A broken chain

Avoiding Broken Links in Canvas

Has this happened to you? You open an email from one of your students that reads, “I can’t access the required reading file in week 3 of the Canvas course?” Concerned, you open your Canvas course. You check your week 3 module; it’s published and so is your “Required Readings” page. Strange. You open the course page and click on the link to the reading file; it downloads. Even stranger. Your student still insists that they cannot access the file. What is going on???

Instructors working in Canvas can occasionally encounter scenarios like the above where a link, image, or file in their Course works for them but does not work for their students. These errors can be very tricky to diagnose and are often caused by something sneaky going on “under the hood” in Canvas. Thankfully, Canvas has a tool that instructors can use to hunt out bad links in their course. This post introduces Canvas’s course link validator tool and explains how it can be used to proactively detect broken links in your courses. It will also provide a few tips for fixing these issues once they’ve been detected and best practices for avoiding these issues altogether.

Detecting Broken Links

Your secret weapon in this fight against broken links is the course link validator. The course link validator, which can be accessed from the Settings page of your course, scans all content in a course for links that may not work for any of several reasons. It will detect and report links to unpublished content, links to content in another course, and links to external websites that just don’t work. It’s a great idea to run the link validator right before you are ready to publish your course and run it again each time you make a large change or addition.

After running the link validator, Canvas will display a list of each piece of content in your course that contains at least one link that may need your attention. These problematic links are further sorted beneath a description of the cause of the error. In the example screenshot of link validator results below, the validator found five broken links in this course:

The results of a link validation check in Canvas.

  • One embedded image in a quiz question that will not work for students because the embedded image is stored in another course.
  • Three links within a single page that students cannot access because each link points to an object in another course. This page has a link to a page in another course, an embedded image stored in another course, and a link to a file stored in another course.
  • A link in a different page that points to an assignment in this course that has not yet been published.

These results illustrate two of the most common causes for confounding broken links in a course:

  1. Links pointing to unpublished files or other unpublished course content
  2. Links pointing to content that is in a different Canvas course

Both of these issues create links that appear to work fine for the instructor but do not work for students. Without a tool like the course link validator, it would be very difficult to detect these issues!

Defeating Broken Links

Whenever the link validator detects a broken link in your course, it’s time to spring into action and heal those links. Mending links that are broken because they point to unpublished content is straightforward: find that content in your course and publish it! Fixing links that point to content in other courses is trickier.

First, you need to remove the bad link. To do this, find the course content that contains the bad link and edit it. Then remove the bad link or embedded image:

  • For broken links, find the course content that contains the bad link, click edit, click the link in the editor, then click Remove Link.
    The Remove Link option in Canvas
  • For broken embedded images, put your text edit cursor after the image and backspace to remove it.

Once the bad link is removed, use the Canvas editor’s tools to create a new link that points to the course file or course page, or embed the image from your course images. If that file, page, or image you are linking to doesn’t yet exist within the course, you’ll have to upload it from your computer or import it from the other course. Recreating the link in this fashion will point it at content that is contained within the same course, ensuring your students get to where they need to go!

Why Broken Links Happen

These sneakily broken links are typically the result of a teacher trying to share something with their students that their students are not allowed to access. Naturally, teachers are afforded much wider access to a course than students. The most confusing broken links commonly point to either unpublished content or content in another course. Students can’t see unpublished content or content in the teacher’s other courses, but the teacher can!

One item type in a Canvas course that can unexpectedly cause access problems with its published status is course files. Unlike most other content in a Canvas course, you typically don’t have to manually publish course files; most files you upload to a course will be published upon upload. However, files or even entire file folders can be unpublished in your course Files page. When that happens, students will receive access denied messages after attempting to click a link to that file. To resolve this issue, the course instructor must publish the file or folder in the course’s Files page.

Links to content in another Canvas course can sneak in whenever course content is manually copied from one Canvas course and then pasted into another course. The result of copying and pasting between courses creates links to files, pages, and images that point to an outside course. When students try to follow these links, Canvas sees that they are not enrolled in that course and sends an “access denied” message. To prevent this type of broken link, never copy and paste links or images from one Canvas course into another. Instead, use Canvas’s copy and import tools whenever you need to duplicate content from one course to another.

An Access Denied Error in Canvas

Try it Out!

Whether or not you have been bitten by broken links in the past, we encourage you to run the link validator in your Canvas courses. If the validator finds any issues, take a look at those pages in your course and either remake those links or publish any unpublished link targets. You can check to see if your fixes were successful by rerunning the validator and using student view to try the links as the test student. If you’re ever unsure of how to fix an issue reported by the link validator, please don’t hesitate to contact Canvas 24/7 support via the “Help” button in Canvas, email UWGB’s Canvas support team at dle@uwgb.edu, or request a CATL Consultation for one-on-one training on finding and fixing broken links!

Your Course Communication Strategy

Communicating is paramount in any course—this is especially true at a distance where even incidental contact is absent. Good communication correlates strongly with positive student feedback. The materials and content in your course could be entirely mute if students don’t know fully how you expect they interact with them.

You will want when and how you communicate with students to be authentic to you and your course. Much as you want the materials and activities of a course to align with your course objectives, you want how you communicate to align with you.

Decide what’s right for you…

Take a moment to consider what communication strategy is most authentic to you.

For now, think of this in general terms what is your “style” of communication? Are you a better listener or informer? Do you prefer one-on-one conversation or group-think? Can you be more often found waiting for others to pose questions or proactively providing answers?

Consider what you’ll need to communicate, to whom, how, and when.

As one example: I need to provide the instructions for lab and safety information to each section. The instructions need to be transparent because the sections will be at different places in the text. The safety information has to match the language in the safety manual. Students need to have received and comprehend this information at least a week before lab.

Consider what method you would follow to communicate with your students about these materials. Put another way: What would you like communication to look like in this course?

One method you may use for deciding on communication tools is the “SAMR” (Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition) model.

Finally (and this is the step that’s easy to forget), look again at your workload and consider your teaching style. As an example, do you have final papers due in four different courses in the same week? You’ll want to make sure you have the capacity to be true to your own teaching. If you’re the sort of person who would like to do one-on-one conferences leading up to the final paper, that’s something to take into account.

In summary:

  • Consider what is authentic
  • Consider what is realistic
  • You may wish to use the SAMR model as a way of approaching this problem
  • But remember to keep your workload in mind

… then, match that to the tools available.

Return to the SAMR model or another means of reflecting on your decision as needed. Consider these options (and a few of their trade-offs) for communicating with students:

Benefits

  • A "distribution list" will allow you to send a message to your entire class at once.
  • Familiar to you and to students.

Trade-Offs

  • One-on-one communication can get "noisy" and relies on the class list in SIS or Canvas (not Outlook).
  • Media limited.

Benefits

  • Engage the whole class or specific groups of students.
  • Keep related things together.
  • Familiar in principle to students.
  • Less formal.

Trade-Offs

  • Requires regular/frequent interaction for best results.
  • Small learning curve in Canvas initially.
  • Task needs clarification.
  • Less formal.

Benefits

  • Intuitive and in Canvas.
  • Alert the whole class or sections of students all at once.
  • Allows for rich media (video messages, images, etc.)
  • Students get notified.
  • Allows for student comments (optional).

Trade-Offs

  • Students can disable email notifications—but still see announcements when in Canvas.
  • Can get noisy with frequent use.

(E.g., Zoom or Teams)

Benefits

  • Feels more like being in the classroom.
  • Sessions can be recorded for review (or those who miss).
  • Varying levels of interactive options (whiteboard, breakout groups, chat, polls, etc.)

Trade-Offs

  • Steeper learning curve the first time.
  • Relies on a good connection and technology.
  • Logistically, some students cannot make it to synchronous sessions.

Benefits

  • Intuitive and familiar to students.
  • Easy to use.
  • Synchronous.
  • A "history" of the chat is available to the entire class making it good for Q&A-type sessions.

Trade-Offs

  • Synchronous.
  • Whole-class only. Cannot be limited to specific students.

Benefits

  • Displays course due dates automatically
  • Can add other items (like reminders)

Trade-Offs

  • Requires "due dates"
  • Only the names of events appear directly on the calendar

Benefits

  • Create blocks of time for students to sign up to meet one-on-one (e.g. office hours)
  • Can use a "feed" to add these blocks to Outlook

Trade-Offs

  • Required additional communication so students know how and to use them.

Finally, let students know.

Make the necessary preparations for your selected technologies and techniques. All the while, be sure to keep your course information updated. At the minimum, you will want to let students know which tools you’ll be using, for what, when, and how to get support if they need it.

Example: I will be posting twice-weekly announcements in Canvas to help you stay on task and remind you of upcoming due dates. I ask that you reply to these announcements with questions you may have so we can clarify any sticking points as a class. I will reply to announcement comments the next day at the latest. If you need any help with the announcements tool in Canvas, Canvas support can be reached through any of the contact methods in the syllabus.

It is a good idea to have a dedicated Communication Policies page or outlining this information in your syllabus to let students know how and when you will be communicating with them—and how, when, and what they should communicate with you!

The SAMR Model

The SAMR framework stands for Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition. It was developed by Ruben Puentedura to categorize classroom technologies and can be used to decide which technologies might be right for you in a given situation.

Consider these “degrees” (rather than “levels”). Each has their place. Let’s look at the acronym using a typical classroom lecture as our example. This is, of course, only an overview for you to consider as you decide the best ways to communicate with your students, choose and build course materials, create assessments, and more. To go into any of this in more detail, always feel free to meet with someone in CATL.

  • S—Substitution: The new medium replaces the old medium but does not change the task.
    An example might be going from chalk to dry erase—the lecture remains the same.
  • A—Augmentation: The new medium is still a substitute but adds functionality.
    In our example, let’s say you have some magnetic models to put on the board—you can supplement your lecture with these illustrations and save time re-drawing the same figures.
  • M—Modification: The technology is used to re-design the task.
    For example, students use a classroom response system to steer the lecture—the lecture is taking on a new form; it’s still recognizable as such, but even the material will vary depending on how the students interact.
  • And R—Redefinition: Designing and creating a new task altogether.
    If lecture just doesn’t cut it, you might instead build a site your entire class can use to develop an Open Educational Resource.

The SAMR model is a valuable tool to use as you’re considering technologies for your courses. Keep in mind, as you move “up” the model (or down the list above), you will introduce additional cognitive load. It is important to balance additions with scaffolding and by returning to your objectives and reviewing the alignment of your course.

Checking for Students Who Are Not Engaged in Canvas

Faculty are periodically asked to check their courses for students who are not engaged with the course and report these students in Navigate so that advisors can follow-up with the student. This page outlines the main tools that can be used to check a Canvas course for students who are not engaged.

Please note that these Canvas tools are imperfect, so CATL does not recommend that they be used for grading participation in your course.

New Analytics

Instructors can use the New Analytics tool in their Canvas course to view a sortable table of student participation data that includes the last participation date, page view count, and participation count for each student. A list of what Canvas counts as participations can be found in this guide. Here is how you can view this table in your course’s New Analytics page:

  1. Click the New Analytics button that is located on the right side of the course home page or click the New Analytics link in the course navigation menu.
    Screenshot of the New Analytics button
  2. In the New Analytics page, click the Students tab to view the table of student participation data.
  3. Click on any table column’s header to sort the list of students by that column’s data.
    Screenshot of the Canvas New Analytics student table screen highlighting the Students tab and the column headers that can be clicked for sorting the table.

Students who have not engaged with the course at all will have no or very few page views counted in this table.

Instructors can look more closely at individual students by clicking their names. Please reference this Canvas guide for more information on using New Analytics to view individual student participation statistics.

Please note that data in New Analytics refreshes once every 24 hours, so this page may not reflect recent activity in the course. The date and time the data was last refreshed are visible near the top of the page under the “Average Course Grade.”

Course Access Reports

If greater detail is needed, instructors can view a list of course pages that a student has accessed by viewing that student’s course access report. Here’s how to view the course access report for a student in your course:

  1. Open the People page of the Canvas course by clicking People in the course navigation menu.
  2. In the list of students, click on the student’s name.
  3. In the sidebar that appears on the right side of the page, click on the student’s name.
  4. Click the Access Report button located on the right side of the user details page.

Screenshot of the Access Report button in Canvas

If the access report is empty, the student has not accessed the Canvas course.

People Page

The list of students on the People page in your Canvas course contains some student participation data, including the last activity date and total activity time. Students with no date listed under the last activity column have likely never accessed the course.

The reported total activity time does not track time spent viewing the course on the Canvas mobile apps and is prone to other measurement errors, so it is often an inaccurate representation of a student’s actual engagement with a course.

One point of confusion for instructors with the People page is the presence of an “inactive” tag after a student’s name. This tag indicates that the student has dropped the course in SIS; it is not an indication of disengagement from an enrolled student.

Backward Design

What is backward design?

Backward design is a three-stage process for designing a course:

  1. Identify outcomes or the desired results of learning.
  2. Determine what counts as acceptable evidence of learning.
  3. Plan learning experiences or instruction that will lead students. to achieve your outcomes and provide evidence of learning.

Instructional designers call this process “backward” because one starts with the outcomes and works backward towards daily lessons. One strategy for arraying course experiences is called “scaffolding”—building on prior knowledge to reach new knowledge. A detailed overview of scaffolding can be found here.

This process is most closely associated with a book called Understanding by Design by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe (2005). You can read a condensed version of the book if you like or watch the video below to learn more.

How does backward design relate to digital democracy?

The structure of your course speaks volumes to students. When learning outcomes, activities, and assessments work together, students know what to do and how their work contributes to their overall success in the course. At a time when face-to-face communication is at a premium, the structure of the course stands stands in for the check-ins at the beginning of class, where the instructor orients students to how the activities of the day contribute to the overall goals of the course. When the course itself makes transparent connections between outcomes, activities, and assessments you and your students do not have to lumber off to a web conference to discuss these matters. Moreover, students who are not able to attend a web conference are not left out.

How can backward design help me?

Backward design ensures that your outcomes, activities, and assessments work together. As William Strunk, Jr. said of writing: “sentences should contain no unnecessary words… for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts” (Elements of Style, Rule 17.) So too should a course contain no unnecessary work. Backward design helps you determine which elements of your course to keep (those that help students meet the course outcomes as measured by the assessments) and which elements may be edited out (those which do not help your students show mastery of the course outcomes).

Alignment

Diagram showing a "triangle" of intended outcomes, teaching and learning activities, and assessment.

Backward design implies a linear method (albeit in reverse) where one starts with outcomes works backward to assessment and then back again to daily learning activities. In an ideal world, that would be true. But in reality it is more useful to think of backward design as a process that instructors can enter at any of the three points and then use the other two to triangulate their course design.

For example, you may have a really great group project that you think will make a great assessment. To ensure the project fits in your course you will want to attach learning outcomes to it and plan daily activities that will lead your students toward being successful on the final project. This group project is every bit as aligned as one which started with the outcomes and proceeded backward to the assessment (group project) and back again to the daily activities. The key idea is that all three sides of the triangle should work together.

Applying Backward Design

Backward design may be useful for updating your course in multiple ways.

First, you will want to see that your assessments provide evidence that your students have mastered your learning outcomes.

Second, as you consider the various ways students may access your class (face-to-face, online, synchronous online, etc.) you will want to see if your daily activities are aligned equally well in each learning environment. For example, if you do a think-pair-share in a face-to-face lecture so that students can practice key concepts, you will want to do a similar activity in the online environment, such as a journal activity where students explain key concepts in their own terms. The activities don’t have to be the same but they should provide an equivalent experience that is equally well aligned with assessments and learning outcomes.

Finally, backward design serves as a way to check if something is worth doing (does it align?) and a method for incorporating new elements that you can’t resist doing (how can it be made to align with the outcomes, assessments, and learning activities?).