Standardized Class Organization of Sub-Pages

[silaswaxter]

Canvas should provide recommended guidelines and/or defaults/templates for creating classes;  part of this would be a quick reference document & video tutorial, explaining default pages (Modules, Discussions, etc.) and their use case.  This would unify the student experience making it more intuitive. 

As a student, it's a pain to navigate my various classes, all of which share components: Syllabus, Contact Information, Zoom Schedule/Links, Discussions, Assignments, Learning Materials, etc.  For example, in order to email all my teachers, I have to search through each class's sub-pages for the professor's email.  With just 5 classes, I found emails in multiple places: Syllabus->email, People->Proffessor->email, Modules->Week 0->Syllabus, Files->Syllabus, etc.  This is a major pain for a process that should be efficient and standard across classes.  However, this is just one example.  This is also the case with assignments/modules/announcements/discussions.

I wish there was a standard between classes, where I could quickly check the overview of the week.

[silaswaxter]

*I wish there was a standard between classes, where student actions: checking for assignments, looking at the week overview, contacting the teacher, etc.) were unified.

[Stef_retired]

@silaswaxter 

Thanks for sharing this idea. I sympathize! Canvas is designed to create a consistent experience for students across all courses while at the same time allowing Canvas teachers, admins, and course designers considerable flexibility. However, as the maker of the LMS, we cannot impose specific designs on our customers, as there is no "one-size-fits-all" approach that would work for every institution across the globe.

Our Canvas Guides and videos provide comprehensive overview instructions for using all of the features in Canvas, and you can browse through them by selecting Knowledge from the top navigation menu on this page—but these are "how-to" resources, as discussions of best practices are generally conducted in the Instructional Designers group hub. 

Have you brought this to the attention of the local Canvas admin or eLearning department at your school? Many schools create just the sort of course template you've described to facilitate that consistent experience for students across all of their courses.