Community Information

Canvas Communities

Why are they used?

Communities are used for a range of activities across Canvas. They are often used to provide information for students at programme or stage level. They can also be created for specific projects or activities that are not module or programme related.

Static Communities

Static communities are created once. At the start of the academic year, students are added and removed based on their programme code and stage.

Annual Communities

Academic units may want a new community for each academic year. This may be due to a requirement of students to access assessment information from the previous year, or due to the content changing significantly each year.

Some academic units unpublish their community at the end of each year to stop the enrolment issue described in the next section. This would stop students being able to access their communities from previous years.

Enrolments

Enrolments for communities are managed differently than for University modules (Canvas courses). Programme code and stage are used to select which students should be in each community. Issues can arise in annual communities when new students get enrolled on to the previous years’ community as well as the current one.

To request a new community

To request a new community please complete this form. This will send a request through to the IT Service Desk and your community will be created as soon as possible. When completing the form, you will select from:

• Category 1 – Static Community
• Category 2 – Annual Community with the previous year unpublished
• Category 3 – Annual community with the previous year published

If you are unsure which community is best for you, please contact ltds@newcastle.ac.uk for further guidance.