4. Tidying Your Course Menu

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Make it easy to find your course through the navigation function.

 

There are many, many options that Canvas offers as a part of it's customisable drop-down menu. As such, it is recommended that not all features of this menu are enabled for the students in your course. To make your course menu more easily navigable for both you and your students, remove any of the options which overlap in content and take away everything that is unnecessary for your navigation. If you're finding it difficult to work out what options are most or least useful, a suggestion is to look at your course through student view (link opens the checklist for canvas) 

In the image above, the student is able to access the course through both the navigation menu and the modules. In this way, there is a kind of 'double navigation' which links to, for example, Discussions, Assignments and Files through two different pathways. You need to deselect these options from the course navigation in order to make the course material easier to understand.

 

Simplifying the Course for your Students

To manage the course menu, follow the instructions below. Make sure to close the student view if you still have it open.

1.  Go to Settings | Inställningar.
2. Click on the  Navigation | Navigering option - you will now see a long list, in two parts which reflect your course menu. The upper part of the list shows the selected features which are visible to the students, the lower shows the deselected options which will not appear in student view.
3. Click and drag the options of the list into the order that suits you. Drag items to the bottom that you wish to be deselected in student view.
4. Click Save | Spara (at the bottom of the page)  when you have finished clearing.

 

As shown in the picture below, after this process, the page should show a menu with the selected options in black, while the deselected options are in a light grey. The exception to this is the Settings button, which remains grey.

Note that as a teacher, you are still able to interact with those options which are light grey. In the above example, Conferences, Collaborations and Messages are also deselected as they will not be used in this example. 

 

Checking your course with Student View

In this example there are only 3 options in the navigation menu.

• Home, which leads to the modules, where students can find all the course materials.
• Review - where students can find feedback from submitted assignments.
• People - where students can find both the teachers of the course and their peers.

Your navigation doesn't need to look the same as these examples, but orient it around what your students need to see. Less is more.