Using the Course Request Form

Overview

Canvas course sites at Penn are only available by request. Instructors, TAs, and departmental staff can request Canvas course sites by using the Course Request Form (CRF) for their school.

The instructions on this page only apply to the CRF for the following schools:

Annenberg
Arts & Sciences
Biomedical Graduate Studies
Dental
Design
Engineering
Nursing
Social Policy & Practice
Vet

Access

To access the CRF, navigate to https://courserequest.library.upenn.edu/ and log in with your PennKey username and password.

Find a Course

Instructors

The CRF homepage displays your requestable sites, and sites you’ve already requested. You can also find these courses by clicking My courses in the left-hand navigation.

Next, start your request.

Missing a course?

If you are new to Penn or were assigned to teach a course near the start of the semester, you might not see your course(s) listed in the CRF when you log in.

If this happens, you can still request your course by doing the following:

Find your course by using the directions for TAs and staff members.
Add yourself as a Teacher with the Request Option to Add additional enrollments (see the “Additional options” section).
Submit your request.
If you don’t see yourself listed as an instructor for the course in Courses@Penn, reach out to your school’s registrar. They can confirm you are listed as an official instructor of record for the course, which will allow you to upload final grades to Pennant at the end of the term.

For questions or assistance, please email Canvas Support.

TAs or Staff

To request a course on behalf of someone else, click Browse all courses in the left-hand menu.

Use the search bar in the upper right to search by course code (ex: ARTH 5231) or title (ex: Archaeological Field Methods).

Next, start your request.

Start a Request

To start a course request, click on the course code for the site you want to create.

Request Options

Once you’re requesting a specific course, you will have several options to customize your site.

Title Override

If you would like to give your site a custom title, type it in the title override box. You’ll see a preview of how the course title will appear to students under “The title of the Canvas site will be:”

Copy content from a previous Canvas site

To copy content from an existing Canvas site, choose the PennKey of the Instructor (1) you wish to copy content from under “Copy content from a previous Canvas site.” The instructor’s sites will then be available to choose from under Canvas site (2).

If you would like to copy content from a site that is not available in the drop down menu, please contact Canvas Support.

If you forget to copy content while requesting the site, you can use the course import tool at any time to complete this after the site has been created.

Selecting additional sections

If your course includes multiple sections (i.e. recitations or labs), you can include them in your request so that multiple sections will be grouped in a single Canvas site.

To add a section to your request, check the box for the section under “Multi-section sites”. Sections already included in a Canvas site will be grayed out and cannot be added to any requests.

Benefits of sections:

Instructors can design one site to use with all sections of one course and not need to make manual updates to more than one site.
Assignments, Quizzes, and Discussions can have varied due dates by section.
TAs can be restricted to only grading students in their assigned section within one site.
Instructors can toggle the Gradebook only to display one section at a time.

After a Canvas site has been created, instructors can only add sections tied to user enrollment with help from Canvas Support.

Additional Options

Library services: Course Reserve services from Penn Libraries are available for your course. Check the Reserves box to add the Course Materials @ Penn Libraries tab to your course. For more information about the Libraries’ Course Reserve service, please see Course Reserves at Penn Libraries.

Add Additional Enrollments: You can add users to a course in the Add Additional Users section of the Course Request Form. To add other users to a Canvas site, enter their PennKeys and select a role from the drop-down menu. Note – if you enter an invalid PennKey in the form, it will throw an error. Please confirm the user’s PennKey and try again.

Submit your Request

Click the Request site button at the bottom of the form when you’re ready to submit the request.

Edit a Request

If you have submitted a request with incorrect information, you can edit the submitted request form. Click Browse all courses in the left hand navigation, and use the search bar to find your request. Once you’ve found the request you want to update, click the course code to access the request. Make your desired changes, and click the Update button to save.

If your request has already been processed and has the status of ‘COMPLETED,’ please contact Canvas Support so we can modify the Canvas site.

Find Your Canvas Site

If your request has the status of ‘COMPLETED’, a Canvas site has been created for your course. You may receive an email from canvas@pobox.upenn.edu if we need additional information from you to complete the request.

To access your site, either:

Click the link that will appear in your list of courses under the “Canvas ID” field (scroll all the way to the right). This field will switch from “Requested” to a link to your Canvas site once the request has been approved.

Login to canvas.upenn.edu with your PennKey, and click on Courses > scroll until you see your Unpublished Courses.

Next Steps

All Canvas sites are created in an unpublished state. Once your site has been created, we recommend going through the Start of Term Instructor Checklist before publishing the site to make sure all content is ready for the new semester.

Additional Resources

Request a Canvas site

Getting Help

Please submit a request to Canvas Support.