Parents
Canvas Navigation

Your Canvas home screen is called the dashboard. From this screen you can navigate to all the different areas of Canvas. The dashboard has three areas: course cards, side panel, and the navigation bar. Learn more about these sections below.

Course Cards

Each course has a course card and each card can include up to four notification icons(1), which represent the four main Canvas features for student course activity: Announcements, Assignments, Discussions, and Files. Depending on the teacher's course settings, not all four of these icons will be visible. New activity within each Canvas feature is designated with a blue indicator on the icon (2).

Dashboard-Card View.jpg

Changing Your View

Besides the card view described above, you can change your preferred dashboard view to Recent Activity or List View. To change your view, select the peapod icon at the top of your Canvas dashboard, next to the Orientation icon, and select a different view.

List View:

List view is an agenda-style view that shows past and future assignments, point value, and an indicator when an assignment has been graded:

List view of the dashboard. the example shows 2 assignment due on thursday and one assignment due on friday.

Recent Activity:

Recent activity view is a newsfeed style view that shows recent announcements, new and upcoming assignments, and grade notifications.

Recent activity view showing 1 new announcement and 2 new assignment notifications. Show more links are listed after the items to expand them and show more details.

Side Panel

dashboard side panel.png The dashboard side panel, on the right side of you home screen, has 3 sections:

To Do lists unread announcements, upcoming (or missing) assignments, and calendar events . Each item in the To Do list displays the assignment name, the number of points, and the due date for the assignment. Use the X next to an item to clear it from your to do list

Recent Feedback lists assignments recently graded by your teacher. You will see your score and any comments left by your teacher.

The View Grades button opens a page that shows a list of all your courses and current grade.

The To Do and Recent Feedback section will show a limited number of items. If a section contains more items than are listed, a link will appear under the list that you can use to view additional items.

Navigation Bar

navigation bar_student.jpg The grey navigation bar will appear on the left side of every screen in Canvas. It has the following menu items:

Account: Here you can change your profile image, pronouns, etc.
Dashboard: Takes you back to the home screen.
Courses: Select this to view a list of your courses. This is helpful if you have you English course open and want to open you math course without going back to the dashboard.
Groups: Students will see this if a teacher has put them in a group in Canvas for a class project or other activity.
Calendar: Shows assignments, announcements, and other events in monthly or weekly view.
Inbox: Class messages to or from teachers.
History: Quick way to go back to Canvas pages you've recently viewed.
Search: Tool to find an assignment or content page in your courses.
Help: Links to common questions and guides.
Grades: Summary of current grade averages in Canvas.