Manage Your Canvas Profile and Notification Settings

Last updated on June 11, 2024

Your Canvas profile lets you choose a profile picture and share a brief biography with your students. Setting up your Canvas profile will help your students get to know you as a person, which increases instructor presence, humanizes your course, and makes your course more engaging. In this tutorial, we’ll add a profile picture, fill in some basic information, and set our preferred notification settings.

Directions

Manage Your Canvas Profile

1. Go to MSU Denver’s Faculty and Staff Hub.
2. Click Canvas in the Teaching & Learning section.
3. Log in to your Canvas Account.
4. Click Account on the left-hand global navigation menu.
5. Click Profile.
6. Click the Profile Picture in the top left-hand corner.
7. Click Choose a Picture.
8. Locate an Image File of yourself saved on your computer.
9. Click the Image File.
10. Click Open.
11. Click and Drag the Circle to crop your photograph, as desired.
12. Click Save.
13. Click Edit Profile in the top right-hand corner.
14. Enter any Biographical Info that you’d like to share in the Biography text field.
15. Enter a Title and URL for any website that you’d like to link to from your Canvas account, such as a blog or professional website.
16. Click Save Profile in the bottom right-hand corner.

Link a Secondary Email Account

1. Click Settings in the left-hand navigation menu.
2. Click + Email Address in the top right-hand corner.
3. Enter a Secondary Email Address.
4. Click Register Email.
5. Open your Secondary Email Inbox and follow the instructions in the confirmation email sent by Canvas.
6. Click OK, Thanks.
7. Click Edit Settings on the right-hand side of the page to change your preferred pronouns, language, and time zone settings.
8. Scroll down the page and click one of the Other Services if you’d like to connect any of those to your account.

Manage Your Notification Settings

1. Click Notifications in the left-hand navigation menu.
2. Select Account or a Specific Course from the drop-down menu to change notification settings for.
   • Note: All courses will default to your Account notification settings unless you change one of their individual settings.
3. Browse the list of Course Activities that you’d like to change notification setting for. 
4. Click the Icon to the right of that activity for the desired contact method.
   • You’ll be able to choose different settings for any secondary email address or the Canvas app.
5. Choose the desired Frequency for notifications about this Course Activity.
   • You can choose to be notified immediately, in a daily or weekly summary, or to not receive notifications about this activity.
   • Note: You will still receive notifications about any of these activities in Canvas itself, these settings will just change what you receive in your email account or as push notifications.