Creating your own sandpit course
A sandpit course is a practice course in which University staff members can develop and test content and functionality before transferring it to a live course and making it available to students. Although it is possible to import materials from your sandpit into other Canvas courses, it is preferable not to build actual content intended for live courses in your sandpit.
Who may need one: Any University staff member who would like to experiment with Canvas in a practice environment.
Your personal Canvas sandpit is available and visible only to you. It is a way of trialling course activities or resources before you build them in your live course.
In your sandpit, you can build and test various student activities or tools in Canvas, such as:
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- Quizzes, Discussions and Assignments
- Modules to provide a structured pathway of materials and activities
- Pages using the rich text editor
- Files for sharing content and other information
- Groups for student collaboration
- Integration with external tools such as Panopto, ORLO and Cabinet
Canvas provides a full set of guides on how to use course tools. Links to an external site.
- You might want to enrol one or two of your colleagues in your sandpit with the student role for them to test how activities like Assignments or Quizzes will appear to students.
- You can also request the creation of an alias Canvas account for yourself and enrol that 'persona' into your sandpit course with the student role. Then log in (using a different browser) with that external alias account to get the true student experience.
How to create your own sandpit
- Log into Canvas and click on Account on the left hand menu
- Click on Create Sandpit
Follow the prompts to create your own personal sandpit course:
Your newly-created sandpit will contain a 'How to get started with your sandpit' page offering further help and guidance.
Note: If you are a student with a teaching role and would like a sandpit, please email Canvas support to request one.