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Help for Academic Issues

Please contact your instructor directly with any academic questions or concerns you may have, using the contact information supplied in your syllabus. Reminder: Be sure to send your inquiry from your Penn State email address or Canvas, as University policy mandates that the instructor cannot discuss academic information with students via e-mail except when messages are sent to and from student PSU e-mail accounts.

Technical Problems: Help Us Help You

In online learning, a certain degree of technical difficulty is to be expected. A problem may arise with your computer or its software, your connection to the Internet, the course page server, the Canvas server, and so on.

Regardless of the nature of the problem, the fastest way to reach a solution is to include the following information in your request for help:

1. What course and section are you enrolled in?
2. What is the URL of the page you were viewing when the problem occurred?
3. What were you attempting to do?
4. Did an error message pop up? If so, what exactly did it say?
5. If possible, take a computer screen shot and attach it to your message
6. Be sure to copy in your instructor and/or TA to alert them that you are experiencing a problem
7. Where to go for help? The answer depends partly on the type of technical problem you are experiencing and partly on which campus you are enrolled in.

Problem: Experiencing Difficulties Using Canvas

24/7 help is available directly from Instructure (creators of Canvas). If you have an issue to report or questions about using Canvas features in your course, access Canvas Help from your Penn State Canvas dashboard at psu.instructure.com by clicking on the “Help” button in the lower left corner of the screen. All help requests are initially routed to Canvas Tier 1 support. Penn State-specific issues are then forwarded to the Penn State Help Desk.

All Other Technical Problems

For any other problem, contact the appropriate help desk for your campus.