[ARCHIVED] Too many Modules | Options for resorting/structuring content

[caitlin_stiles]

Hello Everyone,

I'm moving this post over from another page as it was suggested that one of the Instructional Designers might be able to help.

I'm currently using Canvas as the platform for a resource development project for some of the staff at our university. In essence, what we've done is taking an traditional training manual and moved all this information into Canvas so that the information can be continually updated as need be.

Given that this isn't the traditional functionality of Canvas, we're running into a few challenges and one of these is that there is A LOT of content within our course. For example, we currently have 21 modules (and this number will continue to grow) and within these modules, there are anywhere from 15-50 sub-tabs. In other words, a lot of content, which is great as a repository for our users, but becoming a bit overwhelming for users. I'm looking for suggestions or reaching out to Instructure to consider re-structuring or re-ordering the modules page to aid with navigation.

Lastly, let me tell you a few things we've considered and why they haven't worked:

• Splitting the modules into individual courses. Seems like an easy solution however, there are currently +275 users in my course which would mean I would need to add each person to 21 different courses which they would need to accept individually, not very user friendly AND we want the one course to act as one Hub for information rather than 21 different courses.
• Reducing our content. Not an option. What we have in our course is only a small portion of what our staff need to do their jobs.
• Look at Bridge (also built by Instructure). We looked at Bridge and weren't pleased with the content at this time.

To help you better understand, here is a screenshot of only some of our content...

I appreciate everyone's comments/feedback and am open to suggestions!

[garciah]

Hi Caitlin, when dealing with a course that has a lot of content that can't be reduced, my recommendation is always to focus on creating clear, intuitive, and consistent navigation. You might consider adding a table of contents or outline, either to the top of your modules or even to your homepage. Then, you can easily link to specific pages or modules, and the users can click to go to the topic or module they are interested in. I also recommend using text headers and indenting in modules to visually indicate topics and subtopics. Good luck!

[caitlin_stiles]

Thank you Heather. I appreciate your suggestions however, we're already utilizing the suggestions you've made. Unfortunately, we just have so much content that we're hoping for an alternative layout/format. Thanks again!

[swilson34]

Can you chunk some material into tabs? You will have to do some coding, but it does reduce the number of modules. Be consistent and bold with headers and visual indicators. I have included a link on how to build them. Hope that helps!

Using Tabs in Your Canvas Course

[caitlin_stiles]

Hi Stephanie- thank you for the suggestion. I'd previosuly watched that video within the link and had posted a question (which I have yet to recieve a response on). My question was:

From what I can see, you can only have one page with additional tabs, is this correct? In otherwords, you can't have multiple pages with multiple tabs, is this right? From what I can see Canvas only provides the option to have on 'page'.

Do you know if this is the case? Thank you very much.

[scottdennis]

Hi Caitlin,

I personally have only ever seen people using one set of tabs, for what that is worth.

Regards,

Scott

[Stef_retired]

 @caitlin_stiles ​, while a Canvas course can have only one front page, it can have as many pages as you like (although I'm not sure what the limit is, I've seen courses with over 100 pages and have heard of courses with over 200).

For example, we run a training course that has eight modules in it. The first item in each module is a page that incorporates a tab interface with five or six tabs of content. So that's 40-48 resources in eight pages. (Each module also contains links to discussions, assignments, and quizzes.)

If you were to use a combination of modules and tabbed content, you needn't limit yourself (as we did) to one tabbed page in each module. You could organize the content into large categories, and then sub-categories with tabs. The tabbed interface can certainly get unwieldy if there are too many tabs, but five tabs per page is quite manageable. So, within your 21 modules, you could organize the relevant content in 8-12 pages for each module (I haven't done the math, so that might not be quite the right number).

But doing the math on the hypothetical max, I get 21 modules X 12 pages X 5 tabs per page = 1260 pieces of content (on 252 pages)--which is more than the higher end of what you've described.

Might this work for you?

[swilson34]

Our is organized in a similar way. We have modules and pages within the modules and tabbed content within the pages. I agree that 5 is good, they can extend to a second row if the titles are too long though. Not a big deal, unless you find it aesthetically unappealing.

Stephanie

[gailc]

I like the idea of tabs within a page - can anyone share how they are using this within a course or might be utilizing in the future?

What could the tabs contain? Replace the next page within the module? Ideas would be appreciated.

Gail

[Stef_retired]

 @gailc ​, yes, that's exactly right: we employ the tabbed interface to replace the pages within the module. We place a note at the top of each page reminding our participants that there are x number of tabs on the page and that they have to click on each one to see all of the available resources. You might like this resource: Using jQuery without Custom Javascript

[swilson34]

Stefanie,

How did you word the reminder? We were trying to think of ways to remind people to not just hit the next button and look at the tabs.

Stephanie (with a PH instead of an F)

[Stef_retired]

Hey  @swilson34  (ph duly noted), here's the verbiage we placed on the first tab displayed:

The [X number of] tabs shown above include important resources for your training. Please read through them before proceeding to the next page, and refer back whenever necessary.

[swilson34]

Thanks, Stefanie (f duly noted)

[caitlin_stiles]

Hi Stefanie,

Very interesting and sounds like a possible solution. I'm having a bit of trouble wrapping my head around what this would exactly look like. Do you have any screenshots you would be able to send me? I appreciate it.

Caitlin

[swilson34]

These are the pages within the module.

And the tabs within the first page.

A picture is worth a thousand word...

Stephanie

[Stef_retired]

 @caitlin_stiles , unfortunately, I can't send you screenshots of the training courses to which I referred because the materials contained therein are proprietary. However, you might get some ideas by viewing the Sample Course Templates and Example Courses by Subject pages. And, of course, here in the Instructional Designers group we have numerous guides on how to employ accordions, buttons, and tabs. You might also glean design ideas from Creating an inviting course home page​ and Home Sweet Homepages without Tables​; while these blogs refer specifically to "home pages," the design approaches described there can be applied to any Canvas content page.

In the design example I outlined above, I'd recommend that you make the Modules page your course home page and hide all of the other navigation tabs (unless your specific use case requires that participants navigate to those tabs independently from the Module navigation).

[Stef_retired]

....and you might like this: Using jQuery without Custom Javascript

[cadatko]

Tabs or collapsable divs (jquery accordions from the style guide) can definitely help to reduce pages in modules.

You may want to also explore other content authoring tools like SoftChalk. The interface is fairly plain, but in terms of content management, it's a really great tool. You can have multiple pages of content (and embedded assessments if necessary that can be linked to the gradebook through LTI). Another advantage is that you can easily either create an eBook or a lesson that allows the user to print the content -- multiple pages (which can be difficult in Canvas if you are using tabs -- only the active tab will print -- see screenshot below).

Plus, since SoftChalk is cloud-based, if you have the content linked in multiple shells or course locations, you only need to update the lesson -- everything else will update automatically from the cloud.

I've found it really helpful to use in terms of both our model online course and training content management.

[Stef_retired]

 @caitlin_stiles ​,  @MattHanes ​ just contributed these awesome resources to the Using Code from the Style Guide discussion:

Modifying CSS and Javascript

using this code

Edit fiddle - JSFiddle

[cadatko]

I also tried tabs & collapsible divs in the mobile apps. Collapsible divs work fine on both iOS and Android. For tabs, however the links to take you to the content will appear, but won't work in the same way HTML anchored content does. The content will appear, but not aligned with the appropriate tabbed content in much the same way it does in the RCE. This is something that if not fixed, could at least be mitigated by making certain to include the tabbed content titles within the tabbed text and instructions for reading on mobile apps...  (Screenshot taken from desktop RCE, but looks the same as the mobile content....)

[stelpstra]

Hi Caitlin, splitting the modules into different courses would be the easiest solution and the side effect of manually adding and needing everyone to accept 21 course invitations can easily be avoided if you would use the SIS Import feature to enroll everyone in that course. This way it is easy to repeat the enrollments in different courses (although you require users to have user_ids, which is beneficial for maintenance purposes).

We prefer to never add students manually, and use a Macro enabled Excel sheet to generate correctly formatted CSV files for the SIS import which you can download here: Create UTF-8 encoded CSV files for SIS import from Excel.

If you are going to try this, first test it in your test environment instead of production. With this approach you don't need any programming, your users get access to the courses you enroll them in without any course invitations (you could notify them separately) and managing users and enrolments (adding and deleting) will be much more transparent.

Kind regards,

Jaap

[caitlin_stiles]

Thank you for the suggestion Jaap. I appreciate your comment however, its just really not a practical solution to separate our (+250) users into different modules as we have +35 modules. Its just not manageable and we're aiming to use Canvas to develop a sense of community through the discussion functionality and by breaking the modules out into courses we get away from this goal.

I'm opening to, and appreciate, any other suggestions. Thank you!

[swilson34]

Is there a way to group the 21+ small modules into 4 or 5 large modules? There would be less content in Canvas, and fewer modules to send invites for. Other than manual tracking, I'm not sure how you could track progress for your users so they followed them in the correct sequence, however.

Stephanie

[caitlin_stiles]

Thanks Stephanie- we've actually already separated the content into 3 courses and we have 3 courses with 21+ modules its simply that we have way too much content and are trying to use Canvas as an information repository instead of a linear course as its been traditionally used.

I appreciate your suggestion!

[scottdennis]

USU did a presentation at Instcon a few years ago about a nifty process they built for what might be a similar situation.  If I remember correctly they wanted instructors to be able to choose from a long list of topics to make a custom course/PD experience for each instructor.  First they built a whole series of courses, each containing one module each.  Then they built a webpage where the instructor could fill out a form.  Posting the form then triggered API calls that copied each of the courses that contained a module that the instructor wanted, all into one new course.  Not sure if that would be useful for your situation...

[hbarkes]

I have found a lot of these post very helpful like the tabs and accordion options, but would like to see Canvas allow for multiple Module pages within a course. Where you could create and have multiple "Modules" pages in the left menu. It would also have to allow for the Modules menu link name to be customized.

[caitlin_stiles]

I complete agree with you Heather. I'm finding that creating tabs is tidying up the content, slightly, but isn't addressing the overall problem which is the inability to customize the modules.

[kmatson]

We have had some courses with too much content for one course as well. We went to People and created groups and then stored content in the file structure there and the discussion board. Yes I know there aren't any modules in those Group Home pages but they do have files and discussion boards that you can use. It worked for storing files for year long courses like Spanish 101, 102, and 103.

Karen Matson