Canvas @ Yale

Creating a Shared Google Doc Using Canvas Collaborations

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The Collaborations section in your Canvas course is a tool that allows you to create collaborative Google docs to share with your students. A collaborative document allows you and your students to work together either synchronously (such as during an in-person class session or over a web conference) or asynchronously to share ideas and conduct group work. Google Docs allows you to work collaboratively on tasks like group papers or note-taking. Collaborations gives you and your students an easy place to keep track of those collaborations, and also to set them up without having to swap emails.

Not all faculty / students have EliApps (Yale's Google for Education) Accounts. This means that when you use the collaborations tool with Google, some students may need to create a personal Google account so that they can collaborate.

To acquire a Google / Eli Apps account, you can reach out to the ITS Help Desk.

Once enabled from the course settings area, you will be able to start collaborating with Google Docs by clicking into the "Collaborations" section from the Course Navigation.

  1. Provide a "Document Name" and an optional "Description."
  2. In the "Collaborate With" field, select your students in the left-hand column to add them to the collaboration (right-hand column).
  3. Click the "Start Collaborating" button to create your new Google Doc and share the collaboration with the students.
  1. Your collaborations will be listed under the Collaborations tab in the Course Navigation.
  2. On this page you can open your "Current Collaborations," edit the collaborations settings, or delete the collaboration.
  3. Create a new Google Doc collaboration by clicking the "Start a new collaboration" button in the top-right corner and complete steps 1-3 above again.

For more help, please contact [email protected].

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