Digital learning support

Canvas is a cloud-based Learning Management System that is designed to support your learning. As it is cloud-based, you do not need to download any new software, and in addition, Canvas has been designed to be used online with any device that can connect to the internet (such as a laptop, desktop, mobile phone or tablet).

There is a lot of help available online by clicking on the Help icon on the left-hand side of each of the Canvas pages. You may also find it helpful to look through the Guide for new students using Canvas.

The University strongly recommends using Google Chrome. However, Canvas also supports Firefox, Internet Explorer, Edge and Safari. For more information, see browsers and plugins Canvas supports.

Within the Faculty of Education and Social Work, lecturers usually create their Canvas sites using either Pages (individual webpages or activities) or Modules (a collection of individual pages and activities). You should be able to access all of your learning materials via one of these two methods.  

For more information, visit navigating Canvas.  

Turnitin is an electronic plagiarism prevention and detection service that the University of Auckland subscribes to. It is integrated with Canvas, so for most of your courses, you’ll submit your assignments to Turnitin via Canvas. For general information about the service, visit Turnitin.

Read here for information about how to submit your assignments via Turnitin.

For a video guide, see How to submit your assignments on Turnitin (video guide).(Please note that the Canvas interface looks slightly different to the University of Auckland one but the steps are the same.)

The Turnitin report identifies how much of your assignment, and which parts, display similarity, and how much similarity, to other published work and previous student assignments. It is important to note that you can usually check (depending on the lecturer’s settings in Canvas) your Turnitin report prior to submitting your assignment for submission. However, you may only check this report three  times before Turnitin imposes a 24-hour restriction on generating further reports.

Once your lecturer has completed marking, they will release your grades and the feedback. For information about how to access your feedback in GradeMark, see: Access feedback in Grademark (video guide).
(Please note that the Canvas interface looks slightly different to the University of Auckland one but the steps are the same.)

As a student of the University of Auckland, you are a member of a distinguished academic community. We are committed to providing all the support you need to understand what working to a high level of academic integrity means for you.

There’s a lot more to academic integrity than ‘not cheating’. It’s obviously not alright to claim that something is your work when it wasn’t, but University-level work requires that you acknowledge all sources according to the referencing requirements of your subject. It’s in everybody’s interests for you to get this right – never be afraid to ask if you’re unsure, even if it seems like it should be obvious.

For more information about academic integrity at the University of Auckland, visit Academic integrity and copyright.

All University of Auckland staff and students are provided a Google account, which includes free access to the Google Suite. This means that, amongst other things, you have been provided with a Gmail account, a Google Drive (with a 1GB limit from 1 October 2023), Google calendar, and much more. For more information about what is available, visit IT Essentials - Google Apps.

Google Drive is a free online storage service developed by Google. Google Drive allows users to store many different types of files on their servers, share files, and encompasses Google Docs, Sheets and Slides that permit collaborative editing of documents, spreadsheets, presentations, drawings, forms, and much more. Google Drive is designed to work across all modern browsers and on all operating systems. 

To login to your University of Auckland Google Drive, go to drive.google.com and login with your username e.g. jsmi123@aucklanduni.ac.nz. Once you enter in your username, you will be redirected to a University of Auckland login page. Complete the login process here, and then you will be returned to Google. For more information about usernames at the University of Auckland, see: Your username at the University.

Please note, the University’s recommended cloud storage service for personal University work files is OneDrive. We do not recommend Google for this due to its low storage quota. 

All staff and students of the University of Auckland are provided with an email (staff are actually provided with more than one). It is this Aucklanduni.ac.nz email address that your lecturers will use to inform you of when your grades are released, etc. or to communicate any specific notices from, so it is important that you check it. Alternatively, you may wish to forward any email received in this account to one you check more frequently.

For information about your email address (including assistance with setting up email on your phone, tablet or computer, see: IT essentials - Email.

For assistance on how to sync your Google calendar with your phone, see the Google page Sync Google Calendar with a phone or tablet.

Student Services Online (SSO) is your online tool where you can enrol in courses, get advice, search for class timetables, check your University of Auckland financials, and change your personal details.

Your home page gives your direct access to most areas of Student Services Online, and it also lets you know if you have outstanding or overdue items that might prevent you from enrolling in any courses.

For more information, visit Student Services Online.

During your time at the University of Auckland, you will need to access information for further study. Your lecturer may have directed you to specific readings or you may need to search for journals, books or readings yourself.

In some cases, your lecturer will provide you with a reading list on the Canvas site for that course. You can find these reading lists on the left hand side of each Canvas site. For information about what Talis reading lists are, and why the University of Auckland uses these, see Talis reading lists.

If you need to find information for yourself, you have many options including searching Google Scholar and also searching via the University of Auckland Library site, which allows you to search the catalogue of both physical and online resources (e.g. books, journal articles, etc.) that are available through the University of Auckland. The library website also includes a handy help area, and provides access to some additional resources you may want/need during your studies.  

For more information, see Libraries and learning services.