Modules in Canvas

What You Need to Know

Canvas provides flexible options for how to build your course. You can determine what tools are or are not available in your course, what page displays as the homepage when students first log in, and how that page looks. 

You might consider organizing course material in some of the following ways. 

• Around specific units or themes. Modules may be a useful tool for thematic structures. Modules are essentially content containers. They allow you to divide your course into units, with each unit containing a group of assignments and additional content. Modules may be convenient if you require students to move through the content in a sequential way or if it is necessary to group your course material into units.

• Around the calendar portion of your syllabus. The Syllabus tool allows you display all course assignments and events, with undated assignments appearing at the bottom. If most of your course materials contain dates, organizing your course around the Syllabus tool may be most best choice for you.

• Around course assignments. This option is great if your course is very project or task-oriented and can be accomplished using the Assignments tool. The Assignments tool includes all assessments: quizzes, graded discussions and online submissions (i.e., files, text, URLs, images, etc.). You can manage all assessments within Assignments. 

What You Need to Know

Would you like students to be required to complete one module before the next module becomes available? This is easy in Canvas and it's called "conditionals," meaning one condition must be met before the next piece is made available.  Conditionals can be applied to any instructional material or assignment organized in the Modules tool.

You might use this functionality to move students through a specific sequence of information. You might also use this functionality to prevent students from opening the next module before obtaining a specific quiz score. 

Our Recommendation

After adding content to the modules, you can set up your conditionals by creating a set of prerequisites that manage what modules must be completed before another is opened. You can then set your requirements for each module. Requirements include what content within the module must be completed in order for the module to be considered complete.

Note that prerequisites and requirements only manage availability of modules and the content within those modules. See How do I set up prerequisite Modules? and How do I add requirements to a Module? for details.