The Canvas Support Chatbot was built by the Teaching & Learning Technologies team at Northwestern to help you get answers to common Canvas questions quickly. The chatbot also provides instructors and staff with immediate resolution to two types of Canvas requests – creating a prep site so you can prepare materials for a future course and adding storage space to your Canvas course when you are running low. The chatbot can do these tasks for you directly, eliminating the need to place a request with NUIT and wait for it to be processed.
Finding the Chatbot
To talk to the chatbot, go to Canvas in your web browser, click on the Help icon in the main left navigation, and select the link to Chat with Canvas Support Chatbot.
Requesting a Canvas Prep Site
Want to build out a future course in Canvas? Pop over to the chatbot for a prep site.
Once you’ve pulled up the chat window, ask the chatbot for a prep site. After the chatbot understands your request, it will take a moment to confirm that you have a current Teacher, TA, or Support role in Canvas. After its confirmation, it will ask if you would like to add a “course name modifier” to your prep site – this text, if you choose to enter it, will just become part of your course’s name. For instance, you might enter “Spring 2021 Journalism 101” if you were planning to work on creating materials for that future course. You can also proceed with your request without entering a modifier, and then your prep site will just have a plain name. Once you answer this question, the chatbot will process your request and create a prep site.
In order to accommodate the unusual nature of the fall term due to COVID-19 and the related uncertainties in scheduling, Fall 2020 courses will be released from CAESAR to Canvas later than usual. Fall 2020 Canvas courses should be available to instructors scheduled to teach them in CAESAR by the end of June. If you would like to get started on building your course before then, please request a prep site from the Canvas Support Chatbot.
Requesting More Storage Space in a Canvas Course
Running low on storage space in your Canvas course? Check in with the chatbot for greater gigabytes.
After you’ve pulled up the chat window, ask the chatbot for more file storage space. Once the chatbot recognizes your request, it will ask for the URL for the course where a file storage increase is needed. Copy the course URL from the top bar of your web browser and paste it in the chat window. The chatbot will then ensure you have an appropriate role in the course to make this request (Teacher, TA, Support, or Designer). Once it has confirmed this, the chatbot will process your request for additional storage space.
You can view the percentage of course file space being used by going to Files in your Canvas course and looking in the bottom left corner of that page. The default file storage amount for each Canvas course at Northwestern is 1 gigabyte (1024 megabytes).
In order to upload all the video and audio files that you would like to your Canvas course while consuming less storage space, Teaching & Learning Technologies recommends the use of Northwestern’s Panopto video storage, creation, and management system. Learn how to use Panopto to store videos and share them with your students in Canvas.
