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Canvas Course Import and Search Techniques

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The Canvas Data Import allows you to search for and import courses directly from your instance of Canvas. The Search Canvas Courses feature allows you to search for courses in your data source based on the synced Canvas course criteria.


Preparing for Data Imports

The Canvas Data Import allows you to search for and import courses directly from your instance of Canvas. All necessary course, student enrollment, and instructor enrollment information needed in Course Evaluations & Surveys is transferred into your Course Evaluations & Surveys Project by pressing Import Data.

Once the data integration has been completed, you are ready to test the data import feature within Course Evaluations & Surveys. To do so, you will need to have the following:
  1. A published course in Canvas you can use as a test course for import.
  2. A student test user enrolled in the above course that will be imported into your EK Project.
With the above items, follow the steps below:
  1. As an EK Admin, create a test project within your EK Account.
  2. Under the Survey tab of the project, select your test survey, and click Save.
  3. Make sure your Project Level Start Date is set for today’s date.
  4. Under the Courses tab click on Data Import > Canvas.
  5. On the top of the page you will see three options:

    1. Re-Sync Accounts: This option allows you to re-sync the accounts within Canvas. For first time setup, it is recommended you re-sync the accounts. To do so, select Re-Sync Accounts and you will be presented with the below dialogue box:

    2. Re-Sync Courses: This option allows you to refresh the data source to import your courses and enrollments. Customers that are setting up the integration for the first time will have to re-sync courses. When re-syncing courses you will also have the following options:
      1. You can check the status of your course re-sync via the “Notifications” widget on the Home page of Course Evaluations & Surveys and also receive an email.
      2. A timestamp will be populated to alert you of the last time you re-synced courses.

      3. When you re-sync courses you will be presented with a dialogue box that will give you the option to re-sync courses across all or some of your Canvas Accounts or terms.

    3. Clear Synced Courses: This option allows you to clear your previously synced courses, i.e. your data source. Institutions who change courses information in the LMS, such as deleting courses or building new course sections, should utilize this feature if they want to keep the data source aligned with their recent changes. Once you clear your synced courses, you will need to select "Course Re-Sync" before importing.

      Note: Clearing synced courses has no impact on courses in existing Projects or enrollment refreshes.
    Once your accounts and courses have been re-synced, you are ready to import your courses into the Course Evaluations & Surveys Project. As a note, re-syncing accounts or courses does not make any changes to the data in your LMS. These features only refresh the data source for you to utilize for purposes of the data import.

 

Searching Courses

The Search Canvas Courses feature allows you to search for courses in your data source based on the synced Canvas course criteria. Below is a screenshot of the import page and more information about each search and import option.


  1. Accounts: Select to search for courses within specific Canvas account(s) or subaccounts.mceclip5.png
  2. Status: Select to search for courses with Unpublished and/or Available status, or No Status within Canvas mceclip6.png
  3. Course Format: Select if you wish to filter the courses by their format mceclip8.png
  4. Crosslisted Courses: If cross-listing is utilized in Canvas, there are three options when searching for and selecting crosslisted and non-crosslisted course sections: mceclip7.png
    1. Courses and Course Sections (Courses with at least one crosslisted section will have ALL sections aggregated to the parent course. And, courses with no crosslisted sections will NOT be aggregated to the parent course): This first option creates an aggregate parent course for all course sections in a course IF at least one of the course sections in the course is crosslisted. If there is a crosslisted course section within a course then all course sections (crosslisted and non-crosslisted) will be aggregated into a parent course. For courses with no crosslisted sections, the sections will display separately and will not aggregate.
    2. Courses and Course Sections (Only crosslisted sections of a course will be aggregated to the parent course. And, non-crosslisted sections will NOT be aggregated to parent course): - This second option aggregates all crosslisted child course sections into a parent course. Any non-crosslisted course sections will also appear in the search display, along with the parent course for the crosslisted sections, as the non-crosslisted course sections will NOT aggregate to the parent course in this search option.
    3. All Crosslisted and Non-Crosslisted Sections (No sections will be aggregated to the parent course): This third option allows you to search for all course sections and will display both crosslisted and non-crosslisted course sections. With this option, you can choose to evaluate crosslisted course sections separately in Course Evaluations & Surveys.
  5. Courses With: Choose to search for courses with start/end dates populated within Canvas. Default option is to search for courses with any dates, this will include courses in Canvas with no start/end dates populated. Additional options here include courses with both start and end dates populated within Canvas, courses with start dates, courses with end dates and courses with no start and end dates populated within Canvas. mceclip9.png
  6. Filter Options: Search for courses by course Name, Course Code, Unique ID or Term. Select which of these fields to search on from the first dropdown in this section. You can also use operands like Contains, Equals, or Starts With, or Not Contains based on your desired search logic. mceclip10.png
    1. More Options: Search for courses based on multiple criteria.  Each separate single line adds and AND condition.  The large text box can be used to paste a list of courses to search for.  For example, if you are provided with a list of courses to import this term, you can paste the list of courses into the large text box to search for just those courses.
  7. Courses Start/End Date & Time: Search for courses based off the courses start and/or end dates & times within Canvas. Date/Time format here is mm/dd/yyyy HH:MM. mceclip11.png
  8. Select Courses to Import: The courses that meet your search criteria will be displayed in the “Select Courses” section, where you can check the checkbox for specific courses in the list, or the checkbox in the header to select ALL courses in your search results.
    1. Note: If you delete courses in your instance of Canvas, they will still appear in the Search results but they will not import into your project. To clear them, see Clear Synched Courses above.
  9. Select Users to Import: Import the enrollments in the selected courses, which by default are Student and Teacher roles in Canvas. mceclip3.png
    1. Canvas Student Role: Import users with custom or Instructor roles in Canvas as Students into the Course Evaluations & Surveys Project.
    2. Canvas Instructor Role: Import users with custom or Student roles in Canvas as Instructors into the Course Evaluations & Surveys Project.
    3. Institutions that choose to exclude the import of student and instructor enrollments with a Deactivated status in the Canvas course, can select the option Exclude Deactivated Enrollments.
    4. Note: You may see additional roles listed for students and instructors other than those in the above screenshot, depending on your setup and if Standard and Custom Canvas Course Roles is selected under Account > Canvas > Data Settings tab.
  10. Create Unique Course Evaluations & Surveys Course Sections for each Canvas User Group (optional): Using this feature will automatically create separate course evaluation sections within Course Evaluations & Surveys for each group. mceclip2.png
  11. Create Unique Course Evaluations & Surveys Course Sections for each Instructor (optional): Using this feature will automatically create separate course evaluation sections within Course Evaluations & Surveys for each instructor enrolled within the selected Canvas courses.
    mceclip1.png
    Note: If selected, students within courses with more than one instructor enrolled will be asked to take the whole survey multiple times, for each instructor/course section. This will negate the team-taught courses functionality within Course Evaluations & Surveys.
  12. Add Instructor to Course Title (optional): Add the instructor's name to the course title of the course section.  If there are multiple instructors in a course, only the first instructor's name will be added to the course title.  NOTE: If you are using enrollment refresh (see below) to update instructor enrollments, the course title will not be automatically updated to reflect the new instructor's name.  The course name would need to be manually changed. mceclip0.png
  13. Generate Course-Level Dates Based on Canvas Course Dates (optional): With this feature, you can automatically generate course-level survey dates within the Course Evaluations & Surveys project that control when surveys for specific courses will start and end, based on the Canvas course start/end dates within Canvas. There is also an option to manually enter the course-level survey start/end dates for the courses selected in the import. Options for generating course-level dates within the Canvas data import include:
    1. Generating course-level survey start/end dates based off number of days before/after the course start/end date in Canvas.
    2. Generating course-level survey start/end dates based off percentage of course completion in Canvas. Note: both course start and end dates must be provided within Canvas for this functionality.
    3. Manually inputting course-level survey start/end dates for courses selected in import.
    4. Setup course-level report access dates for administrators and instructors based off number of days before/after the course start/end date in Canvas.
      mceclip4.png
      Note: This is an optional step, if you do not setup anything in this step, Course Evaluations & Surveys will use the project-level dates you have in your EK project to drive the survey start and end dates for all courses within the project.
  14. Import Options:
    1. Use Canvas Account to map courses: Align the imported courses to levels in your Course Evaluations & Surveys account hierarchy (Hierarchy Builder) according to where the course resides in Canvas. The Canvas accounts must already be imported into your Course Evaluations & Surveys account (see Account Hierarchy Import section above).
    2. I would like to receive confirmation emails for this data import: You can elect to receive an email alert confirming the import by checking this check box.
  15. Import Data: To import the course, student, and instructor enrollment data into your Course Evaluations & Surveys Project for the selected courses, click Import Data. Once the import has been completed you will see the status of the import on the Notifications widget on the Home page of Course Evaluations & Surveys.
      1. Note: Your Canvas Import Notification will include an embedded link, that once clicked on will direct the CES Administrator to the Course Import/Delete Log within EvaluationKIT. This log will contain additional information on the courses you brought into your project.






     

    NOTE

    Completion time for your data import will be based on the size of your import. It’s recommended that you allow the import to complete before running subsequent batches.

 

Using the Enrollment Refresh

After importing data for the selected courses from within Canvas, a refresh of the student enrollments can be scheduled in order to automate changes in student or instructor enrollments within the selected courses in Canvas.

You can do so by going into the Users tab of your project and selecting Data Import > Canvas.

NOTE

Re-syncing courses has no bearing on the enrollment refresh and does not need to be completed to schedule an enrollment refresh. Also, the enrollment refresh will only update your enrollment numbers for the courses within your Course Evaluations & Surveys Project.


You’ll be presented with the option to schedule an enrollment refresh for a specific date and time or for every certain number of days within a recurring instance in a specified timeframe. After making your selection, be sure to click Save.

You can also choose to exclude courses from the enrollment refresh where the survey has ended for both course-level and project-level end dates prior to the scheduled run date. At the scheduled date and time the student or instructor enrollments for the selected courses in the project will be automatically updated.

Below are a few things to also keep in mind about the enrollment refresh:
  1. You can schedule multiple refresh instances.
  2. Enrollment refreshes can be done before, during or after a project has ended.
  3. Students who have already submitted survey responses and are dropped from a course within the project will have their results removed from the project results.
  4. Scheduling an enrollment refresh for a date/time in the past will refresh for that project immediately.
  5. The amount of courses/enrollments within your project will determine the length of time that the refresh takes to update enrollments within a project.
  6. Select Exclude Deactivated Enrollments if you would like to exclude/remove student and/or instructor enrollments with a Deactivated status in the Canvas course.

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