How Canvas Courses Work
Canvas course shells can be divided into three categories: live shells (generated every term for courses), shells for organizations and trainings, and development shells. Below, you will find more information about each type of shell.
Live Shells
A Live Shell is a credit-bearing course that has a CRN and will be used by students to take a course. These shells are generated by UCS six weeks before the start of the new term according to enrollment information input by the Registrar's office in Banner. Students will automatically be populated into these shells and it will be the instructor's responsibility to add content and publish the course. CTL cannot create live shells and does not maintain enrollments. Live shells are archived at the end of the term and instructors and students will not be able to add or remove content or work in the course unless an extension request has been made and processed.
Because of FERPA and students' rights to privacy and data security, generally, only faculty and students who have been enrolled through Banner can be added to these courses. Exceptions can be made for teaching observers, who are exclusively division/department chairs or those appointed by them for official course reviews. Additionally, students who are officially employed in the following roles may be added as Teaching Assistants, Student Assistants, or Graders. Faculty may also be added as lab preparators.
Shells for Organizations & Trainings
Some organizations on campus find it useful to have Canvas courses to act as virtual spaces to organize and disseminate information. Examples of these include trainings for university housing and dining, the Registrar's FERPA training, clubs, First Year Seminar, and multiple departments. These courses are clearly labeled in a way that cannot be mistaken for credit-bearing live courses, but they can have people enrolled into them as students to facilitate participation tracking and evaluation through the submission of various activities.
Development (DEV) Shells
A "DEV shell" (short for "Development shell") or "Sandbox shell" is a course that does not have a CRN and will never have students loaded into it. DEV shells can be used by instructors to create a permanent working copy and backup of their courses that is not impacted by course dates; they can act as "practice" areas where faculty can experiment with different tools, layouts, or techniques without worrying about impacting students; or they be used to share content or collaborate with other instructors. These courses should never have people listed as Students in them.
If you would like to have a development shell, please fill out this dev shell request form Links to an external site.. This form is automatic, and you can use it to create as many shells as you'd like, whenever you would like. If you would like to use a development shell to share content with a colleague, see this guide.