Commons is available from the global navigation menu to the left. If it's the first time you use Commons you must accept Commons access to your Canvas account.

At the top you will see these menu items:

Search: The start page you land on.
Shared: A page where all the resources you have shared are gathered.
Imported: A page where all the resources you have imported into at least one course are gathered.
Updates (x): If resources you have imported have been updated, they will be listed here.
Favourites: A collection of resources you have marked as favourites.

Searching for content

Searching for resources is simply done by entering any search word in the search field. You can sort in different ways by using the drop-down menu but perhaps more importantly you can filter results by pressing the Filter button.

Filters in Canvas Commons.

The default filter are Undergraduate, Graduate and All (Includes Public Resources).

Importing content

Click the resource you would like to view or use. When viewing a resource you can see a preview of all the contents, choose to import or download and add the resource to favourites.

Canvas Commons resource preview

If you click Import/Download you then get to choose which course you would like to import the content into. Select one or more courses and then click Import into course.

Tip!

If you are having trouble figuring out which course is which (because of identical names and terms are not displayed in this view) you can give your courses nicknames from the Dashboard and by clicking the three dots on the course card. A nickname is for your eyes only, students and other teachers will still see the real course name in their Canvas instances.

Updating content

If you have imported content from Commons and the author later updates the content, you will see a notification of this in Commons (but only in Commons, not on the dashboard or via e-mail). You can then choose to update the resources in your course(s) from the Updates tab in Commons.