I find instructors struggling with how to balance the length of content pages and the length of the Modules page. If a page is too long, students might feel overwhelmed with contemplating how long it will take to read all that material (a point for books, magazines, and newspapers!). One response is to break up long pages into several smaller pages, but then the Modules page can become very long and generate a different kind of overwhelming feeling (so many choices!).
One way to balance this is through the use of tabs, which Canvas already has in places like the Settings page of a course. Many sample pages with tabs are available in the Canvas Commons.
In the embedded video I demonstrate the following:
- Searching the Canvas Commons for a sample page with tabs that I created and importing that page into a Canvas course.
- Finding the imported page in the Pages tool and editing it.
- Making careful changes to the sample page in both the HTML Editor and in the Rich Content Editor.
Using tabs presents a new challenge, which is how to make sure that students click on each of the tab headings so they do not miss any content. The sample page that I created includes header and footer text telling students to click through each tab before they click the Next button to advance in the Module. And as noted in the excellent discussion Using Tabs in Your Canvas Course, there are issues with how tabs appear on mobile devices.
