CANVAS COURSE SITE DESIGN

Many faculty use Canvas as an online home or central hub for their classes. The site may serve as an online community, or a fully operational website with options for assignment submissions, grade book keeping, feedback, and collaboration opportunities.

For Maximum Canvas Usage

If you are using several features within Canvas, your students may find the options overwhelming. For example:

You may create a Quiz to check your students' understanding early in the quarter. If you have maximized your use of features in Canvas, it is possible that this quiz will appear in multiple places, including:

The Quizzes section
Assignments
At the bottom of the Syllabus page where all graded work is linked to
A Week 1 content page you've made.

For some, having multiple access points may be beneficial, providing constant reminders. However, most users may end up more confused and think that there are multiple quizzes for them to complete.

In addition to issues of redundancy, certain feature areas in Canvas, like Wiki Pages, have a lackluster organizational structure:

By the time you are done using all of the features Canvas has to offer, you have added content to a majority of Canvas's available features and your left hand navigation looks something like this:

nav power.jpg

CONGRATULATIONS: You have defeated Mike Tyson and become a certified, Canvas Power User!!!

Unfortunately, your students will likely spend more time tying to find their way around your Canvas course than actually engaging your with your course content.

Quick Tips for Organizing Heavily Populated Canvas Course Sites

In order to provide a clean, easy-to-navigate Canvas course when you are using many features, follow these tips:

TIP 1: Consolidate or Group Your Course Items

Consolidate a series of related course items into a Wiki Page. Pages allow you to link to course content while adding additional context and organizing material in a hierarchical manner.

Take it one step further and implement Modules. Modules serve as a digital table of contents for course materials. They can be organized topically, chronologically, or by content type.

TIP 2: Limit repeat information by hiding extra areas of the Course Navigation

Now that you've consolidated your information, remove the features that are redundant or that are unused from your course navigation. For example, if you've added your Assignments and Wiki Pages to Modules, go ahead and hide these areas from student view.

better nav2.png

Even if you are not using areas like Pages or Modules, you can still make some minor choices to ease the burden of navigation.

Let's return to the Week 1 quiz you created. Considering your Quiz will automatically appear in the Assignments area, go ahead and hide the Quizzes tab from student view along with a handful of other features you do not plan on using.

TIP 3: Provide Guidance

Your students needs to know where to go. The navigational options do provide good visual cues to the affordances of your course site.

Assignments will likely lead to the course assignments.
Discussions will lead to discussion boards.

Perhaps you've hidden Quizzes and Assignments from view in order to limit the volume of choices. If so, tell your students. Perhaps on the Syllabus or Home page, make it known that all graded items are found in the Assignments tab, or within a Module for the week they are assigned.

What else can I use Modules for?

The basic function of Modules is to consolidate material (Pages can achieve this as well but also serve a dual purpose in allowing faculty to expand on topics or provide context to course items).

Modules also allow faculty to:

Time release material
Differentiate instruction through benchmarks and pace setting

Just about any type of course material can be added to a Module, including:

Course building blocks, such as Pages, Assignments, Quizzes, Discussions, and Files
Website URLs
Embedded YouTube Videos
Text Headers to provide additional context
LTIs and other external software tools (e.g. Twitter feeds)

HOW DO I DO THIS?

What are Modules for instructors?
How do I require students to move through each Module item in order?
How do I lock a Module?
How do I set up prerequisite Modules?
How do I add requirements to a Module?
How do I view the progress of my students in Modules?

KEEP IT SIMPLE!

Remember -- when the volume of content or choices becomes overwhelming, consolidate.
Here's an example of a Module run wild:

This could easily be condensed into a few simple items and clarified without headers by using clear titles to Modular items.