ASU guide · Canvas

How ASU Online courses work: Canvas, weekly modules, and 7.5-week sessions

The short answer

ASU Online courses — and the Universal Learner Courses in Earned Admission — run on Canvas, where weekly modules organize your content, assignments, and discussions. Fall and spring classes are compressed into 7.5-week Session A and Session B (summer runs six-week sessions), so a course covers a full semester's material in half the time. That pace is the thing to plan around: with modules due weekly and only seven and a half weeks per class, staying a week ahead beats trying to catch up.

How ASU Online courses work: Canvas, weekly modules, and 7.5-week sessions, a ASU student guide, from ASU Tutors
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The Canvas classroom

In Canvas, each course is built from weekly modules that hold the readings, the activities, the discussions, and the assignments, with your grades and feedback in the same course. There are no set class times; you work through the module on your own schedule, which is flexible but puts the pacing on you.

The 7.5-week session, A and B

Fall and spring semesters are split into two 7.5-week sessions, A and B, and summer runs six-week sessions. You might take one or two classes in Session A, then start new ones in Session B. The compression is the key fact: a 7.5-week class moves at roughly double the speed of a 15-week semester course, so every week carries more weight.

Keeping up with a compressed course

In a 7.5-week class there is no slow stretch to recover in. Log in at the start of each week, look at what the module requires, and work a few days ahead of due dates rather than at them. Falling one week behind in a half-length course is like falling two weeks behind in a normal one.

Where a tutor fits

We help you carry the compressed pace: understanding a module's assignments quickly, building work to the rubric, and keeping a 7.5-week course from getting away from you when everything is due weekly.

Sources and verification

Facts on this page come from official sources; confirm current details with ASU:

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