If you’re like me and didn’t have a chance to attend the presentations about Canvas Commons at InstructureCon 2015, you will be happy to know there is an upcoming webinar on October 19, 2015. Canvas Commons: Tips That Can Save Your Life.

Before attending the webinar, view the presentation by Kate McGee about Commons. Go to the Canvas Community and watch Reduce, Re-Use, and Re-Commons: Content Sharing with Commons to learn more about what Commons will bring to your course development and teaching processes. That way, when Canvas Commons is available on Northwestern University’s Canvas instance, you’ll be ready to import content into your course site and share your creations to Commons.

What’s really exciting about Commons is that it is a centralized location for open educational resources that are designed to work with Canvas. Not only will it be useful for adding supplemental resources for students, it will also improve the course development process by exposing everyone involved to new ideas and approaches to try in lesson plans.

Individuals can use Commons to make importing course content each quarter even faster. Templates, such as a course homepage or reusable introductory modules, can be quickly shared between multiple sections or even throughout an entire program.

Commons has content for many subject matter areas. What exceptional content will represent Northwestern in the Canvas Commons? Be the first in your program to submit a resource to Commons to see how many other users adopt it and increase the visibility of the Northwestern identity as a leader in online education.

Not sure how you might use Commons? This guide on the Canvas Community site will give you some ideas.  For example, the SPS Distance Learning team is looking forward to Canvas Commons to make it easier to manage course consistency. See what ideas others have already suggested for Commons, or submit your own suggestion for ways to use or improve Commons by posting them here.

The featured image of the Canvas Commons is sourced from a list of Canvas features published in this press release from Instructure.