Organisations

An organisation functions in the same way as a course site in Learning@Griffith, except they are used as Communities to disseminate information or to deliver short Learning Modules.

Communities

Organisations can be used to support the student experience that goes beyond a particular course code, such as by providing materials and administrative information that cut across different programs or levels of study.

While an Organisation has the same features and tools as a Canvas course, they provide continuous access to content, on which enrolled students have access until they leave the university, leave a program or course the enrolment rule is based on, or are manually unenrolled by instructors.

Uses include:

Essential information relevant for all students at a Program, School or Group level, or for a group of related programs
Staff and student partnership groups
Projects and initiatives involving students and/or staff
Student research or co-curricular networks

Learning Modules

Organisations can be used to deliver learning modules for:

Professional education
Compliance training
Community engagement
Philanthropic and values-based courses
Research courses
Student recruitment courses
Academic skills courses
Non-award programs

Learning Modules can be designed for an internal or external audience.

Internal: Only for participation by staff, students and visitors with sNumbers hosted in L@G.
External: The primary participants do not have an on-going Griffith relationship or identity. These external engagements are typically business to consumer where individuals or groups enrol in courses offered directly to the public or business to business tailored professional learning courses and modules.

External Short Courses can only be offered through Griffith’s External Short Course Canvas environment. For more information on External Short Courses and associated costs, please contact learning_futures_admin@griffith.edu.au.

Viewing an organisation

Staff members are often enrolled in organisations belonging to the school, or for the purposes of completing assessments such as the Annual Fire Training. If you are enrolled in an organisation, you can access it via:

Your Dashboard
Your All Courses page

There is currently no function in Canvas to search for organisation-type course sites. Access to organisation sites should be made through URLs wherever these sites are promoted to users.

Creating a new organisation

You can request a new organisation in Canvas by filling out the Organisation Request Form

All organisation requests must list a relevant Supervisor or Head of School who approved the creation of the organisation but does not require the approver to take further action.

An Organisation needs to:

Be internal for Griffith staff and students
Be an individual unit of study that is not part of a full degree program; or
Be for generic resources beyond individual courses and have a clear purpose for supporting teaching and learning

Academic Group-wide Organisations for communication with students require involvement of Group marketing partner as part of the planning and ongoing community.

What details are required when making the request:

LMS Organisation Name: The name of the organisation you are creating
Description: A short description of the purpose of the organisation e.g., Staff Health and Safety information
Availability: Yes/No - Whether the organisation is immediately available to non-Leaders upon creation
Duration: The anticipated lifespan of the organisation - if unsure, select Continuous
School/Group: The School/Group responsible for the organisation
Approver: The Manager/Head of School that approved the creation of the organisation (for record keeping only, no approval workflow)
Enrolment Options: Whether participants will be added by the organisation leaders (Manual Enrolment), set up with an Enrolment Rule (I.e., program or course code), or enabled as Self-Enrol. If self-enrolment is selected, there is the option to set a password.
Organisation Leaders: The staff members you wish to be added to the organisation as a leader

What should I do before requesting a Program, School or Group level Organisation?

Coordinate within your School or Group before making a request for an Organisation, and where appropriate make use of existing Organisations to avoid any duplication and proliferation. Not all staff in a School are necessarily enrolled in all Organisations, so you may not be aware of them without checking.

Please ensure that:

You have liaised with other staff in your Program, School or Group to co-ordinate your request.
An existing Organisation for this purpose is not already in use.
Your requirement cannot be incorporated into an existing organisation. Avoid setting up separate Organisations just for one-off activities. These are usually best incorporated into existing Organisations or carried out using an alternative.
You have identified staff who have responsibility for maintaining the Organisation and can keep it up to date.
The Organisation will adhere to staff and student communication policies and principles.

Considerations:

Large organisations over 2000 enrolments can have an impact on the functionality of some features of Canvas

Enrolments into organisations

Staff and students can be enrolled into an organisation in the following ways:

Manual enrolment
- You can add individuals yourself, one by one, in the Course Navigation > People > + People
- The Learning@Griffith Support team can manually enrol a list of staff and students. To do this, a list of Griffith ID numbers in an Excel spreadsheet is required.
Automatic enrolment (for student enrolments only)
- Program codes and Course codes can be enrolled, so that all students undertaking a Program will be able to see the Organisation. As students enter or leave the Program, their Organisation enrolment is updated automatically.
- Students can also be enrolled in an Organisation by course code
Self-enrolment
- To self-enrol, you will need to be supplied a unique URL from the organisation site

Updating leaders/assistants/participants

Users with the Organisation Leader role in a Learning@Griffith organisation can add and remove users from their organisation. This includes participants and other leaders, assistants, etc.

How to manually enrol a user into an organisation

Navigate to your organisation in Learning@Griffith
In the Course Navigation, click the People link
Click +People
Enter the s number or email of the user you wish to enrol. When adding multiple users, use a comma or line break to separate users.
Select the role you would like the user(s) to have and the section you would like them to have access to
Click the Next button
Then click Add Users

How to manually remove a user from an organisation

Removing a user from an organisation will permanently delete all data associated with the user from the organisation. This includes any uploaded assessment, quiz attempts, discussion board posts, marks, etc., as outlined in the warning message that appears in step 5 below. To remove a user from an organisation:

Navigate to your organisation in Learning@Griffith
In the Course Navigation, click the People link
Enter the s number or name of the user you wish to remove in the search box
Click the three dots next to the user’s role, then click Remove From Course
Read the warning
If you would like to proceed, click OK to confirm the deletion

Responsibilities in managing and maintaining an Organisation

Canvas Organisation use is governed by guidelines and procedures framed within the University’s policies, procedures and guidelines relating to student communication and use of IT systems.

Organisation owners are responsible for administering and overseeing the Organisation, including ensuring that student communication is reliable, relevant, timely, efficient and effective. Communications should enhance the student experience, enabling successful transmission of information and reducing duplication.

The following principles, in addition to those outlined in the Student Lifecycle Communication Policy, should guide communications in Organisations:

Email should be minimised, with preference for non-email communication channels such as announcements to broadcast information out to all members of an Organisation or all members within a section.
Exclude instructions for students to change announcements to their preferred notification settings, so notifications can be minimised or disengaged if appropriate.

Managing large cohort organisations

Delivering organisations with cohorts exceeding 2000 students within Canvas presents certain challenges, including:

the volume of enrolments
the volume of submissions and marking
There may be slower loading times for certain tools, including SpeedGrader, People, Course Analytics, and Markbook. Additionally, large cohorts may cause some of the above features to become unavailable.

To manage the challenges mentioned above, there are some tips below for how to best handle Organisation Setup & Delivery, Content Management, and Enrolment.

Recommendations - Organisation setup & delivery

New Quizzes should be used instead of Classic - New Quizzes are better equipped to handle large volumes of submissions. Please be aware that some features available in Classic Quizzes may not be present in New Quizzes.
Organisation delivery should be done directly through Canvas rather than using alternate avenues such as SCORM LTI
Discussions should be avoided due to the extensive moderation required. However, within Organisations, it is possible to create groups and utilize group discussions if necessary.
Organisations that have a very large number of enrolments (over 10000) should, where possible, be rolled over yearly. This approach allows for effective management of content changes, minimizes data in Marks areas to improve load times, and ensures consistency in all integrations.
Staff can create sections and groups within Organisations. They should use these sections and groups to organize students for assessments and marking as needed.

Recommendations - Content management

To ensure smooth operation of courses and avoid unintended disruptions, such as mass notifications to students, it is recommended that instructors seek assistance from L@G Support or a Learning and Teaching Consultant for content management and administrative tasks

Recommendations - Enrolment

It is recommended to limit enrolments to students only, if possible. If this is not feasible, then only the minimum necessary staff should be enrolled in an Organisation
Organisations with larger cohorts should rely on automation for enrolment as much as possible - using data imports (Automatic Organisation & Program enrolments), and Canvas Catalog.

Support

If you need assistance with setting up or managing a course with a large cohort, please contact IT or your Learning and Teaching Consultant.

For more information, see Best Practices for Large Courses in Canvas

Migrated Blackboard Organisations Canvas links

Emergency Response and Evacuation (Annual Fire Safety) Training	Canvas Enrol Link
Manual Tasks/Office Ergonomics Training	Canvas Catalog Link
Health and Safety Induction Training	Canvas Enrol Link
Laboratory, Workshop and Studio Safety	Canvas Enrol Link
Wellbeing for Work and Life Training	Canvas Catalog Link
Annual Warden Training (only required for Fire Wardens)	Canvas Catalog Link
Musculoskeletal Injury Prevention and Management Training	Canvas Catalog Link
Assessing and Managing Risks Training	Canvas Catalog Link
Health, Safety and Wellbeing Committee Training (for committee members)	Canvas Catalog Link

Please only enrol into an organisation if you are required to do so

Think this page could be more helpful? Think we're missing something?

Staff

Learning Tools