Quick Toggle Student View

Being able to toggle into Student View within my classes in order to double- and triple-check to make sure "everything is as it should seem" is a wonderful feature built into Canvas.

 

FEATURE IDEA: Have a quick toggle button located at the upper-righthand navigation that allowed me to toggle Student View ON/OFF easily, would improve my workflow and efficiency in setting up new assignment / pages / etc.

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

For more information, please read through the Canvas Release Notes (2020-12-19) - Canvas Community

79 Comments
juliaash
Community Member

dan_baeckstrom, Thank you! The Chrome extension is great. This functionality should be built-in, but until then, your extension is very helpful. I just rated int 5 stars on the Chrome store.

BethKeech
Community Member

Could you make a Teacher View / Student View Button at the top of each page? It seems very cumbersome to have to go back to the homepage to be able to access student view.

rinehart_164
Community Member

YES! I was just about to suggest this idea. It's so many extra steps to go back to the homepage or settings and then back to the thing (mostly modules) that you want to view in student view. Too many extra steps, please consider adding this functionality to other pages (especially Modules page) in Canvas! 

karl_christense
Community Member

For Instructors

It would be very useful to be able to see the student view icon on the Nav bar on the left hand side and use a single click to toggle the view

dan_baeckstrom
Community Explorer
FosterTheMusic
Community Member

It would be helpful if I could access student view without having to navigate to the home page and then back to whatever page I had been on.  I was trying to make a screencast tutorial in student view, then realized I couldn't access the assignment because I hadn't published it yet, so I had to exit student view, go to my assignments page to publish it, go back to my home page so I could get back into student view, and then go back to the assignment page to begin the tutorial.  Unfortunately, the screencast program lost my first video, so I had to record again and go through the same process because apparently I didn't learn my lesson the first time.  

I was teaching a summer course using Moodle, and there they had a "Switch role to..." option under my account dropdown menu in the upper righthand corner of the screen, no matter which page I was on.  I found that to be MUCH more convenient.  I could check, fix, and check again all without having to hop around within the course.  

dan_baeckstrom
Community Explorer

The feature requested by the OP (Student View button on every Canvas page) is supplied by my free browser extension Canvas Quick Student View which is now available both as a Firefox add-on and as a  Chrome extension.

 

decarbo_michael
Community Member

Having to route through the home page to check on another page in student view is cumbersome.  A hot key, or toggle switch to be revert back and forth would be ideal. 

Particularly because some pages have release dates in the future, and student view will tell me the page is not available.  How can I ensure the page is functioning before I publish.  Using a sandbox is also too cumbersome.

gkim_tis
Community Member

Yes. The "student view" button needs to be available on every page. I don't want to go to the course homepage every time I want to see what the students will see.

ckleinwaks
Community Member

I would like to be able to enter student view from any part of Canvas like Modules, etc. when screen sharing instead of going to the homepage each time.