Digital Education Policies

Faculty, staff, and student accounts are automatically created via Banner within approximately one week of uniqname/email creation.  Accounts will begin to be created up to 8 weeks before the start of the semester. Students registering for courses earlier than that may receive an error when trying to log in to Canvas. This is normal, and will be resolved automatically as the semester information starts to load 8 weeks in advance.

Guest presenters or others may need to first create a U-M Friend Account, and then request a Canvas account be created with their friend account info.

All courses from Banner will automatically have a corresponding Academic Canvas course site created (policies about accessing these sites are outlined in additional sections below).

Canvas support personnel can manually create a "model/work-in-progress" site if faculty wish to start developing a course before the official course site is created or wish to collaborate or share their work with other faculty members on campus.

The use of UM-Dearborn Academic Canvas is reserved for official UM-Dearborn courses offered for credit toward degrees and certificates or model/work-in/progress sites for future versions of such courses.

In addition to Academic Canvas, UM-Dearborn has a Professional Development Canvas instance, which is not tied to Banner, and is suitable for a wide array of uses but is not completely open. Projects for professional development, scholarships, grants, file sharing, etc. should consider using Professional Development Canvas or other university resources such as U-M Google Sites, U-M Google Drive, or U-M Box.  The UM-Dearborn Alternative Learning Management Solutions guide is available to outline these other resources and the features they offer.

Academic Canvas course enrollment is automatically updated from Banner six times per day.

Faculty must be assigned to the course as the instructor of record by the Office of the Registrar (via department administration) to get access to the Academic Canvas course site. Faculty removed from an instructor role in Banner will be removed from the course site after the first day of the semester (not during the early access period).

Students must successfully register for the course to have full access to the Academic Canvas course site.  Waitlisted students will have read-only access to some material, but will not be able to post to discussions, submit assignments, or access some third-party integrations.

Canvas support personnel can add librarians or teaching assistants (including lab assistants) to an Academic Canvas site upon request from the instructor of record. Additional approval may be required depending on any individual department or unit policies. Canvas support personnel cannot add anyone as a teacher or student to a course manually. This must be done through official procedures, as outlined above.

This information is aligned with the Classroom and Learning Management System Course Access Policy and the Learning Management System Course Access Procedure.

Course availability guidelines for instructors and students are outlined in the Learning Management System Course Availability Policy.

All courses and sections crosslisted in Banner will also be automatically crosslisted in Academic Canvas. Canvas support personnel can also manually combine multiple sections of the same course with the same instructor(s) of record together upon request by one of the instructors of record. Independent study or other similar courses may not be combined with any other courses.  Additional approval may be required depending on any individual department or unit policies.

Please note: electronic course evaluations will be generated based upon Academic Canvas courses and enrollments. Courses manually combined in Academic Canvas will be evaluated as one course. Please keep this in mind when requesting courses be manually combined, as it may affect tenure and promotion or annual reviews (check with your department if you are unsure).

Access to Academic Canvas courses can be extended for faculty and specific students who are given an "I" grade and have completed an incomplete contract.  Canvas access for the student and instructor of record will be extended to the completion date on the incomplete contract (there will be no additional extended window for grading).  Please contact your unit's Canvas support personnel to complete the unit-specific procedure for extending access.  Students with an "I" grade cannot be added to any other course(s) to complete their work.

This information is aligned with the Classroom and Learning Management System Course Access Policy.

Please see the Video Use in Online Courses policy for information on how copyright law applies to videos placed in Canvas (or any other online educational environment). This policy was created by Jack Bernard, Associate General Counsel of University of Michigan.