Students want Canvas courses that are easy to navigate! You can utilise Modules in Canvas to organise your content effectively rather than using files and folders, as you would have done in the past. Modules in Canvas can be compared to a container where you organise your course materials based on your teaching practice. Assignments, quizzes, pages with textual content, images, videos, and other course components can all be organised within Canvas modules. This organisation indicates that your course offers students a suggested learning path in addition to being simple to navigate.
The Modules tool in Canvas can be found in your course navigation menu. Before you begin developing and designing your course content, here are a few helpful tips!
Label and organise modules by week or topic.
Labelling your modules by week will make it easier for students to understand what they should be doing and how they are progressing each week in your course. Alternatively, you might wish to categorise your modules by themes or topics, depending on how your course is set up. Instead of designing your course site from scratch, you may choose to import one of the NUS course templates, which you can then edit, adding your own content.
Offer a pathway, not a resource repository.
The import tool in Canvas does an excellent job of transferring your data from LumiNUS, but if you don’t organise them, your course will end up looking like a repository. You undoubtedly want your students to view your course as more than merely a repository. Courses that provide meaningful learning opportunities for students create a roadmap so that students may easily advance, understanding where they’ve come from, where they’re heading to, and what they’ll accomplish in the end.
Redesign your course to make it more web friendly.
Using “Pages” inside of a Canvas Module is an easy way to create web-friendly content. It is better to compose content directly in a Canvas Pages using the text editor. You can easily embed videos, add images, include links to lecture notes, handouts and readings. You can integrate the in-person and online components of your course by using pages. Instead of having to download a file and open it in a different program, students can read the content immediately from the pages.
Provide context and guidance for the learning activities and/or resources.
It is always a good practice to include some context regarding the purpose of the learning activity and/or resources you include on Modules/Pages. Additionally, you can think of Modules/Pages as “chapters” in a book. The “Previous” and “Next” buttons on each page allow students to progress through the activities and resource material page by page.
Chunk modules with text headers. Some courses are more complex.
Maybe your course has different teaching activities (e.g., lectures, seminars, tutorials, labs, recitations, workshops), is a year-long course or has some other level of intricacy. In such situations, you may end up with a big list of diverse topics to be included in your modules. Making the content more understandable for students involves using text headings and indenting content to separate various but related parts. Students can obtain a summary of the course material at a glance, which makes it simpler for them to find what they’re looking for.
Hide unused menu items from navigation.
You have control over which menu items to display in your course navigation and whether you want your students to view or use a particular menu item. Most items can be hidden, and they can also be re-ordered to suit your preferred course setup. For example, you can hide “Files” from the Navigation menu and only provide access to the necessary files through pages and modules.
Clean up old content.
You should review your course and update or remove any outdated materials. We suggest that you consider the following:
- Remove outdated files imported from LumiNUS , such as outdated PDFs, website links, and unused slides.
- Review course presentations to ensure they are still up to date.
- Verify that any external web links are still active. Check for broken links and fix them as necessary. You may use the “Validate Links in Content” from the right-hand menu to fix the broken links.
Resources
To find out how to build modules, pages, text headers and link to documents: