Organizing Content for Online Learning

It may be tempting to just post all your content in Canvas and assume that your students will be able to find it because your organizing scheme makes sense to you. However, this can lead to confusion and the inability to locate essential course materials, resulting in increased anxiety and frustration. Avoid putting course materials in separate locations or modules, e.g., one for lectures, readings, assignments, etc. Instead, try to organize the content and course materials around weeks in the course and follow these principles:

  • Keep weeks consistent with the order of items or materials, due dates and naming.
  • As much as possible, include everything that the student needs for learning in the weekly unit, including:
    • Readings (PDFs), links, videos, and books; 
    • Links to quizzes;
    • Links to discussion forums; and 
    • Links to assignments rather than having students search for all these and try to connect to their learning tasks.

Your goal is to establish a learning pattern. Students can log into the course, know where to find everything they need for their learning, and what the workflow is from week to week, whether the course is in-person, virtual, online or blended.

How to Organize Content in Canvas

Canvas modules can serve as weekly units by organizing all the required materials under the module heading. You can use Pages for text-based information such as weekly overviews. You can also embed quiz, assignment and discussion forums in the module through the + button at the top of the module.

Here are some relevant Canvas guidesfor creating and organizing content:

Guide for Using Modules in Canvas

Guide for Adding Modules in Canvas

Guide for Adding Content (Quizzes, Assignments, Discussions)