Explore the Canvas Dashboard

 Introduction

The user dashboard consists of four parts and is the first page you will see every time you log in to your Canvas account:

 

From left to right on your Canvas Dashboard you'll see global menu options, boxes for each of your "favorited" courses, and finally a list of To Do's, Events, any Feedback from teachers of courses in which you're a student, and buttons to start a new course or go straight to your grades.

Check out this short video to see a tour of the newest Canvas interface which was released in September of 2015.

 

Canvas Calendar

1. Helpful tips about the calendar:

• The Calendar is used for reminding students of graded Assignments with specific due dates. To provide students with detailed descriptions of how synchronous class time will be used, consider using Pages or customizing the Course Home Page.
• The Calendar automatically syncs with other features in Canvas, such as Assignments, Syllabus, and Grades, so if you create, change, or delete the due date of an Assignment on the Calendar, it will show up in all the others and vice versa. You can change dates easily by dragging and dropping assignments from one date to another.
• The Calendar in Canvas is a global feature, meaning you can see all of your assignments from all of your courses in one place. If your Calendar becomes too crowded, you can filter the number of events listed on your Calendar by selecting or deselecting courses in the Sidebar.
• The Calendar is designed to display up to 10 calendars at any given time. To help manage user calendars, courses customized in the courses drop-down menu as a favorite course will always be listed at the top of the user’s calendar list in the calendar sidebar.

Note: iOS users can sync the Canvas calendar with the calendars on their mobile devices

2. Events vs. Assignment Shells

• Events you create on the Calendar will not appear on the Assignments page or in the Gradebook. But they will show up on the Syllabus page and student calendars. You can create events with due date times as well as all-day events.
• Assignment shells are placeholders for the Assignment until you fill in the Assignment details. You can create varied due date Assignment shells via the Calendar too.