Collaborations

The Collaborations tool in Canvas helps instructors and students work together with Google Docs, an online collaborative document authoring tools. Any Canvas user can create a collaboration and invite other users to join in.

For more general information see the following guide - What are Collaborations? Links to an external site.

Using Collaborations

Use of the Collaborations tool requires that learners have an account set up with Google Docs (Gmail). The following resources will help you (and/or your students) get a Google account created and linked to Canvas!

• Create a Google Account Links to an external site. - Instructors and students can also use existing Google/Gmail accounts or create a new account to use for the course.
• Connect Google Account as a web service in Canvas Links to an external site. - Instructors and students must connect their Google Account to Canvas in order to use Collaborations.

Once you have a Google Account connected to Canvas, the next step is to actually start using Collaborations! The following guides provide information that works for Instructors and Students!

Instructor (and student) guides for how to use Collaborations:

• How do I create a Google Docs collaboration? Links to an external site.
• How do I edit a Google Docs collaboration? Links to an external site.
• How do I delete a Google Docs Collaboration? Links to an external site.
• How do I join a Google Docs Collaboration? Links to an external site.

Video Tutorial

Collaborations Overview Links to an external site. from Canvas LMS Links to an external site.

Advantages to using Collaborations

There are several advantages to using Canvas's Collaborations tool to manage these:

• Collaborators can be added from a drop-down menu when you create the collaboration -  no need to collect email addresses or usernames.
• Canvas centralizes and integrates the different collaborative projects, and can retrieve these for assignment submissions, etc.
• Projects can be tracked or managed within the Canvas system for grading and archival purposes.
• Students can work on Collaborations together in real time or asynchronously and all work is automatically saved!
• Student Collaborations can be directly uploaded as a submission to an Assignment Links to an external site.. No need to download and upload anything, just click on the Assignment and select Google Doc as the source and then pick the correct Collaboration!