Clean Up Your Dashboard in Canvas
If you have taught in Canvas for even a few semesters, you know that it can be a challenge to tell which course is which in your Dashboard or your Course List. Here are a few ways to clean up your Dashboard and quickly determine which course you want to enter.
To set the context, course cards are created automatically for all Canvas courses in which you are enrolled and your Dashboard can hold up to 20 cards, sorted alphabetically by course name and your role in the course (instructor, TA, student). If your Dashboard is showing Recent Activity, you can change to show Card View by adjusting the View Settings.
Only show current (or important) courses
You can select specific (favorite) courses to show on your Dashboard. Click Courses in your global navigation, then choose All Courses. Click the star next to each course you want to show on the Dashboard. Both published and unpublished courses can be saved to the Dashboard.
Create Nicknames
The standard Canvas course names are usually long and not always useful. You can nickname your courses to help you distinguish between courses. Only you will see these nicknames. To manage Nicknames, click on the “more” icon and type a name. You can remove the nickname by clearing out the field.
Use Dashboard images
To help you distinguish between courses that have similar names but are for different students (a different section, online versus face-to-face, undergrad versus grad, etc.), you can use a different course image. To add or change the image, go to the course Settings and choose an image. Make sure to save the settings. All users will see this image if they are using the Card View.
Change (or turn off) color overlays
You can color code all your courses, or you can turn off the color overlay if you are using Dashboard images. To change the color, use the “more” icon and select the new color. Only you will see this color.
To remove the color overlay, uncheck the option in the Dashboard View settings.
Questions about using the Dashboard or any other questions about Canvas?
