A Quercus Sandbox Course is a space where instructors can experiment with Quercus (Canvas), explore its features, and develop course materials without affecting an active course.
Sandbox courses are initially empty and contain only the instructor. They provide a space to test course content, activities, and settings without involving enrolled students.
Accessing Your Sandbox Course
Sandbox courses are automatically available to instructors with an active teaching assignment in ROSI (Repository of Student Information). Instructors affiliated with a federated college should contact their divisional Quercus support team to request access.
To access your Sandbox Course:
- Sign in to Quercus.
- Locate your Sandbox Course on the Dashboard or under Courses > All Courses.
- Select the course to begin working.
If you cannot locate your Sandbox Course, contact your divisional Quercus support team.
Using Your Sandbox Course
A Sandbox Course allows instructors to explore Quercus features and develop materials before using them in an academic course.
You can use your sandbox to:
- Explore course features: Experiment with Pages, Modules, Assignments, Discussions, Quizzes, and other Quercus tools.
- Develop course materials: Create and organize content that may be used in future course offerings.
- Test the student experience: Use Student View to preview how course content and activities appear to students. Some features, including certain group activities, cannot be fully tested through Student View.
- Experiment with course settings: Try different approaches to organizing navigation, publishing materials, and managing course activities.
- Import and reuse content: Copy materials from an existing course into your sandbox or from your sandbox into a future course.
You can also add colleagues or support staff to your Sandbox Course when collaboration or technical assistance is needed.
For instructions on copying materials between courses, consult Quercus (Canvas) Course Copy.
Resetting Your Sandbox Course
If you want to start over, Quercus provides a Reset Course Content option.
To reset your sandbox:
- Open your Sandbox Course.
- Select Settings from the course navigation menu.
- Select Reset Course Content.
- Review the confirmation message before proceeding.
Important: Resetting a course permanently removes its content and cannot be undone. Make sure you have saved or copied any materials you want to retain before resetting your sandbox.
For detailed instructions, consult Canvas’s How do I reset course content?.