The Dashboard is the first thing you will see when you log into Canvas. The Dashboard helps you see what is happening in all your current courses.
You can return to your User Dashboard any time by clicking the Dashboard link in Global Navigation Menu (the colored sidebar on the far left).
The Dashboard is set up in what Canvas calls Card View, which displays each course as a Card.
Click on the Courses tab on the Global Navigation Menu. This will open a menu that lists your courses. Click on All Courses at the bottom for a full list.
You will see a list of all of your past, future, and current courses with a star next to each one. Click the star next to any courses you want to see in your Dashboard. If the stars are solid, you will see the courses in your Dashboard. (Unstarred courses will still be accessible, they simply won't show up in your Dashboard.)
You can customize your Course Cards with nicknames and colors.
Canvas displays the Course Code in the top-left (“breadcrumb” area) of your Canvas courses.
There may be times when you’d like more information than the course code to appear in this “breadcrumb” area. You can create custom Nicknames for your Canvas courses that then appear as the breadcrumb. Why might you do this?
For faculty teaching multiple sections of a class, you might want to make it clear which section’s Canvas site you’re in. In the example at right, the instructor has added the CRN and modality to the class Nicknames to clearly differentiate between the two Canvas sites.
To create a course Nickname, select the Options [⋮] Menu on the Course Card and enter your custom course name in the Nickname field.
You can change the color of the Card using the default colors, or by adding your own using a Hex color code.
Select Apply to save your changes.
And remember that this nickname will be visible only by you – not your students. Students have the option to create their own course nicknames.
There may be times when you'd like to move Course Cards around on your Dashboard. You can do this by selecting the Options menu [⋮] in the top right of a Course Card and then selecting the Move tab.
From here you can move Course Cards to the top or bottom of the Dashboard.
Use the up and down options as many times as needed to place the card exactly where you want it on the Dashboard.
You can also Unfavorite any Course Card from the Move tab.
Moving Course Cards gives you options for prioritizing your Dashboard.
Students are saying: "Finding the correct Course Card on my Canvas Dashboard for my BI 101 course is hard, I see two different Course Cards! Can you (my instructor or GE) help me?" Instructors and GE’s can help! When courses are merged or with large lecture courses, there might be multiple Course Cards for a course on the instructor’s Dashboard and the students’ Dashboard.
Changing the color of the Course Card or giving it a nickname, as noted above, works only for you - the user. Students won’t see what instructors nickname the card or if they change the color and visa versa.
There is however, a great way to make it easy to find the desired Course Card: add an image to the Course Card. This will show for everyone in the course! Here is an example of a default new Course Card on the Dashboard.
It gets more complicated when students see the lecture and lab cards or lecture and discussion cards for the same course, so adding images to the Course Cards will make them stand out and the lecture and discussion card images can be different enough to stand out for the students enrolled in both.
These two Course Cards are using slides created in PowerPoint and were designed to provide the information about the course and lab, and also provide different patterns that will stand out. (Export the slide as an image file.) Any image can be used, so be creative!
All users will see the image and they will know which course it is.
1. Go to Settings [1].
2. On the Course Details [2] tab, at the top is Image. Click on Chose Image [3].
3. Navigate to where the image is stored on your computer and select the image. Note - image must be a JPG, JPEG, GIF, or PNG file. For best practice, images should be approximately 262 pixels wide by 146 pixels high.
4. Click on Open and the image will appear in the title on the Settings page.
5. The image can be changed or removed by you at any time by navigating back to Settings and clicking on the Options Icon [︙]. Select Choose image or, to go back to using a color on the course card, choose Remove Image.
6. Finally, scroll to the bottom of the Settings page and click Update Course Details.
By default, the Dashboard has the Color Overlay enabled. This adds color tint to all course cards. If there are images on any course cards on the Dashboard, you might prefer to turn off the course overlay as shown here.
