OEI Rubric Tip: Course Navigation

By Gary Enns, English Professor, OEI Rubric Fan and POCR Team Member

Section A4 of the OEI Rubric focuses on the navigability of an online class. To align, a course must exhibit navigation and content flow that are “easily determined by the user,” meaning that when a student first lands on the course homepage, they know what to do, when to do it, and how to do it because the designer has built an intuitive learning environment.

To score additional exemplary elements for this component, the course must also include “clearly labelled tutorial materials explaining how to navigate the specific course.”

Here are two simple elements you can integrate now to make your course easier to navigate and receive that high checkmark for additional exemplary elements.

1. Add a “To Get Started” Statement

The Cerro Coso Canvas shell is unique in that we have the ability to add a front page element to the top of the Canvas homepage so that students see a general message and/or images—whatever we want them to see—as soon as they open the class. (For a quick front page how-to, scroll to the “Bonus” section at the end of this article.) Adding front page content is a nice way to customize the learning environment, and it’s also a great place to share initial instructions.

To boost navigability at the beginning of the semester, consider adding a “To Get Started” statement on the front page. Here’s mine, which I have placed below a course description and image:

To Get Started

Simply scroll down from here and click "Orientation (Start Here)" to begin the orientation module.

I look forward to seeing you (virtually) in class.

Enjoy!

Simple! As soon as they log in, students see this message and know, right away, where they are supposed to go and what they are supposed to do. Of course, the orientation material they go to must also be easily navigable, but this decisive first message of instruction is a great step toward showing them the way forward.

2. Add a Navigation Tutorial to Your Orientation

All of our courses contain orientation materiel. You may have a traditional course description/syllabus document, for instance. In my course, I create an orientation module—a kind of one-stop a-la-carte module full of pages where students can find answers to course information and policies. In whatever form your orientation takes, create a section or page describing how to navigate your course, and make it really easy to find. In this material, consider explaining things such as

• How Canvas modules work (along with a link to the modules section of the Canvas student guide for more information)
• How and when students should move through modules (weekly, for instance)
• How to use the Previous and Next Buttons at the bottom of each Canvas page in order to move chronologically through a module’s contents
• How to use the module collapse arrows to hide completed modules from view
• How to use the syllabus page
• How to check comments and rubrics in assignments
• Anything else you can think of to make navigation simple

And that’s it—two very simple tips for the day. Nothing profound, but they do go a long way toward making our students feel comfortable within the Canvas course environment.

Bonus: How to Add a Front Page to Any Canvas Homepage

I promised this bonus earlier. To add a front page to your Canvas homepage, follow these steps

1. Go to “Pages”
2. Build or decide on the page you would like to feature on your homepage. (Best to keep it fairly short since it will appear above the modules. Consider a description of the course and maybe one suitable image.)
3. Once you’ve decided on the page, click the three vertical dots to the right of that page and select “Use as Front Page.”
4. Go back to your homepage.
5. Toward the top, click the “Add Front Page” button.