LearnWise Virtual Course Assistant

LearnWise is grounded in your Canvas course materials

The LearnWise virtual course assistant provides students with study support using content directly from your Canvas course materials. Unlike open-ended tools like Gemini or ChatGPT, LearnWise is specifically configured to guide learning rather than simply provide answers.

I’m a student. How do I find and use the virtual course assistant?

  1. Navigate to your course in Canvas and select "LearnWise" from the left-side navigation menu. If you do not see LearnWise listed, your instructor may have opted out of the integration pilot.
  2. You can type questions directly into LearnWise as you would with an AI chatbot. Ask about course-related topics, including due dates, concepts, and summaries.
  3. You can also turn on "Study Mode" to generate practice quiz questions, flashcards, and interactive exercises. LearnWise creates these directly from the materials your instructor has uploaded to Canvas and includes links back to those source documents.

I’m an instructor. Do I need to set up my Canvas course in a particular way for LearnWise to work?

No special setup is required for LearnWise to function. However, LearnWise has difficulty processing some kinds of documents (see below), and a well-organized course helps the assistant provide your students with accurate, high-priority information.

Tips for organizing your Canvas content:

  • Publish key content in Canvas pages, as opposed to slide decks or announcements.
  • Organize content using Canvas modules to structure the course layout.
  • Use descriptive titles for pages, modules, and files instead of generic labels like week numbers. Specific titles make LearnWise citations more useful to students.
  • Keep Canvas pages short and focused on single topics rather than long and multi-topic.
  • Use structural headings (H2/H3) instead of bolded text on pages. This improves processing for both LearnWise and assistive technologies.
  • Remove outdated files and content, especially materials from previous terms.

LearnWise doesn’t seem to see some of the materials in my Canvas course. Why is that?

LearnWise refreshes its index once per week, which creates a delay between when you publish or update materials in Canvas and when LearnWise processes them.

In addition, LearnWise cannot access the following types of content:

  • Unpublished materials: Content uploaded to Canvas but not published.
  • Locked content: Items hidden or scheduled for release to students at a later date.
  • Embedded multimedia: Video and audio files.
  • Discussion posts: Student replies within Canvas discussion boards.
  • Grades: Any student grading data.
  • Non-selectable PDFs: Image-only or scanned PDFs without searchable text.
  • Restricted external content: Materials behind permission walls, such as library links or unshared Google Drive files. To fix this, upload the files directly to Canvas or adjust Google Drive settings to "Anyone with the link."

Can I opt out of LearnWise?

Yes. Instructors can opt out of the LearnWise virtual course assistant in any course they teach. Although LearnWise is enabled by default, an instructor can remove it from the course navigation at any time by going to Course Settings → Navigation in Canvas.

Learn More

For more tips on getting value from the Canvas-LearnWise integration in your course, read this short article.