Everyone who uses Canvas will want to create several Sandbox courses to "play around in" - to practice making pages, try making quizzes, etc. These are not courses you'll add students to, although you might want to add other teachers/staff to collaborate with later.

To create a new, empty Sandbox course, you go to your dashboard and click the "Start a New Course" button on the right side of the screen.*

Name your course - you'll probably want to be more specific than the example below, instead of "Sandbox I", try "Honors Biology Sandbox" or "Social Studies Sandbox" (you can rename it later if you want). Once you click create, you'll be taken to the Course Details area of your new course. It will be unpublished.

Animated gif showing how to create a new course

Your sandbox will appear in the Unpublished Courses area of your Dashboard. Even if you publish your sandbox course at this point, you are still the only person who can see it, because you have not added any people to it.

You can create as many Sandbox courses as you'd like. You can "conclude" (archive) them anytime you'd like. You will want one Sandbox per prep and possibly one Sandbox per class or subject, but let's start with just one Sandbox for now.

After you create a Sandbox course, you can add your own pages and other content, or you can import templates from an area in Canvas called the Commons. We'll learn more about the Commons next.

*If you do not see the "Start a New Course" button, please submit a tech ticket.

Next: Learn about the Canvas Commons.

You can always receive help with Canvas through live chat or by phone. You can find the chat link and phone number by clicking the Help button in the global navigation menu to the left.

Click "Home" in the course navigation menu on the left to return to the home page.

Click here to go back to the Canvas Course Preparation main page.

Click "Tech ASAP" in the course navigation menu to return to the page with links to information about tech things you'll want to have done as soon as possible.