Canvas (Instructors): Customize the Courses List and Dashboard

When you are enrolled in 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 favorites, 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 appear in the Courses list.

Managing the Display of Courses on Your Canvas Dashboard

Your Canvas dashboard displays a course card for every course with which you are associated. Eventually, that list may become overwhelming, making it difficult to find the few courses that you are working on.

To control the display of courses on your Canvas Dashboard, follow these few simple steps:

1. In the Canvas Global Navigation bar, select Courses.
2. At the bottom of the resulting pop-up menu, select All courses.

This new screen is an itemized list of every Canvas course with which you are affiliated. At the beginning, this list will match the course cards that are found on your Canvas Dashboard.

When you log in, there are white stars to the left of each course title. Those stars are the main tool for managing which courses appear on the Canvas Dashboard.

1. By default, the very first time you log in, all stars are white. All courses are displayed.
2. However, if you select a white star, it turns a color.
   • At this point, only courses with a colored star show on your Canvas Dashboard.

After selecting the star for all courses that you want to appear on your Dashboard, select Dashboard. Confirm the course cards that appear on your dashboard correspond with the courses that have stars with colors in them. See the "How do I view my favorite courses in the Card View Dashboard as an instructor?" guide for more details.

Note: After you manually favorite at least one course, Canvas automatically favorites any new published course enrollments for you.

View Unpublished Courses

Unpublished courses can be identified by using the Published column. You can favorite unpublished courses.

View Past Enrollments

Note: Courses you have made a favorite are automatically removed from your Dashboard six months after the course concludes - when the Term ends in Canvas. This allows room for new courses on your Dashboard.

Your Courses list shows all courses Past, Current and Future.

Some material has been adapted from the following guides:

• How do I customize my Courses list as an instructor? (Instructure)
• Managing Display of Courses on Canvas Dashboard (UW Madison)