Canvas UI different between Kids

[DavidMoschioni]

My two kids are in the same grade, same school. 

I set myself up as an observer for both of their accounts. 

When i log into canvas and view their pages, the UI is almost completely different. 

On the left panel, Student A has Home, Subjects, Calendar, Inbox, History. 

Student B has: Dashboard, Courses, Calendar, Inbox, History.

The dashboard and home both display different information. 

Screenshots attached. 

[chriscas · Accepted solution]

Hi @DavidMoschioni,

The screenshot with the Courses menu is what I would call the "standard" Canvas experience, which has been around almost since the beginning of Canvas itself.  The other screenshot with Subjects is (as far as I know) the Canvas for Elementary experience, which was released a few years ago and is aimed at K-5.  I'm in higher-ed, so I don't have much Canvas for Elementary experience.  It appears it's something that can be enabled for certain areas of a school (called a subaccount in Canvas), so my guess is that the classes your kids are taking are in two different subaccounts in Canvas, one with the standard experience, the other with Elementary.  If you wanted to find out why things are set up that way, you'd likely need to speak with someone at the school, as all of this would be their decision.

Hope this helps!

-Chris

[Chris_Hofer]

Hi @DavidMoschioni ...

In addition to what @chriscas stated, I was wondering if this was because of a Feature Option that your school's Canvas administrator had set.  In the back-end admin side of Canvas, there is a Feature Options page where Canvas admins can turn certain things on/off.  One of those things is called "Canvas Elementary Theming".  There are essentially four ways this can be enabled/disabled by Canvas administrators:

• The feature is turned off for all courses at the Canvas account level with no way to turn it on at the course level
• The feature is turned off for all courses at the Canvas account level, but instructors have the option to turn it on per course
• The feature is turned on for all courses at the Canvas account level, but instructors have the option to turn it off per course
• The feature is turned on for all courses at the Canvas account level with no way to turn it off at the course level

My initial thought when I read through your question was that your Canvas administrators used one of the two middle options.  If this is the case, I can see why you would be seeing differences in some of the icons between two different courses.  (And, as I looked at your screenshots, even the font type is slightly different.)  An instructor may have chose to use the elementary theming while another one did not.

I hope this helps to explain things a bit.  Sing out if you have any other questions about this...thanks!