Less is more

Teachers often complain that their students do not read important course information. Students, in turn, complain that the information is hard to find or has not been received at all. To ensure that miscommunications are prevented, and students do not miss anything, it is important to make your Canvas page as clear as possible.

One way to do this, is to turn off as many menu options as possible. Students don't know under which page they can find what they are looking for and click on all the possibilities. The fewer options there are, the faster they will find what they are looking for. And the faster they find information you want them to find.

It depends on the course which menu options should be available. The 3 most necessary for each course are: Home, Announcements and Modules:

• Home is the page the student will see first when they reach your Canvas page. So put here the most important information for the course, such as the syllabus. How to set up this page in the best way will be discussed in later Canvastips.
• Announcements is the easiest way to communicate with all of your students. Students receive an email every time an announcement is posted. This way, you have the best chance of reaching students. It is recommended to make an announcement every time you have added something new to your Canvas page during the course. By leaving this menu options on, students can always read back an announcement.
• Modules is the page where you can share all files, links, assignments and other information with students. How to set up this page will be explained in Canvastip #2.

These 3 menu options are sufficient for most courses, but some courses require more. For example, some courses require a discussion prior to lectures. Discussions can be useful for this purpose. When working in groups People is necessary to have as a menu option.

Which menu options are needed depends on the course. Think carefully about what you think is necessary for your course. Do not add extra things just because there is a chance that students might use it. If your course does not specifically ask for it, students will not use it. We see this a lot with the Discussion page, for example. Also, do not add options that only you as an instructor use, such as Attendance. As an instructor, you can continue to use these features without them being visible to students. Finally, it is not necessary to add pages that are also linked to in Modules. Students can simply access this page via Modules, two ways to get there is not necessary. Pages, Files, Discussions and Assignments are examples of this.

But how do you change the number of menu options? In the instruction video below this is shown: