What is Canvas Commons?

Canvas Commons is a learning object repository or digital library that enables users to find, import and share educational resources. It contains content contributed by Canvas users all over the world.

Canvas Commons gives you easy access to a large, searchable collection of course material—and it provides you with a way to share your own course material with the larger educational community.

What can I do with Canvas Commons?

  • Create your own repository of resources
  • Find and import shared resources—and even full courses—into your course shells
  • Share resources that you have developed with specified audiences at SFU and beyond

What types of resources does Canvas Commons contain?

Any component or material that is part of a Canvas course may be added to Canvas Commons:

  • Full courses
  • Modules
  • Quizzes
  • Assignments
  • Discussions
  • Pages
  • Documents (e.g., PDF, DOCX, TXT files)
  • Video (e.g., MOV, AVI, Mp4 files)
  • Images (e.g., PNG, JPG, AI, GIF files)
  • Audio (e.g., Mp3, AU, WAV files)

Note that resources shared to Canvas Commons never include student data. For example, if you share a quiz from your course, only the question(s) will appear; student responses will not be uploaded.

Getting Started with Canvas Commons

1. Click on Commons in the navigation bar on the left hand side your Canvas window.

2. Log in to Commons with your SFU computing ID (you will only need to do this once). You will see a privacy notice required by B.C.’s FIPPA privacy legislation for content that resides outside of SFU. Although SFU uses an open source version of Canvas, Canvas Commons integrates with a service provided by Canvas Instructure that resides outside of Canada.

3. Agree to the Terms of Use.

You will then see the following screen showing various resource/component categories and a search field:

You can now search for resources or click on a category button to share your resource or component with Commons.

Click HIDE THIS in the top right corner of the image if you want to hide the image.