Checklist: Launching your LMS subject

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Access your current subjects and communities

Before you begin editing your subject, check the following:

• Availability: Your required Subject(s) are available to you.
• Staff access: Check that all staff have been added to the Subject, each with the appropriate level of access.

Update your subject

It is essential to review and refresh your LMS subject before it is published, to make sure that students have access to the most accurate information throughout their studies.

Editing and updating your subject includes checking content for relevance, updating dates and links, and confirming that assessments and resources are all set up before being published to students.

Content

If applicable, copy over subject content from a previous delivery.

We recommend to not copy forward assessments.

For a structured, step-by-step approach to designing your LMS, visit the LMS subject design guide, which walks you through planning, creating and organising each page in detail.

If you are looking for some inspiration or a quick way to build out your LMS subject, see our downloadable LMS templates. Pages like Subject overview, Staff information and others listed below have ready-made templates that you can apply to your subject and customise quickly.

• Home page: Add a brief welcome message with subject overview, aims, assessments, and links to Subject Overview and Modules.
• Subject overview and staff information: Create or update these pages.
• Module naming: Use clear, logical names (for example, weeks or topics).
• Module requirements: Apply rules and check configurations as needed.
• Content review: Ensure all content is current and relevant.
• Readings Online: Confirm link works, update reading list, and add links to readings in pages.
• Accessibility: Check all pages using the accessibility tool (speedometer icon).
• Copyright: Verify compliance and proper citations for all materials.
• Manage media: Review embedded images and videos on pages and assignments (for example, quizzes) to confirm that they are viewable to both students and staff.
• External tools: Ensure set up and access. Optionally, enrol an external user as a student to confirm they can access all content, including items created with external tools.
• Navigation: Hide unused menu items. We recommend always hiding the links for People, Files, and Pages.
• Links: Use the link validator to confirm all links work.
• Publishing: Ensure all required modules and pages are published.

Assessment and feedback

• Assignments: Review descriptions, dates, and settings. To bulk update assignment dates, see How do I bulk update due dates and availability dates as an Instructor?
• External tools: Set up, update or recreate (if needed) external assessment tools (e.g. Gradescope, FeedbackFruits, Cadmus). Each tool handles rollovers differently; check your assessments to confirm if a new copy or an update is required.
• Assignment groups: Review automatically created assignment groups from the Handbook, check assignment weightings and groupings and remove old groups.
• Quizzes: Review migrated quizzes and confirm images display correctly.
• Gradebook: Check columns and settings; we recommend setting the Grade Posting Policy to Manual; automatically apply grade for missing submissions and set grade for missing submissions as zero.

Lectures

• Lecture Capture: Access Lecture Capture by EchoVideo via the LMS navigation bar and check the schedule.
• Zoom meetings: Review and set up upcoming meetings (if required), and add Zoom to the navigation bar.
• Presentations: Organise and make your lectures accessible by providing slides within Lecture Capture instead of uploading them to content pages

Accessibility

The LMS allows for high accessibility standards, which can be supported by good practice.

• Content in pages: Use Canvas LMS Pages instead of uploaded files wherever possible.
• Files: If PDFs are necessary, provide accessible Word or PowerPoint versions alongside them.
• Images: Add meaningful alt text or mark images as decorative.
• Links: Use descriptive hyperlink text (avoid “click here”).
• Styles: Apply proper heading and paragraph styles.
• Colours: Ensure sufficient contrast. Be wary of colour combinations that may impact those with low vision or colour vision deficiencies.
• Tables: Include meaningful headers for rows and columns.

For more information on making the LMS more accessible, see Ten tips: Creating accessible subjects in the LMS.

The University has accessibility tools that can help you make your subject more accessible to students.

• UDOIT
• Ally

Discussions

• Set up Discussions (if required): Ensure discussions topics and content are ready.

For guidance on design and facilitation, see discussion and chat tools for teaching and learning.

Files

We recommend providing subject information directly in pages rather than uploaded files whenever possible.

• Clean up Files area: Review and delete old files, utilise logical folders, and reduce file size where possible; see our advice on managing files.
• Check file permissions: Ensure correct file access settings for students.

Student view

Use Student View to confirm the subject appears correctly and has been made available (or published) for students. For guidance, see how do I view a course as a test student using Student View?

We recommend going through all modules and content pages, as well as assignments. Additionally, test access to attached documents in the subject and ensure that the appropriate links are visible in the subject menu for easy subject navigation.

Note that some external and custom tools will not be accessible in student view. These tools should be tested using the external user tool to ensure that they can be accessed and function as intended.

Make the subject available to students

Student enrolment and management

• Enrolments: Review the Enrolment Change Log in the subject menu.
• Sections: Instructions for creating sections both manually and automatically can be found in the Sections guide.
• Groups: To create Groups, see how do I add a group set? and the Bulk Group Membership tool.

Publish the subject

Students cannot access a LMS subject, see announcements, or receive emails about the subject unless it has been published.

LMS faculty representatives handle the auto-publishing and opt-out process. Subjects are typically published 10 working days before the recorded start date in StudentOne at 10am. However, Subject Coordinators or Instructors can publish the subject at any time.

Note: A subject cannot be unpublished if a student has interacted with the content.

See our subject publication and auto-publish management guide for more information.

Further support

Teaching and Learning Innovation (TLI) runs workshops throughout the year and have recorded webinars about the LMS and other learning technologies.

See our staff guides for step-by-step guides and the LMS FAQ page for answers to common questions.

For guidelines on the development of online components for subjects, read the framework for building or improving an LMS site.

Contact the Teaching and Learning Innovation team.