas course in the Quizzes area. The confirmation message that the exam is available will include information on how to finish applying settings and making the exam available to students.

Facilitating Online Student Presentations (Synchronous)

This article contains strategies for preparing your students to give awesome presentations in synchronous online classes over videoconferencing programs. While many of the fundamentals of making strong in-person presentations apply to presenting online, the online element adds an extra layer of technical competencies and media-specific best practices for your students to consider. The aim of this article is to help you prepare your students for success in their presentation projects.

Table of Contents

  1. Teaching Technical Fundamentals
    1. The Best Way to Join Video Meetings
    2. Audio and Video Settings
    3. Screen and Content Sharing
  2. Facilitating Rehearsals
  3. Managing Session Permissions
  4. Audience Engagement Strategies
  5. Appearing Professional in Online Presentations

Teaching Technical Fundamentals

Given that student presentations usually occur well into a semester, by the time these presentations are due, your students may feel some level of comfort with the video meeting program you are using for synchronous sessions, but that comfort may only extend to the program features needed to participate in, but not lead, a class. A few weeks before presentations are due, you should provide your students with resources for teaching them the best way to join a meeting as a presenter, how to ensure their audio and video settings are correct, and how to share their presentation materials over the video meeting.

The Best Way to Join Video Meetings

While video meeting programs may support multiple ways to join a meeting, not all methods are created equal. The inequality between join methods is more pronounced when the user is expected to present in the meeting, as the non-ideal join methods often have limited content sharing functionality. To ensure that student presenters have access to the widest array of meeting features, recommend that they join the meeting via the best method. For Microsoft Teams and Zoom, for example, this means downloading the app and logging in with their UWGB accounts. Joining on mobile devices can limit the features that user can access, so recommend that students join the meeting on a desktop or laptop computer (if able).

Audio and Video Settings

If a student has been camera shy and mostly participating in class via text chat, they may not be fully confident that their microphone and camera are properly set up in the software settings. Share resources with your students to help them check and test their device settings.

Screen and Content Sharing

If your presentation assignment involves the sharing of a visual aid, make sure your students know how to use the screen or content sharing features of the video meeting program you are using. Some video meeting programs provide multiple ways to share content with the audience. In both Microsoft Teams Meetings and Zoom, presenters can share content by either sharing their entire screen or uploading presentation files—most commonly PowerPoint presentations—to the meeting. Both of these sharing methods have strengths and weaknesses:

When sharing the entire screen:

  • ✅ Presenters can easily share multiple programs and documents during their presentation by opening different windows on the shared screen. If a student’s presentation has any links they wish to follow during the presentation, sharing their entire screen would be the best strategy for ensuring a smooth transition between presentation slides, website content, and other documents.
  • ❌ Unless the presenting student has multiple monitors hooked up to their computer, sharing the entire screen can leave the presenter blind to raised hands and chat messages as the meeting window will be minimized. A presenter sharing their entire screen may have to delegate chat monitoring duties to another member of their group or defer all questions to dedicated Q&A breaks where they can stop sharing and pull up the meeting window.
  • ❌ For student presenters with aging computer hardware, screen sharing will tax and slow down their computer more than the file upload sharing methods. Screen sharing also requires more internet bandwidth, so student presenters with limited internet connections may have an easier time with the file upload sharing methods.

For group presentations, the presentation may run most smoothly if one member of the group is in charge of sharing all presentation content. The flow of the presentation can be stifled if each individual student needs to start sharing content before beginning their part of the presentation.

Facilitating Rehearsals

Rehearsal is a BIG part of preparing for successful presentations, and, for online presentations, effective rehearsals extend beyond practicing in front of the bathroom mirror or a trusted friend or family member. In addition to rehearsing their presentation content, students should also rehearse working with the technology. It’s important for students to become comfortable with the logistics of sharing their content and navigating raised hands and chat messages before giving their presentation. It is easier to navigate the technology in a rehearsal setting without the pressure of the spotlight and the resulting jitters. A proper tech rehearsal will help students identify and avoid potentially derailing technical snags.

For group presentations, groups should be able to effectively rehearse together as a unit, but you could also consider pairing groups together if you wanted to incorporate peer review into the development of the final presentations. For individual presentations, consider pairing your students with a rehearsal buddy or creating a Canvas discussion for students who need to seek out a rehearsal partner. To facilitate these presentation rehearsals, you will have to help your students find or create virtual rehearsal spaces.

Managing Session Permissions

Video meeting attendees can hold different roles in the meeting, and these roles dictate how much control the user has over the meeting and whether they can share their screen or other presentation content. To ensure your student presentations go smoothly, make sure you understand what each role can do in the meeting and that you understand at least one of the two methods for assigning meeting roles to your students:

  1. You can edit the meeting settings so that students automatically join the meeting with elevated presentation privileges.
  2. During the meeting, you can manually promote individual users to the presenter role.

Audience Engagement Strategies

While presenting online, it is important to think about how to keep your audience engaged through participation opportunities. At the most basic level, this can entail building in Q&A breaks throughout the presentation, but students should give thought as to how they will handle the Q&A. Would they like the audience to type questions in the chat as they come up with them? Would they like the audience to use the raise hand feature to indicate that they have a question? To keep the audience engaged, students should consider spreading Q&A opportunities throughout the presentation instead of leaving all questions for the end. Beyond Q&A breaks, students can use their video meeting’s polling tool to survey audience knowledge and opinions.

Appearing Professional in Online Presentations

It is not uncommon to see the odd student walking down a crowded hallway of campus in business attire, looking like a shining beacon of professionalism adrift among an ocean of sweatpants. It’s a telltale sign: it must be student presentation day! Presenting online over a videoconference can carry the same expectation of formal dress as an in-person presentation (at least from the waist up), but there are a few additional online-presentation-specific tips available in this guide you can give your students to help them present themselves professionally.

Please remember that your students have different living circumstances and remote-work environments, and that an ask for students to remotely present from a professional setting may not be equitable. Express compassion and understanding for those students who may not have control over the environment from which they can attend class and give their presentation.

Audio Recordings

Why use audio recordings in your course?

  • Technical: not as demanding of internet speed/quality as video recordings
  • Humanize your course when video is not needed or an option
  • Time: Can save time when giving students feedback in Canvas
  • Appearance: relieves pressure of presenting in a clean or professional environment if that’s a concern

Things to keep in mind

  • Accessibility*: the audio recordings may not meet accessibility requirements of your students. Keep in mind you may need to provide a text-equivalent of the audio recording.
    *Some instructors take this into account by pre-typing their message, reading it more or less verbatim for the recording, and the providing this transcript if/when needed.
  • Technical: listen to your recordings after creating them. You might be surprised what your microphone is or isn’t picking up. If you’re having trouble hearing yourself, or the sound is tinny, consider using a headset with microphone, or leaning into your computer’s microphone. If you’re not using a headset with microphone, resist the urge to move around or look around while talking.
  • Safari: If you are using Safari, you must use the Flash recorder. Disregard the indicated audience. This applies to instructors using Safari as well as students.

Making audio recordings

In Canvas

Canvas has a built-in video and audio recorder. It’s not as elaborate as “My Media,” but works great for brief recordings. When launching the recorder, disable the webcam feature to make audio recordings.

A guide to using the recorder in Announcements, Pages, and Discussions is available here.

You can also leave audio messages on student submissions when you grade them. This can sometimes be faster then leaving text comments, is another opportunity to humanize your course, and can eliminate misunderstandings in tone that students may experience when receiving feedback. Yale has a guide on leaving video and audio comments in SpeedGrader. Toggle off the video to leave audio feedback only.

On other devices

When making messages on other devices, like our computer or smartphone, those files can be shared with students a few different ways.

  • Uploaded to Canvas: You can upload your recordings to Canvas in both the SpeedGrader and the regular text editor in Pages, Announcements, Discussions, etc.
    • In SpeedGrader:
      • Click on the button in the Add Comments area:
        media commenting in speedgrader
      • Click the Upload tab, navigate to your file, and upload it:
        uploading a media comment
    • To upload comments outside of SpeedGrader, anywhere there is a text editor:
      • Edit the Page, Discussion, Announcement, etc.
      • Click the Record/Upload Media button
        canvas media button
      • Click the Upload tab, navigate to your file, and upload it:
        uploading canvas media

Keeping Everyone on Track

Consider these tips as you’re readying your course for Fall delivery to help keep all of your students keep on task and at the same point in the class welcome to Equitable Communications with all Students

Set expectations

General communication

Let your online/not in-person students know if you plan on communicating with them regularly, and how often that might be. As an example, some instructors choose to send out general weekly communications at the beginning of the week. Others send out more frequent communication. Having regular, structured communication can help your students feel engaged with the course as well as help them remember and understand what’s going on in the course.

See this page for more on equitable communication.

Feedback

One of the largest problems students identified in Spring, was feeling separated from their classes and experiencing a feeling of being lost. Besides regular communication, feedback on assignments and assessments, and encouragement can go a long way in improving student morale and engagement.

Learning objectives and content meaning

If you’re not already including information on how new topics relate to previous topics, the course goals, or students and their worldview, consider including that in either communications, your topic lessons, or framing text for your students unable to attend in person.

Grading

Although you likely have a grading scale in your syllabus and information on late work submission, consider also including the following items:

  • Canvas “grading scheme” – the grading scheme in Canvas is a setting that allows what Canvas shows in Grades to reflect what your actual grading scale is for the class. This can be useful for students not able to attend in-person to better understand how well they’re doing. It may also reduce some of the grade questions you receive! See these two Canvas guides on how to create and set a grading scheme.
  • Assignment and assessment grading criteria – consider providing information on what a “good” or “poor” assignment submission includes. These might be student examples with identifying information removed, or samples you create. You should be clear on what elements you’ll be looking for when grading. This is often accomplished through the use of rubrics. Rubrics can be files attached to Canvas assignments or distributed to students. You may also choose to create your rubrics in Canvas, which can speed along the grading process when used in tandem with SpeedGrader. See these pages for more information: creating a rubric in Canvas, attaching a rubric to an Assignment, attaching a rubric to a Discussion, attaching a rubric to a quiz.
  • Expectations for graded work – Consider creating Transparent assignments so that all students benefit from knowing the Purpose, Tasks, and Criteria for success. Not only will this assignment design technique will decrease what you might need to explain to students who can’t attend an in-person session, but it’ll help the students who can attend the in-person, as well because they’ll be less likely to need to ask you further questions!

Provide resources

When students are not able to attend in person, they may not know where to look for help. You may want to create a page similar to this one (feel free to copy!), and make it available in your Canvas course. Additionally, consider linking to or providing students the links to resources that can help them with their work, like relevant libguides, writing center resources, or other external resources.

Consider how you’ll make resources used or referenced in class available online. This could be as simple as uploading files to Canvas or creating links, or take a little more work like sharing presentations or creating equitable experiences.

For partially or wholly in-person courses, you will likely also need to think about how your students unable to attend in person will be assessed. For much more on this topic, please refer to this page.