Welcome to the Fall 2025 semester! We're excited to work with you this school year. In this article, you will find some important reminders and information to help you start the term strong. As always, if you have any questions or would like to meet with a member of the COLRS staff, please contact us. We're happy to help anytime!
-Emily, Carrie, Scott, & Taylor
Canvas courses
Fall 2025 courses open to students on Friday, August 22 at 12:01 a.m. Courses will automatically publish at this time; you will not need to do anything on your end to ensure students have access
Combining course shells & course title updates
To improve accuracy and prevent frequent course combination mistakes, our office is now handling all requests for combining courses in Canvas. If you have multiple sections of the same course that you鈥檇 like to have combined, please reach out to the COLRS team at colrs@uis.edu.
Canvas course titles are now dynamically linked to the course schedule data. If you see a mismatch between your Canvas course title and the course schedule title, contact the COLRS Team and we will edit the Canvas title to match the course schedule.
Copying course content
You can copy content from a past term or a Gold Course into an active term anytime. Learn more about copying course content on our website. Please note that, when you copy content, you may see a 鈥�partially completed鈥� message. Usually, this happens when there are broken links in a course. You can use the to more easily identify what links are broken.
Workshops
Canvas Basics
Is this your first time using Canvas? Or has it been a while, and you鈥檙e looking for a refresher? Either way, please join Carrie and Taylor for our Canvas Basics workshop! We鈥檒l walk you through some of the most important features of Canvas and answer your questions about the LMS.
- When: Wednesday, August 20 @ noon
- Where:
- Duration: 1 hour
Demystifying AI Detectors
How do AI detectors work? Are they accurate? What biases do these systems have? If you missed the workshop in July, join ITS and COLRS staff this month to see live testing of an AI detection tool.
- When: Wednesday, August 20 @ 3:00 p.m.
- Where: UHB 2028 or
- Duration: 1 hour
Copyleaks updates
This summer, we shared some information regarding the most recent updates to Copyleaks, our plagiarism and AI detection tool. In July, the AI detector was upgraded to v9, and in August, Copyleaks implemented the tool. If you have used Copyleaks before, you may notice that the results are different from what you saw previously. Please reach out to us with any questions or concerns regarding these updates.
More about COLRS
We are pleased to announce that, as of June 16, Emily Boles is our new Chief Online Learning Officer (COLO) and Director of COLRS. Emily has been part of the COLRS team since 2006 and brings a wealth of experience and expertise to this role; she will be working with various campus stakeholders to enhance online learning at UIS. Please congratulate her on this new role!
Course accessibility
In order to prepare for the April 2026 deadline for making online materials accessible, COLRS鈥搃n partnership with the Office of Digital Accessibility (ODA)鈥揾as developed a process for working with instructors on their online courses. We invite you to read more about this process and to fill out the Canvas Course Accessibility Intake Form when you鈥檙e ready to get started. Academic departments will begin to work with ODA this Fall, but you may fill out this form at any time to receive one-on-one support.
Video creation & editing
COLRS multimedia services cover a variety of production styles for online classes: interactive video quizzes, lightboard demonstrations, lectures, graphic animation, and more. We have also produced videos for marketing, student outreach, alumni testimonials, and more. View a fuller array of our video services, and contact Scott, our multimedia specialist, to get started!
Instructor support
Office hours
Join the COLRS team for open office hours on Zoom at 10 a.m. Central on weekdays. Scott, our multimedia and video specialist, joins office hours on Tuesdays and Fridays each week.
One-to-one support
Please feel free to call or email us with questions! You can also set up an appointment to work with a member of the COLRS staff. We鈥檙e available Monday through Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
- Phone: 217-206-7317
- Email: colrs@uis.edu
COLRS events & teaching tips
See the COLRS events on our homepage for all workshops and training sessions. Teaching tips will be sent to full- and part-time faculty lists periodically during the term. Feel free to email us an idea for a workshop or tip!