The recommended home page to display in a Canvas course is the Modules view instead of a 'page'. This has the advantage of guiding students through the desired sequence of content and activities, without them having to think about what they need to do next.

However, the Modules view is very linear, can involve lots of vertical scrolling, and is not necessarily visually appealing. Refer to the Page Enhancements tool for how to quickly build an appealing home page that displays Module Titles, either as a tiles view or a list view.

The Configure Module View tool (formerly called the Course Presentation and Navigation tool) offers an automatic sub-menu of modules that appears on the left-hand course navigation menu (as in this guidance course), as well as the option for icons at the bottom of each module item, for easy Next–Back navigation between items. This feature is dynamic, in the sense that as you update modules (or the items within a module), the navigation menu will be automatically updated.

The tool is available within a course to those with the teacher or course administrator role.
Please note that students using the Canvas app will always see the standard view.

This tool assumes that you have chosen Course modules to display as the home page in your course: select Choose home page on the right hand menu on the home page, and then select Course modules:

1. How to enable Configure Module View

The Module View options can be turned on or off for a course as follows: Go to Settings and click on Configure Module View on the right hand menu.

2. Module Menu/Module Content Icons option

The Display module shortcuts and module content icons toggle switch allows you to enable the sub-menu shortcuts and module content icons:

Screenshot showing module menu/module content icons option

Select Display module shortcuts and module content icons and then click Save.

Note: Be aware that due to a technical issue, there may be a 5 minute delay if using Canvas on the Chrome browser, between a change in the toggle settings being saved and the resultant change being visible on the course.

Now, in the course navigation menu, the list of modules will be displayed under the Modules tool as a sub-menu. See the differences between Standard View and the Display module shortcuts... option in these two screenshots:

Standard View:

Display module shortcuts and module content icons enabled:

The module titles are clickable, and clicking them will take the student to view content only in that module. When they access content within a module, there will be an indication of which module they are in.

Within a module, Previous and Next buttons are standard to enable easy navigation to the module items. When the Display module shortcuts and module content icons option is enabled, icons are added for each of the module items, and the one the user is currently in is highlighted:

If the screen is small and/or there are lots of items within the module, these will show as small squares instead, and so remain useable:

3. Is this option right for my course?

There are pros and cons of the Display module shortcuts and module content icons option and we recommend experimenting with it to see the impact that it makes on the course display and navigation to determine if it will work for your course.

Enabling the option is better suited to courses that:

Have many modules and are using the Modules homepage view (but note that there is a limit of 100 modules, beyond which the tool will 'break')
Have a large amount of content within the modules
Have a non-linear module structure

Disadvantages of the option are:

It may cause a flicker on the student’s screen when the view loads
It will mean that users might need two clicks to get to module content, rather than one

Avoid using the option for courses that:

Are short and easy to navigate
Do not have long scrolls through their modules page

However, not enabling the option may require students to scroll a long way down in order to find later modules