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Why is the dashboard important?

All students and teachers when logging in are immediately brought into the dashboard area where they will see announcements, to do's and a list of active courses. The interface on the browser is similar to that of the App to help provide a similar experience.

Canvas Interface Overview

500 - Canvas Interface Overview from Instructure Community on Vimeo.

Getting to Canvas

To access your Canvas environment, follow the steps below

Go to the USF Portal page at https://myusf.usfca.edu
Look for the Canvas link in the left navigation menu.
If you are already logged to the USF Portal, look for a Canvas button.
You can also get to Canvas directly through the link https://usfca.instructure.com

How it looks

Let's first get acquainted with the general layout of Canvas.

The Dashboard [1] defaults to the course view, which displays courses that have been starred as a favorite and are ordered alphabetically. The Dashboard also includes a sidebar [2], which helps show upcoming events in your courses.

Course Cards

The Dashboard course view includes a course card for each of your favorite courses. Each card can include up to four tabs [1], which represent the four main Canvas features for student course activity: Announcements, Assignments, Discussions, and Files. These tabs mimic visibility and order in Course Navigation, so for instance, if an instructor hides the Announcements link, the Announcements tab will not display on the course activity.

If the tabs are visible, Discussions and Announcements indicate the number of new activity items in the course [2].

Course Color

You can also change the color of your course, which is synced with the color shown for the course in the Calendar. To change the color, click the card Settings icon [1], then select a new color [2].

If you change the color for a course in the Calendar, the Dashboard will also update with the new calendar color.

Course Nickname

While in the card edit mode, if one of your courses includes a long or confusing name, you can create a nickname for your course [3] mode and then click "apply"[4].

Viewing all Your Courses (My Courses) and Customizing your Dashboard

When you are enrolled in more than one Canvas course, you can customize the active courses you want displayed in your Course list. Courses you want displayed on the Dashboard and the Course List menu are called "favorite" courses. You can favorite any published course that appears in the "My Courses" section on the course list page.

Open Courses

Click on the "Courses" tab in the Global Navigation menu on the left side of the page and then select "All Courses" from the menu.

Manage Courses

Click the "favorite" icon next to a course to add or remove the course from the Courses list. Courses with yellow icons indicate a favorite course and are included on the Dashboard and the "Courses" tab.