To create your Canvas shell, log in to the Rowan Online Portal at online.rowan.edu and select My Courses from the top navigation menu.
Scroll down to your schedule and click on the drop-down menu to Select a Term such as Fall, Spring, or Summer. Courses you are assigned to as an Instructor will be listed. Shell creation availability is available approximately thirty days before the official course start date. Only Day, Evening, and Weekend session types are available for shell creation from the Rowan Online portal.
Select Create Shell to create your course. Courses will appear in a blue box if they have already been created. Your course will be immediately provisioned in Canvas with the Rowan Online template. Instructors are expected to use the template for their syllabus, bio, and course organization. Please allow a few minutes after the shell is created for your template to appear.
You will also be enrolled in the Self-paced Canvas Training course. It will appear on your dashboard when you log in to Canvas. The course provides instructions for using the course template and other tools and features in Canvas.
After you have created your shell you can begin building your courses Canvas. Click on the course title from the "My Courses" tab or select Dashboard from the yellow bar and choose Access my courses in Canvas.
Course Copy: You will be given the option to copy existing course content into your shell for any day, evening, or weekend courses that were previously created from this portal. For each course where you select “Create Shell,” you will be prompted to choose between copying content from an existing course or creating a new, blank shell.
- When you choose “copy content,” you will be able to select any one previous course. The system will copy 100 percent of the course content into your designated course shell.
- When you choose to create a new, blank shell, a new shell with the default course template will be provisioned for you.
- Please note that an option to copy the course content from the previous term is only available at the time you are creating your shell for the term. You cannot select to do this at a later time. If you choose to copy your courses later, you will need to use the Canvas Commons system to manage the copy process. After you copy course content, you may update, edit, and/or delete any portions of the copied content in the new shell.
- After you submit your request, the course shell and copy process will begin immediately within Canvas. You will receive an email notification when the course is ready (course copy may take some time depending on the amount of content being copied). Once you receive the email notification, you can begin building and/or updating your course for the next semester.
- Please plan for timely submissions since students are expected to view their courses 5 days before the course starts.
Please Note: Canvas shells are not available until 30 days prior to the start of the semester.
If you have any questions or need help, please contact the Technology Support Center at 856-256-4400 or submit a ticket in the IRT Support Portal.