Announcer: OTAN, Outreach and Technical Assistance Network.

Dana Thompson: So hello. Good morning. Welcome to Blueprints and Templates. And last week, we talked about Blueprints and Templates from the admin perspective. Setting those up, managing them, what they can lock down and not lock down, those kinds of things. Today, we're going to look at them from the teacher's perspective. So if you are a teacher in a course that is a Blueprint-associated course, what can and can't you do?

Or if you're starting from a template, how are ways that you can get your content in there? So hopefully you can hear me. I'm going to assume you can. If you have any questions, please feel free to put those in the chat. I will be monitoring the chat as we go. You will have time to experiment yourself. So if you'd like to have Canvas open, then that way, you can go in and maybe do some of the things that I'm doing.

So first off, if you can put in the chat whether you are a teacher, an admin, or both. Because I can review some of the things that we talked about last week as far as mostly that's going to pertain to Blueprints. Today, I'm going to spend most of the time on Templates. Because setting up a Template is easy. Using it as a teacher is what we need to focus on. Whereas the blueprints, it's easy as a teacher to use it, but to set those up as an admin. So that's why last week, we spent most of the time on Blueprints.

So feel free to put in the chat whether you're a teacher, an admin, or you're going to be doing both roles. And that will help me customize what we're talking about today. Excellent. Thank you, Mary. OK, so just as a reminder. Blueprints, which, again, we spent most of the time on last week, that's where you can set up a master course and then push content out across multiple associated courses, teacher and admin both. OK, great.

So those master courses are great. So for example, what we worked on last week is we had a master intro to culinary arts. And we were able to push content down to associated courses, so that everybody was teaching the same content. And then lock down areas that we didn't want to be modified or customized. And then open up areas that we wanted to give the teachers the ability to customize.

And then because they're still associated, you can push content down even after students are enrolled and teachers have been working. So there are instances where you might have a master course, and you want to push content out on a weekly basis. And so you can do that with Blueprints.

So it's consistent course design, content synchronization. Changes in the Blueprint course will automatically sync to all associated courses. Those locked areas will overwrite any existing content. Unlocked content will remain editable, so that your teachers can customize them. So that's kind of a Blueprint, and we're going to look at that a little bit today.

And then again, you can lock down on a general level, like any content is locked down, or you can pick and choose. So like with assignments, you can choose that the content is locked and the due dates are locked, but the teachers can customize the points or the availability dates. So the distribution is top down. So the Blueprint course must be in the same sub account as the associated courses. And it's created and maintained by that account admin or designee. So the teachers are just able to modify what they modify in their courses, but it really does need to be maintained by somebody at that admin level. And neither Blueprints or Master Templates can contain students.

Having trouble uploading Canvas courses in Templates. So she's created courses, and she's trying to upload. I guess I don't understand what your question is. So let me know if it keeps timing her out. OK. So [inaudible name] if we can talk about that at the end, that might be something that is not a Blueprint or Template issue, but it might be something on the network side. Yeah. OK, perfect. Thank you.

So then we're looking at Canvas Templates. And again, this is where we're going to spend a lot of our time today because we're looking at it from the teacher's perspective. And so what this is, is instead of just getting a blank course with nothing in it and the teacher has to start from scratch to get it up and running for school or for classes to start, we can provide them with a course shell that has a structural foundation and some of those things already done for them.

And then they're on their own. They can use it or not. And they can customize it. And I'm going to show you some tips and tricks with that today. So this is great if you want consistency in your design and your branding, but you don't want to have to maintain the content. That's the teacher's role. So we'll take a look at that today.

So some key features and limitations of the Template is that it supports all content types, like Blueprint courses. So a Blueprint course can start from a Template. And it applies to only new course shells during that creation. So if the Template has been assigned to that sub account, then anytime you create a new course, it will pull in that Template before the teacher has access to it. And that can be a manual course or an SIS. So the admins will create that Template and then maintain those Templates. But then after that it's an automated process.

So limitations is it does only apply to new courses. So there's no way to sync content after a course has been created. Once it's been created in the Templates in there, it's then disconnected. So the maintenance then becomes the teacher's responsibility. And there's no direct association with existing courses, like a Blueprint course that you can then sync content to. So two different reasons why you would use them.

OK, thank you. Does the instructor have to have a school email? So that is no, because this is what-- they're logged into Canvas. So the only way these will work is if they actually have an account in Canvas, they're logged in, and they have been assigned to the course. So the admin creates the Template or the Blueprint. They create the new course. The teacher is added to the course. And then they can go. But it doesn't really have anything to do with their email unless that's how they've been given access to Canvas, OK.

OK, so this is just kind of a again, a review from last week from the admin one. So advantages, the Blueprint can sync content. It has more control. There's consistent course design that will not be modified because things can be locked down, whereas a Template it's an easy transition into new courses. There's a consistent starting point, but then after that, it's up to the instructors. It does have less initial work for the instructors to get started, but then they do have the ability to customize and put in their own content and all of those kinds of things.

So the disadvantages, it is a time intensive setup for Blueprints and there's potential overwriting of content that if you want-- if you did not lock it and the teacher modifies that page, that breaks that page's sync. So if you are updating content and expecting it to be pushed out, it won't be to those pages that are not locked. So really thinking through how you set those Blueprints up is key.

And then the downfall to Templates or disadvantage is that it's only limited to new courses, so you can't update something after the fact. And it does require admin intervention for setup. But again, it's kind of a one and done. You set it up, and you set it as the Template, and then you're done unless you change your Template, OK.

So we're going to get into Canvas and start taking a deeper look at this. So for purposes, I'm looking at an admin view. So if you are not an admin, you will not see this. But basically what I did is I logged into Canvas. So when we log into Canvas we all see the dashboard, right. And as a teacher, these are the courses that I'm enrolled in. This one is published. These three are being worked on. And they are not published yet, which means that students don't see them yet.

But as an admin, I can go into my admin shield and go into my sub account. And I can see all of the courses that are in my sub account. So what we looked at last week is that we have this course here as a Template. Notice there are no students enrolled in it. So Templates, and then this one right here is a Blueprint. And it also has no students enrolled in it. So Templates and Blueprints cannot have any student enrollments. They can have teacher enrollments, but not student enrollments. And then the admin has access to them just because they're an admin.

So last week, we pulled the adult ed Template from the Commons. And so we kind of walked through those steps. And I know that video will be made available. If you didn't make it last week, then you can take a look through those. But I'm going to take a look at this Template. And again, it has this little icon that tells me as the admin that this is a Template. The Blueprint has a similar icon, looks a little bit different, that tells me it's a Blueprint.

So when I-- actually, let's start with Blueprints. So I'm going to come into this Blueprint course. This is a course that either me as an admin or somebody that I have designated is developing this course. So you can see it has a nice banner. It has a welcome message, but this is going to be left up to the teacher to customize. And then we've given a little note here where they consider adding a welcome video.

So this is the home page and it is part of the Template. So when it's synced to the course that you're in as a teacher, you will see this. But you will have the ability to edit this page so that you can customize it. As a teacher, when I come into the Modules view, and again I'm in here as an admin, you can see that there's already a module for student resources, a module for Welcome to class, your journey begins here. And then we have a week one and a week two module.

And it shows you over here what has been locked or not locked. And that tells you as a teacher, I have the ability to edit this page, wrap up and looking ahead. I do not have the ability to edit some of the things in this quiz, depending on how the admin set it up. So knowing that when you're looking at these icons that you might be limited in how you can customize a Blueprint once you're in there as a teacher, this is where you're going to find that.

So this page is wide open for me to update and customize myself, whereas this one might not be because it has some portions locked, OK. But what happens is with this Blueprint, I can now push out week one's module or week two's module so that the content is there, so the teacher doesn't have to build the content. But it does give them the opportunity to add to it or to customize parts that I said they could customize.

And as an admin, I can come in and continue to add to this course. And then push out that content, even if students are enrolled in the teacher's courses. So I'm going to come back to all of the courses that are in my sub account. And you can see here that that's the Blueprint that we were looking at. I'm going to come in here to-- these are two courses here that are attached to that Blueprint.

So now I'm going to look at-- here I am, Dana Thompson, the teacher, and I'm going to come into this course where I am the teacher. Now, again, this is my first time in here, so I can see that this has been set up for me already. But I have the ability to come in here and click on Edit. And I can come down here to the welcome and I can get rid of the placeholder text. And I can say, welcome, we are entering a fun six weeks of intro to culinary arts. I'm excited to cook with you. And you can do like a little, you know, introductory and put in as much information as you want.

I can also come in here, and because it's all built into canvas, it gave me my admin put in there, consider putting in a welcome video. So what I can do up here on The Rich Content editor, I can come over here to this insert media and I can either upload or record a video of me welcoming my students, which is a really nice thing to do on the welcome page because it makes that personal connection that doesn't otherwise get communicated through online communication.

So I'm going to choose Upload Record Media, and I can either upload one that I've recorded already and save it as an mp4 on my computer, or I don't even have to do that, I can record it right here in Canvas. So it's going to pop up and ask you to allow Canvas to access your camera and your microphone. So I'm going to allow. And it sees my microphone. It doesn't see my video or my webcam because Zoom is using it.

So I think let me try this. I'm going to turn off my webcam and see if it will recognize it. So I'm going to just be-- OK, now let me see if it will use my-- no, it still seeing that Zoom is using it. But if Zoom wasn't using my webcam, then I would be able to come in here and see myself. But if I don't have a webcam, I can do a podcast, or I can do a welcome audio message. So I can come here and start recording.

And hopefully, you can see the window that's popped up. But I can record my welcome message. And when I'm done, I would click on Finish. And then save that. And it will input it right here on my welcome page. And I don't-- again, I didn't have my video on. But it did put in this seven minute Welcome video, right, my message. So you can do that right inside Canvas with this icon right here, Record Upload Media, OK.

And then I'm going to leave this because I want my students to know, and that was again put into the Blueprint and pushed out. I don't need to change it, but I can go ahead and save my Welcome page. So I have my welcome message. I have my welcome video. Maybe on here, I could put in some additional information that they may need. But because it was not locked, I was able to change it, even though it's part of a Blueprint course.

So now, as the teacher, I can come into modules. And you can see that there's all these modules for me already, right. So I have-- these are two more modules that came actually with the Template, and it's just giving me the instructor some kind of instructions so that would be something that your, your administrator would have set up ahead of time. And I can either get rid of these modules or I can move the module to the very bottom, so it's not in my way, right.

So I want to keep that information in case, I want to look at it later, but I can move it down to the very bottom. So I don't have to keep scrolling. And I'm going to do the same thing for this module. So just click on the three dots for the module and everything that's inside that module is going to move to the very bottom, or I can put it after my week two. So it's above the one that I moved, but not above my content.

So you can move modules around like that, even though it's a Blueprint, I can move these modules around. So maybe I like to operate where I have week one and then when I'm ready to teach week two, I'm going to move week one to the bottom and put week two at the top. So my students don't have to scroll. So if that's the way that I operate, I'm going to go ahead and do that. Notice that I have-- I have all these modules, but if I have them all drop down and open, it's a lot of scrolling.

So if I'm just working on the module aspect of things, I'm going to collapse so that everything that's inside that module container is in there. But I don't have to look at it right now because I don't need to right now. So this Need Help that might be for my students, so I'm going to leave that up at the top because it will-- and again, this is pushed out by the Blueprint.

And that might be something that I can either customize or not customize. But I'm going to leave this here so that my students have access to it at the top of their module view. And in the beginning, I want to keep my course overview here, right. But when I come into About This Course, you can see that it has a whole bunch of placeholder text. And this is all editable. So I have access to the Edit button. I can come in here and click on Edit.

And I can get rid of the placeholder text and I can put in my information about the name of the class. I'm going to put this as Intro to Culinary Arts. And then-- and this may be something that you have the ability to customize, or it may be something that your admin customizes and you don't. But because I had access to that Edit button, I know that I can come in here and customize this. I can put in my learning objectives.

But the Template is there so that I can just plug-in what I need to and not create this from scratch. So there's already these fun little icons that and-- the structure of having a heading, followed by information, followed by my grading scale and this cute little icon. I don't have to worry about setting any of that up. It's done for me. But I have the ability to come in and edit and customize.

So when I come back to modules, I can come in here and customize. So I would want to put my information, so my students know how to contact me, when are my office hours, is it better to text or email. I can come in About This Course, I can put the course days in the times. Maybe you have some resources that you want them to have access to all the time, like websites, or podcasts, or YouTube channels that will have a bunch of information. So you can put all of your resources in here.

So this course overview, I'm going to leave up here at the top. And then we have-- this is a Template. So this, again was pushed down by my admin. And it gives me a starting point. And I'm going to talk more about this when we're talking about Templates. But this is not something that I want my students to see because it's my Template to help me create content.

So I'm actually going to come over here and unpublish the module and all of the items that are inside of it, because this is not meant for students view. It's only meant for me to use. And I'm going to use these three dots and move this module to the bottom. My students won't see it, so it doesn't matter on their view. But I want it at the bottom so it's out of my way. And when I need it, I'll go to the bottom and get it. But otherwise, I just want to see what my students are seeing.

So then we have this Canvas overview and resources for students. Now take a look at this over here. This is telling me that it's locked. So this is something that my admin has created and has locked because they don't want any modifications made to it. So I no longer have that Edit button. I don't have the ability to come in here and edit this page, OK. What I can do is I can unpublish it. So as an admin, remember that you might have something in there that you want to be a part of the course and you don't want any modifications to it.

But when it comes to actually having students see that page, the instructors do have the ability to unpublish it. So if it's something they should not unpublish that needs to be communicated. But I'm going to leave it published because this is a great-- this links out to Canvas resources where students can look at videos and how to guides on how to use canvas, and it will avoid questions that get directed to me. And they can go and take a look at that.

So I'm going to come back to Modules. So I'm going to-- and really, when I'm looking at these, there's kind of an overlap in some of these. And under this Need Help, Student Support, maybe that's my campus student support. So where do they go if they need to change classes? Where do they go if they need to inquire about upcoming courses or their course progression? In Campus Resources.

And this Canvas Resources for students, if that's going to be down here and my admin is locked it, then I'm going to go ahead and unpublish this one, so it's not duplicated. And I'm going to unpublish this header so that the students don't see that. And if I just take a look at this Student view because I always like to look at things from the student's perspective so that I can see what they see.

I'm getting a tour. You can see that Need Help module only shows the Student Support and the Campus Resources. That's published for the students to view. But I unpublish the other two items so they don't even know they're there. I can still publish it later, if I want it, but it's not in my students view. They can see the course overview. They can see the Canvas overview for students, my welcome to class, my week one and my week two. So all of those are the things are published for students to view.

But if I come down here to the bottom, notice that I don't see that instruction-- instructors only module. I don't see the Template module because I hid all of those modules so my students don't get confused by what that is. It's just there for my use. So I'm going to leave Student view. So I'm back in my Instructor view. So again, these ones that are green, those are the ones that students can see. The students could not see these two items.

So I like to compress things when I'm working, so I'm going to come up here and collapse all. And I can see here that under the Welcome to class, your journey begins here. I do not have the ability to change this class overview. OK, so when I come in here this class overview is locked. Now this is where I would contact my admin because it's locked. But this is all placeholder text. So is it supposed to be locked or is it supposed to be something that they were to create and they forgot or skipped over it?

Now the beauty is so say I'm the admin and I have this Intro to Culinary Arts and I have 10 different Canvas courses that are associated with this course. It could be 10 different teachers or it could be several different teachers that are teaching several sections. But I've got 10 courses now that has this mistake of the class overview page having just placeholder text, right.

But instead of now saying, oh, well, now everybody's going to have to do it themselves, as the admin, I can come back in. And so now I'm switching my hat and I'm in my admin role. I'm going to come back into the master Blueprint course. And I'm going to go into my modules. And I'm going to come down to that Class Overview page. Again. I know it's locked. And as the admin, because I am the admin, I am in charge of this course, I'm going to unlock it.

And then I could do a couple of things right now. I could unlock it and then resync the Blueprint to all of the associated courses. And what that will do is then unlock it on the teacher's end, so they now have editing access. Or which is what I would probably do is I would keep it locked. But as the admin I do have the Edit button. And I can come in and I can put this course is an introductory course for our culinary arts pathway.

It is required for all students in our culinary arts certificate program. So I can put in more. I can put in the class learning objectives. So knife skills, I can put in here basic kitchen sanitary dairy practices. I can put in seasoning and cooking. So you can, you know-- and then expectations, resources, my grading scheme. But what I'm going to do is, is I'm just going to put in this for now. So you can see that I've updated this page as the admin.

And I'm going to get rid of this placeholder text so that you can just see the objectives. And because this is a Blueprint course as the admin-- now as a teacher, you don't have to do this. But as the admin, I've made this change on a locked page. So I can come up here to my Blueprint sync section. It has-- I can see it has-- it's connected to 1.1 and 1.2. And again, if you had 10 courses, you would see 10 courses listed here.

And what I'm going to do here is I'm going to go ahead and sync this change. And it's going to take a minute. And what it's doing is it's taking my changes and it's pushing those changes out to all of the associated courses. So if you have 30 courses, it will take a little bit. So this is something where you can have something in another screen going on, but yeah.

OK, so now it says it's synced. And so I'm going to come back as the teacher. So now I'm switching my hat again. I'm going to come into my Intro to Culinary Arts course. Notice that my welcome message and video is still there. So that was not deleted because I had the ability to edit this page. And when I come into modules, my changes are still there, right. I still have these three modules at the top. And I still have the modules down here at the bottom, right.

And when I come in here to the Class Overview, which initially had placeholder text, as the teacher, it has now been updated. So that's the benefit of the Blueprint is now I don't need to update this page because it's supposed to be consistent along all of the people teaching this class. And so the admin did it and pushed it out. But it's-- I do, when I come back to Modules have the ability to come in, and that was a Class Overview.

But now I can go in and customize my Instructor Information. This Class Resources is locked because that needs to be consistent for all of the people teaching this course, so I can't modify that. But I can come in here and take a look at the Class Question Board and modify that. And I know that because of these icons over here. So it's telling me that it's part of the Blueprint and what has been locked or left editable by my admin.

So I'm going to take a look at week one culinary arts. And again, you can see here that any Canvas items, so this engage, explore, expand, those are just text headers and you only see those in the module view. So if I come in here to this Overview and To Do List, you can see that I have the ability to edit it. It does have content in there that I want to keep because that's what the admin put in, but I have the ability to edit my module to do list.

This is where I was talking about, if I customize my module to do list and put in what I'm doing in my class as activities, I have now broken that sync. So if my admin were to come into the master and change this overview, I would not get those updates because I have already modified this page, customized it because I had the ability to. And so it no longer will sync with the Blueprint. Only the locked pages will sync with the Blueprint.

So think about that too. As an admin, whatever you're pushing out that you're going to give teachers the ability to edit, know that you don't-- you've now lost that control over that item, so it needs to be finalized, OK. Hope that makes sense. And please put in questions, if I'm going too fast or something doesn't make sense. But I do have the ability to come in here into the Edit and I can-- so maybe we have different days, and so on my module to do list, I'm going to say-- and let me get rid of that formatting.

So I'm going to come over here to my three dots because that means that there are more options. And this one right here will clear any formatting, if I don't like it. But I can come in here and say, on Monday, this is going to be in in-class presentation, bring your knives and textbook, right. And then say Tuesday, this is when I want them to participate in the online discussion.

Now the beauty with Canvas is this online discussion is in Canvas. So instead of telling them, go here, go here, go here, I can highlight this text, and I can come over here to the link and I can actually link that to another item in my course. So I'm going to click on Course link. And I know that this is a discussion. And I know it's our week one and kitchen safety discussion. So I'm going to click on that item. And then I'm going to click out of my link there.

And you can see now that this is a link, so they can come in to this page at the beginning of the module and automatically just click on that link to go to the discussion instead of trying to figure out where it is. OK, so that's really nice thing to do. So again, you highlight what you want, and then-- you want them to click on. And then you come into the chain link icon here and you link to an area that's already in this course.

And so then Wednesday, and maybe this is different because maybe Wednesday is a holiday, who knows. But if I was a Tuesday, Thursday class, then that wouldn't be anything that I would put in my module to do list. So I have the ability to come in here and customize, OK. And then I can save. But as soon as I hit that save, if my admin changes something in the Blueprint for this overview part, I am not going to get those changes because I've just overwritten that sync and broken it.

The next page is our presentation on kitchen safety. But notice it's locked. So this is something that my admin wants everybody to have in the course in a consistent content and a consistent flow. So I don't have the ability to change this, but I can come back here to Modules and that's this presentation on kitchen safety, maybe I have a YouTube video that really demonstrates some great kitchen safety. And I want to add it to my module. I can do that.

So I can customize this by coming up here to my module and adding the plus sign. And I can add either another Canvas assignment, a Canvas quiz. I can upload a file, or I can come down here to external URL. And I can paste that YouTube video. So I'm going to come over to YouTube and see if we can just find a video so I can show you how to do that. So culinary safety and sanitation.

Now, again, vet your videos, but this is a quick three minute video-- three and a half minute video on Introduction to food safety. And I want to show my students this video, but I don't want to have to tell them go to YouTube and search it and all of that. So I'm going to actually click into this video, so that I can come over here to the three dots. They've changed the way YouTube looks, by the way. And I don't-- Oh, here it is, this Share icon.

So I'm going to click on this Share icon. And I'm going to copy this link. OK, so I just copied that link, and now I can come back here and I can paste that link. And then here, I can put the name of the video Introduction to Food Safety, and I can tell them that that's on YouTube. Video. And I like to visually in the module view, indent things so that it pulls the students' attention to whatever it is. And now I can add that item.

Now it added it to the very bottom of my module. So I'm going to click on, I call these the railroad tracks. And I'm going to drag it up because I want it to come right after that presentation that I'm required to present because that's part of the Blueprint. But now I'm going to add this video.

And I'm going to publish it so that my students can see that link as well, OK. That will be in my course. It may not be in section one or section three or section 10 because that teacher may not add it. But in my course, I can customize it and add that video for my students to watch, OK. This group you can see that it's open, so I can come in here and edit that if I wanted to. But let's take a look at this assignment.

So this assignment is locked. When I click on this assignment, yes, it's locked, but I have the Edit. So this is where you need to pay attention as a teacher to this area up here. This is going to tell me what is locked because there are some things that I can still do. So what's locked is the content and the points, so I can't change that. So when I click on Edit, you'll notice that don't have the ability to change this content and I don't have the ability to come in here and change the points.

But I can change it to a different group for my gradebook. So maybe I want this to be under my formative assessments or individual assignments or something, you know. So you can create your own grading groups. So I'm going to put it under a formative. Maybe I want my students to see it as a complete or incomplete. They're either going to get the points or they're not. So even though it's worth 20 points, they're either going to get 20 points or 0 points, and I'm going to put that in there like that.

I can also come down here and change the way they submit their assignments. So right now they can write in Canvas or they can upload a file. But maybe I have some students that I really want to be able to record themselves and tell me their answers rather than writing it out or uploading it. So I can add that. And I can come down here and change the date.

So I know that March 5 or March 6 is the holiday, and I want to give them that holiday to do the work. So I'm going to change my due date to the 7th. So even though, I didn't have the ability to change the assignment content or the assignment points, I did have the ability to customize the other items for my course and I can click on Save.

So one of the things you need to remember is if the admin then syncs information back over to Canvas, maybe this assignment changed or they needed to update the video, or maybe this Canvas resources link doesn't work and so they want to update that link so it works for everybody, then you need to come in and double check that all of your things that you customized are still intact because they could be overwritten by that sync, OK, because it does have locked portions.

But it kind of helps the admin control what needs to be consistent across all sections, but also gives the teacher the ability to customize for their course and their students. And then when I click on Modules again so that we can take a look at that week one module, you can see that the quiz safety is also locked. But again, it has the same ability where it could just be the due dates or it could just be the points or it could just be the questions, the content.

And then this module Wrap Up and Looking Ahead, when I look at this one, it's locked as well. And that's something that my admin wants me to maintain so that all the courses, all the students have that information. Any questions so far? And this is on Blueprints. I know it's a lot.

Now, when I came in here, the first time, we have week one and we have week two, right. When I come back to my-- as an admin, so I'm changing my hats. I'm going to come back as an admin. I'm going to come back to Dana's sandbox and go back into my Blueprint. And as an admin, I came in and under Modules, I added a third module. So we're working in module one. Next week my teachers are going to be working on Module two. I wanted to give them access to module three ahead of time so that they could go in and customize what they want to customize.

But I created module three. I created the items I wanted them to be able to edit, the things that needed to be locked. And then when I sync, and I already synced earlier because I showed you that change, it's going to push this entire module out to my courses so that, as a teacher, when I come back into my course, I have the ability to come into modules. And when I come down here to the bottom, you can see that now I also have week three that was synced when I did that earlier sync.

So this is nice if you are writing the content as the semester progresses. Sometimes, we have to do that. It's not ideal, but sometimes we have to. And so setting it up as a Blueprint so that you could push that content out to the teachers, giving them enough time to then come in ahead of time and customize it, and then they can work on it with their students. And everybody has that consistent course progression. That's where Blueprints are really, really helpful. OK.

Now, I'm going to come back here to admin and we're going to take a look at a Template now. So when you get a new course and there's no Template-- this is a new course that was just created. And you can see that it has nothing in it, right. The only thing it has is a name. So as the teacher, if I want to customize this course, I have to come in and do several things.

So I'm going to show you a little bit of the process that I do as a teacher if I have a blank course, because you might get a blank course as a teacher as well. The first thing I want to do is I want to customize this tool-- the navigation bar, because if I look at this from a student's perspective-- so I'm clicking on student view-- there's a lot of things in here that I don't need. You know, maybe we were a Google school and I don't need Office 365. What are badges? Why do we have Zoom meetings? We're meeting in person. You know, why do I have Office 365 twice. It's a lot of noise that can confuse our students.

So as the teacher, one of the first things I do when I come in to set up my course is I come down here to the very bottom and click on Settings. And it's nice to have an image. That's the image that shows up on the desktop. If not, it's just a color. So if I wanted to choose an image, what I usually do is make a-- so, for example, if I came back to my slideshow here, and I come here to OTAN. And maybe I want this slide to be my course image on my dashboard for my students, or let's do this. Let's have this one here, right.

So if I'm in Google Slides or in Powerpoint, I can download this one slide as a picture. So I can come over here to File. And go to Download. And I'm going to choose one of these that say image, either JPEG or PNG, doesn't matter. So it's going to download that for me. You can see that it downloaded it here. So I can come back to my Canvas course and choose that image, that first title slide as my image for my course. So here it is right here.

So now that's what that slide, and if I come down here and save, I'll show you what it looks like on the dashboard. So now you can see-- where did it go? Here, well, oh, because I'm not a teacher in that course, that's why. So let's come back here to the admin. And let's open that course from here. So that was this one. Yes, this is that blank course.

So on the dashboard it will have that the OTAN Blueprints and Templates picture as its course card. The other thing that I do is I come over here to navigation. So again, I'm down here at the very bottom in settings. And I come over here to navigation and look at all of these things that will show for the students that is just not necessary. So if I were setting up a course from scratch, I would have to come in here and manually drag each one of these down, if I don't want my students to see it.

So drag items here to hide them from students. So that's what I'm doing. I don't want them to see any of this stuff. The only thing I want them to see, because I'm having them work through modules, so I don't even need-- So I'm going to leave modules, but I don't need to have them see quizzes or rubrics or outcomes because they're going to access all of those things from modules. So no pages, people, I do want them to see grades. Discussions, they'll get in modules. Assignments, they'll get in modules.

So these are the only five things I want them to see on their navigation. So when I save that and I come home. And I look at this now from the student's perspective. Now they only see three. They don't see modules yet because I haven't made any. As soon as I make a module and publish it, then they'll see modules here too. But look at how much cleaner that is for your students.

So I'm doing all of these things to set up my course. So now I need to create a Home page and I need to make it look nice. And then I need to come over here and set it as my Home page. Then I need to come into modules and I need to start creating my modules and I have to do that intro to the course and the Canvas for students and all of those things. It could take me a couple of hours just to get my course set up before I ever start putting in content. That's what happens when you have just a blank course.

But as an admin, I've set it up so that any time a new course is created, it will pull in this Template that will give my teachers a starting point. So here's a new course, same course as intro to medical front office. But it was created when the Template was applied to that-- this sub account so that when the course was created it automatically pulled in that Template. And so look at what I'm starting with as opposed to the other one.

So already my navigation bar is cleaned up, so they'll see announcements, homes, grades. I don't want them to see badges. So I'll go in and change that. But that's one thing that I'm dragging instead of 20, right. Less clicks means more time. I also already have a front page that looks nice. And I can come in here and customize this because remember, now that it's in my course, it's mine. My admin doesn't have the ability to push any content down anymore. I get to customize this.