Teaching Basics

Teaching Without Canvas

In the event Instructure, the providers of Canvas, experiences an outage, the resources below may help you continue teaching your classes effectively.

Communicating with Students

You can  access your course roster through the CSUF Portal. You can send emails directly to your students through the  Faculty Center.

When Canvas goes back online, how do I export my course materials?

• How do I export my grades/gradebook?
• How do I export a classic quiz? Then convert to a Word doc. 
• How do I download all student submissions for an assignment?
• How do I export my Canvas course?
• Preserve backup instructional materials securely in your fullerton.edu account via  GoogleDrive or  Dropbox

Sharing Course Materials Outside Canvas

Organize your course materials (e.g., syllabus, lecture slides, assignment prompts, rubrics) into a  Dropbox  or  GoogleDrive  folder and share the link with your students via email

Providing Alternate Assessment

• My class is asynchronous, and I was going to give them a final exam. What are my options?
  • Consider an alternate assessment. 
    • Students record a brief presentation or podcast on the course content. See the information below under ‘My students need to record a presentation.’ 
    • Students create an infographic or ‘poster’ to showcase their understanding of the course concepts.
• I was going to administer my in-person final exam via Canvas. What are some options?
  • Distribute hard copies of the exam.
  • Distribute a take-home assignment.
  • Host a Zoom meeting and create a Zoom quiz within your meeting. Zoom quizzes offer options for question types, including multiple choice, select all that apply, matching, rank order, short answer, long answer, fill-in-the-blank, and rating scale. Wayne State University has  guides  on how to create the quizzes and download the grade report.
  • Recreate your test using a  GoogleForm.
• I was going to administer my online synchronous final exam via Canvas. What are some options?
  • Host a Zoom meeting and create a Zoom quiz within your meeting. Zoom quizzes offer options for question types, including  multiple choice, select all that apply, matching, rank order, short answer, long answer, fill-in-the-blank, and rating scale. Wayne State University has  guides  on how to create the quizzes and download the grade report.
  • Recreate your test using a  GoogleForm.

Collecting Student Work

• What are some options for students to submit an assignment/project?
  • Provide students with a clear email subject line and file naming convention (e.g., Last-name-FINAL-SP2026) to help you sort and store submissions. It may also be helpful to ask students to add their CSUF CWID to their papers to make organizing grades easier.
  • Have your students email you their assignment as an attachment to your CSUF email.
  • Share  using GoogleDocs.
  • Submit using  Dropbox file request  (secure, students can’t see other submissions).
• My students need to record a presentation. What are some options?
  • Zoom: The student could set up an individual Zoom, share their screen, record the meeting to the cloud, log into their Zoom account, and download the recording link or recorded presentation.
  • Record a  PowerPoint presentation.
• How do my students submit a recorded presentation?
  • Copy/paste the URL directly into a  GoogleForm.
  • Copy/paste the URL to a Word document and submit using  Dropbox file request  (secure, students can’t see other submissions).
  • Students download their recorded presentation and submit using  GoogleForm  or  Dropbox file request  (secure, students can’t see other submissions).