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Instructor update: Canvas restored as of 5:45 p.m. Friday; grading and additional guidance

May 8, 2026, 5:45 pm

To: Instructors

CC: Deans and Dept Chairs

Dear instructors,

Thank you for your patience as university teams worked to restore Canvas access during this national outage. Canvas is now back online at UW–Madison, although not all connected tools may be available immediately. Please visit outages.doit.wisc.edu for current status information. 

If you continue to experience issues, clear your cache and cookies in your desktop and mobile browsers, then contact the DoIT Help Desk.

Communicating with Students

A separate update is being sent to all students and can be found on alerts.wisc.edu. Students with questions have been instructed to contact their instructors directly. 

If you have any outstanding assignments or exams that were disrupted or postponed by this outage, please be in touch with affected students. 

Providing Flexibility

As we have previously shared, it is essential for you to remain flexible on exams or assignments that were scheduled for May 7 and May 8, 2026. Please keep in mind that beginning yesterday afternoon (May 7), students did not have access to materials in Canvas to prepare for their remaining finals and assignments.

Grading 

Downloading and Securely Storing Canvas Content

We encourage you to download and back up your Canvas course content. This is considered best practice in any semester, as it can protect not only against system disruptions but also against accidental deletion of content or other unexpected technical issues. There are multiple ways to export content:

  • How to export your Canvas course – A course export will make a copy of your course content, minus all the interactions of students (such as discussions and submissions).

Additionally, with this type of high-profile outage, there is often an increase in related phishing attempts. Please be alert and use caution when interacting with unsolicited emails that create a sense of urgency, contain grammatical errors, misspelled URLs, or have unusual “From” or “Reply-to” fields.

While this event was beyond our control, we do acknowledge the stress and inconvenience that it may have caused. We hope this information is helpful, and you have a successful end to your semester.

If you have questions, please contact your department chair and/or dean’s office. If further updates are appropriate, they will be posted at alerts.wisc.edu.