Overview
Organizing Modules
Adding Modules
Adding Content to Modules
Hiding Modules & Content

Overview

Modules is where the content for your course is organized and made available to students. Modules allow faculty to organize their course by days/weeks (in a lock-step course), units, objectives, topics or whatever organizational structure works best for the course. Modules can be accessed by clicking the Modules link in the Navigational Tool.

To access the Modules page click on "Modules" from the navigation links (on the left) in your course.

Additional Resources

For more information on Modules see the following guide - What are Modules for Instructors? - or video.

Modules: Creation & Management from Canvas LMS

Organizing Modules

Course modules are the way in which content is organized. A module may represent a topic, lesson or week of instruction (but isn't limited to this!).

Save time! It's easier to plan ahead for how you want your course content organized rather than after you've started building your Modules and adding content!

In general, modules should be arranged in the order in which the student is intended to move through the course, for example:

Week 1, Week 2, Week 3
Day 1, Day 2, Day 3
Objective 1, Objective 2, Objective 3
Unit 1, Unit 2, Unit 3

Week Example

The screen shot below shows an example of a Module that was set-up based on Week:

Unit Example

The screen shot below shows an example of a Module that was set-up based on Unit:

Adding Modules

Once you know how you'd like to organize your Modules the next step is to actually start adding the individual Modules to the Modules Page!

Getting Started

The following guides provide the basic information on how to add and edit modules in your course:

More Advanced Settings

The following guides provide information on the more advanced module features:

How do I lock a module?
How do I require students to move through each module item in order?
How do I set up prerequisite modules?
How do I add requirements to a module?

Adding Content to Modules

After creating course modules it's time to add course content! Below are examples of the types of content that can be added to a module.

Types of Course Content

Assignment - These are Assignments where students can submit homework files or other assignments. Can also include assignments that are turned in outside of Canvas.
Quiz - Used to deliver online tests, quizzes or surveys.
File - Any type of file (ex: Word, PowerPoint, PDF) can be added directly to Course Modules; more information on files is included later in this Module)
Content Page - Created by instructors and can include text, video, audio, images, and links to other websites or pages in Canvas; more information on Pages is included later in this Module.
Discussion - These are actual discussion forms in Canvas where instructors can post questions or information and students can respond and reply to each other.
Text Header - Used to add extra text to Modules; normally for organizing content within Modules. Example of this can be found in this Instructor Training and include the "What have you learned?" text header at the end of each module.
External URL - Add links to any external web-site; briefly discussed in the previous video.
External Tool - This is a rarely used feature that would require integration with a third party. If you have questions about this ask your ISD representative

Adding Content to Modules

In some cases you may already have content available to add to the Course Modules. This content could be assignments that have already been created (from Module 5 or Module 6) and/or resources copied into your course from other sources. Otherwise, you can create content directly from the Course Modules.

The following guides provide the basic information on how to add content to modules in your course:

Hiding Modules & Content

The ability to hide Modules and Module content (quizzes, assignments, discussions, pages, links, etc) is available via the Draft State and publish/unpublish feature.

Draft State is straightforward to use and it's easy to see if a Module (or Module content) has been "published" or not by the color and type of icon to the right of all Modules and Module content. A green check mark indicates that the module or content item has been published and is visible to students. A gray no symbol indicates that the module or content item has not been published and is not visible to students.

See the following guide for general information on this feature - How do I use Draft State in Modules?

How to Tell if a Module is Published

The image below shows how to quickly tell if a Module is published or not.

How to Tell if Module Content is Published

The image below shows how to quickly tell if content in a Module is published or not.

Important Considerations

There are a five main things to remember when using Draft state:

When creating or adding new content (assignments, discussions, quizzes, files, pages, links, text header, URL, etc) to a course the default is for that content to be "unpublished." For students to view or interact with the content it will need to be published.
Modules and module content that is unpublished will not automatically publish even if you use the "lock module until a given date" (for Modules) or "Available from" (for Assignments, Discussions, & Quizzes) settings. The content will remain hidden from the students until it is manually published.
Module and module content that is published AND has a locked or an "Available from" date will not be accessible to students until the specified date. The students will be able to see that the content is there, but they will not be able to access it.
Module and module content that is published and does not have a locked or "Available from" date will be accessible to students.
Once students have submitted work to an Assignment, Discussion, or Quiz it can no longer be "unpublished" (hidden) from students. It can be hidden from the Module page itself if the module the assignment is in is unpublished, but students will still be able to access the content from their "Grades" page & link.

Publishing your course does NOT "publish" your course content to students, it only publishes the COURSE itself.

Reminder!

After reviewing the information from each tab above click on the Next button to continue with the training!