The Canvas Dashboard is a great organizational tool if configured properly. Did you know that you can customize your Canvas Dashboard to keep your courses organized and easy to find?
For instructors, courses can stay on the Dashboard for one year after the term completes, and the automatic course creation process may create more sites than you publish if you have lecture, lab, and discussion sections associated with your course. Add in a few non-catalog course sites with no course dates set, and all these courses can create clutter.
To display only courses you wish to access on your Dashboard, try favorite’ing those courses in your Courses -> All Courses list. You can favorite both published and unpublished courses, but not those under your past enrollments section.
Once you have only those courses displayed that you want to see, you can move the course cards into the order you wish for them to appear. If you want you current courses at the top of the list, move them there. For more information, please see the Canvas guides, How do I customize my Courses list as an instructor? and How do I view my favorite courses in the Card View Dashboard as an instructor?
Once you have your Dashboard cleaned up, it is time to start building your upcoming course. Be thoughtful here. While it can be a convenient to copy all course content, there are some considerations worth thinking about before doing so. Here are some tips:
- If you really only need some assignments and files from a previous course, choosing specific content can be a better option than copying an entire course. You can exclude items such as outdated content, announcements, syllabus or other files that that will not be re-used, and calendar events. There are many Canvas courses out there with lots of unused legacy content that just creates clutter and confusion for both the instructor and their students. You can always come back and import other items you may have missed.
- Review your course navigation menu. If you copy an entire course, the Settings will be copied too. Hide any unused links that may cause confusion.
- If you use third-party tools with assignments, check with your vendor to determine if copying assignments is recommended. Some tools will not allow you to use copied assignments and instead push a new set of assignments to your course. Having multiple copies can be confusing and doing the work to determine which assignments to delete can be problematic, so do not include them in your copy and save yourself some grief.
- Remember there are multiple ways to adjust dates. You can remove or shift dates during the import process or after the import is complete. Edit dates in bulk using the Edit Assignment Dates option from the Assignments index page.
- Clean up extra assignment groups. Each course site has one assignment group by default. When you import, you may end up with several empty assignment groups that should be deleted to prevent students from seeing them. If you are storing unpublished assignments in an assignment group, remember students may still be able to see that assignment group even if they cannot see the assignments.
- Use the Link Validator to make sure all links work properly and you have all the files you need. Any broken links or links to past Canvas sites will be flagged so you can fix them.
For more steps to set up your Canvas course, review the Start of Term Checklist.
If you have any questions about the changes or about how to use Canvas effectively, IT-Academic Technology Services staff is always available at the IT-ATS Welcome Bar or you can send your questions to canvas-info@udel.edu.
