[Mobile - Canvas Student] Allow faculty to have a 'Mobile View' like 'Student View'

Hello everyone!

 

I have been working with faculty to create mobile friendly content pages.  While most often pages will look okay on mobile devices, I often have to explain why some content such as tables are not properly formatted, etc is problematic when viewing on small screens.  Yes, yes.  They can log into a mobile devices separately, but It's simply not a quick easy thing for them to log in to a separate mobile device to check their work.  People might be more inclined to design mobile friendly pages if it were a toggle they could quickly click back and forth.  I know there are many browser plug-ins that people might use to check webpages proper, but it isn't the same, as easy or as accurate. 

 

I think it would be marvelous if there was a 'Mobile View' option just below or within 'Student View' . . . what do you all think?

24 Comments
cuddies
Community Explorer

We (designers and faculty) should be able to check for accessibility issues using a 'mobile/app' view within the Canvas browser. 

Similar to the 'student view' but would give us a view of what the Canvas course would look like in a mobile browser or using the app so we can determine if adjustments need to be made because specific content doesn't translate well to the smaller view. This would really go a long way to ensuring a seamless user experience across the browsers and platforms. It would also avoid me having to log into the mobile app in the middle of a course design to make sure it looks good on the app. 

HillaryGabbidon
Community Member

This is an important design feature.  Having to go back and forth between devices and apps just seems unnecessarily cumbersome.

 

 

ejames
Community Member

Love this idea! Agree that it should be super-easy for faculty to check mobile view. They're not likely to go to another app/program. Having the option right there in Canvas would be ideal.

Also I like @a_craik's suggestion about adding some mobile-building functionality to the RCE.

kirsten_ryall
Community Participant

I love, love, love this idea too. Just yesterday we needed to view something from a students perspective on the iOS mobile app. My first challenge is that I have an Android phone but I have ways around this. In the end the quickest way for me to get a really good idea of the student experience was to recreate the query in a sandbox course, add a colleague as a student and get him to log into the student app on his iPhone. Of course there were other ways to do this. Imagine if I didn't have to take all of those steps and instead just clicked on 'mobile view' instead. I'd love to have both Android and iOS options too of course.

philip_quealy
Community Explorer

This would be a really helpful feature. At the moment our instructors are predominately unaware of what is being provided to students who use the mobile app. A quick visual check would ensure that students are receiving the best experience that their instructors can provide.

david_heath
Community Member

agree with the comments here. definitely needed.

Ash145
Community Member

 

 

 

I think it is important if Canvas can show how the course will look if the students use a phone or a tablet for  navigation,  I suggest the tab be near Near  Student View tab

Hildi_Pardo
Community Coach
Community Coach

I would like to add an extra vote for @a_craik 's suggestions as well.    We need to make it easy to design the content that is friendly for mobile and that is accessible -- if that was easier from the start (from the RCE and not HTML), that would be amazing.

FaisalT
Community Member

For accessibility - often pages may have text or images that do not show well on a mobile phone or IPad when produced. You normally either aim to login onto a mobile to then see the view or reduce the browser window (less accurate) to try to see what it looks like.

Can we instead have preset viewing modes to see the page when viewed by a Mobile or IPad in addition to the normal web browser view on a PC. This can be on the RTE editor screen or when you look at a page.

You do get these when you use programs that design web pages or even flipbooks.

Thanks

F.Topan (Administrator)

 

MattRyan1906
Community Member

Hi all,

Totally agree! has there been any movement on this? as far more of our students are being encouraged to study on devices and also make the most of their commute, as well as use their devices to create and upload content.