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Getting started with the semester

Adding your syllabus to Canvas

Please refer to the communication from your campus or school for details as to what should be included in the Canvas Syllabus tool. Remember, anything posted in the Canvas Syllabus tool will be available to the general public via Courseleaf.

To share non-public information with your students, please create a separate course home page. For instructions, see, Create a Course Home Page that is Not the Syllabus Tool. As it is generally recommended that the course home page be a welcoming landing page for your students, you may also want to use Canvas Modules to share more details.

Whether you enter your syllabus text into Canvas or attach a Word document, it’s important that the text is accessible to students using assistive technology. In April of 2025 accessible documents, including images and tables, will be required by federal regulation so it’s good to get into the habit of checking accessibility now.  If you are using a Word document, there is a short Canvas course titled Creating an Accessible Syllabus using Microsoft Word that walks you through the process. If you are entering text directly into the Canvas Rich Content Editor (RCE), check out the short course on Improving the Accessibility of your Canvas Course.

Adding the text of your syllabus to the Syllabus tool

  1. Go to the Syllabus tool and choose the “Edit” button at the top right.
  2. Place your cursor in the text box that appears.
  3. Paste in your syllabus text.
  4. Check your formatting. The more accessible your document is, the better your formatting will appear when pasted into Canvas. Any tabs used for indenting in your document won’t indent text on a web page so you may need to re-indent lines using the indent button in the text editor tools above the text box. For more on using the Rich Content Editor, visit the Canvas Guide, How do I add and modify text in the Rich Content Editor as an instructor? or the Rich Content Editor overview video from Canvas.
  5. Select “Update Syllabus.”

Using a link to your syllabus document

To add the link to your full syllabus document:

  1. Select the “Edit” button at the top right of the Syllabus tool
  2. Select the Insert tab above the text editor box, then on “Document” and then either “Course Documents” (if your syllabus is already in the Canvas Files tool) or “Upload Document” (if you need to upload it from your device).
  3. Follow the prompts to select your syllabus file and add your link. If your file is already in the Canvas Files tool and you have a lot of other files in there too, you may find using the search field at the top of the file list helpful.

Questions? Talk to your campus teaching and learning center!

 

Select “Next” below at the bottom right to continue.

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A Canvas Semester Checklist for IU Instructors Copyright © by Trustees of Indiana University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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