Quick Course Updates with Multi-Tool

Adding Multi-Tool to the Course Navigation

Multi-Tool is part of DesignPLUS, which is only available for College of Business courses.
Courses outside the College of Business sub-account will not have access to these functions.

If Multi-Tool is not in your course's left-hand navigation you may need to add it. To do this:

Go to your course Settings
Into the Navigation tab
Locate Multi-Tool in the bottom list and use the Options button to...
Enable it
Don't forget to save your navigation change at the bottom of the page.

Note that even though Multi-Tool shows up as "Active" in the course navigation, students still cannot see it.

Due Date Modifier

Why

As your courses evolve and more formative assessments get added to the course it may start to feel overwhelming to go into every assignment each term to update all the due dates individually. Multi-Tool's Due Date Modifier pulls all the due dates for Assignments, Discussions, Quizzes, and even Pages into one location where you can review and update all of them!

Stepping back slightly, Due Dates are critical in Canvas not only for the obvious reason that they're a clear expression of when you're expecting students to have the assignment completed, but also because those dates propagate to several other locations within the LMS: the calendar, the course summary (at the bottom of the syllabus page), and the To-Do list on students' dashboard. In fact, many students use the To Do list as their primary means of course navigation, which is why Canvas introduced Due Dates on pages even though there isn't a deliverable aligned with pages.

How

Access Multi-Tool from your course's left-hand navigation, then choose the Due Date Modifier tool (you may have to accept the License Agreement the first time). The tool will pull in all the existing elements in your course and provide you with a table of due dates, availability dates, and quiz answer release dates to update. Above the "Assignment Data" section you'll see three tools that can help make this process even more efficient for you.

Multi-Tool's Due Date Modifier Interface

Blackout Dates

This is helpful for avoiding unintentional due dates on holidays or specific days of the week. Use this menu to select which days you want to avoid, then when you're using the "Assignment Data" menu it will prevent you from setting an assignment to be due on one of those days.

Default Times

If you haven't set times on your assignment due dates and want them all to be consistent you can use this to set a standard time. By default this is 11:59 PM, but if you wanted it to be 11 PM you could make that change for all future assignments here.

Bulk Updates

If you want to update the due dates or times on lots of assignments at one time, this menu is a lifesaver. Let's say you set all your assignments to be due at 3 PM last semester (right before class perhaps), but this semester your class meets at 10 AM and you want every assignment's due time to be changed to 10 AM. Go into this menu to adjust the dates/times of all checked assignments (Pro-Tip: There's a "check all" option in the menu if you want to change every assignment in the course)

Module Builder

Why

Conceptualizing a new course is a time consuming and tedious process. There are many different aspects to consider, from objective/assessment/materials alignment to learner engagement and instructor presence. Especially in the case of high enrollment or distance instruction, these all need to be intentionally considered to provide the most rewarding and successful educational experience.

Once the conceptualizing is done you still need to build it! This is where the module builder can bring significant efficiency to the process. Using this process you can quickly build out modules for your course complete with template pages, assignments, discussions, quizzes...everything you need to get a course skeleton built quickly!

How

Access Multi-Tool through the left-hand course navigation, then choose the Module Builder function (you may have to accept the License Agreement the first time). From here, in an empty course you can establish a module pattern and add standardized elements to every module.

Multi-Tool's Module Builder Interface

For example, let's say that you know your course is going to run all 16 weeks and you're going to have an overview page, a lesson content page, and a quiz in every module. You can set the module prefix to be Week, input that you want 16 modules (starting at number 1), and add two pages and a quiz with appropriate names and templates. Once you click the "Generate Module List" button you'll be able to modify all the individual components before committing them to the LMS with the "Add Modules to Course" button at the bottom of the page.

Interface for creating new modules with content