Customize your Canvas Course List and Dashboard

Now that Extension's online courses have been in Canvas for a few years, your Course List and Dashboard might be getting messy and confusing. You're in luck! You can customize it.

Select your "favorites"

When you are enrolled in (or teach) more than one Canvas course, you can customize the active courses you want to show in your Course List. Courses you want to show in the Courses drop-down menu are called favorite courses. You can favorite any active course that appears on the Course List page. Course favorites also display in the Card View Dashboard.

When no courses are favorited, the courses list automatically displays up to 20 courses alphabetically in the drop-down menu. However, once you have selected at least one course as a favorite, only your favorite courses will appear in the Courses list.

Note: Courses are always listed alphabetically; you cannot reorder your courses manually.

In Global Navigation (far right), click the Courses link [1] (a book icon), then click the All Courses link [2] (at the bottom of your Course List).

Then, to favorite a course so it is displayed on your course Dashboard, click the star next to a course [3]. Courses with filled stars show the course is a favorite [4].

In the Dashboard, any courses you have with an instructor role will be listed first, followed by TA roles and any other custom instructor-based roles. Your courses with student roles are listed last.

Note: When you favorite at least one course, the Dashboard will only display favorited courses. Canvas will also continue to automatically favorite new course enrollments.

Unpublished courses can be identified by a gray background [1] and the Published column [2]. You can favorite unpublished courses.

Courses that have concluded will appear after unpublished courses in your Course List [3]. Favorited courses are not automatically removed as a favorite. However, if a past enrollment course still shows as a favorite, users can unfavorite the course by toggling the star icon, but you cannot re-favorite an inactive course [4]. Extension courses have no automatic start nor end dates. You can set the start and end dates in a course's settings [5].

BONUS: Further Dashboard customization

If it makes you happy, or less confused by similarly titled courses, you can customize the course Dashboard image. 

When you're in your course, click on Settings in the course-level menu. Then, at the top of the Course Details page, click Choose Image [1]. After you've added one, you can click the three dots in the upper right of the image to change the photo [2]. Click Save at the bottom of the course details page. When on the Dashboard, click on the three dots in the upper right of the course card to customize the color of the image overlay and course title in the Color tab, or move the location of the course "card" on the Dashboard or unfavorite the course in the Move tab [3]. (Note: The color, nickname, and course card location are individual settings on your dashboard. You can customize them for yourself, but you cannot control these for your learners.)

The top part of this post is a University of Minnesota Extension adaptation of the Canvas instructions. See the original version here.