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Getting Started with bCourses: Organizing Your Course Site

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8.0 - Last modified on 2025-12-22 Revised by Catherine McChrystal

7.0 - Last modified on 2024-02-28 Revised by Miles Lincoln

6.0 - Last modified on 2024-02-21 Revised by Miles Lincoln

5.0 - Last modified on 2022-05-05 Revised by Miles Lincoln

4.0 - Last modified on 2021-11-08 Revised by Judith Stern

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2.0 - Last modified on 2020-05-12 Revised by Seyon Wind

1.0 - Created on 2015-07-30 Authored by Paula Miranda

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Designing your course site can involve a number of ways of organizing your materials and customizing the way that users navigate the site and access those materials. In this article for instructors, we list some of the ways that you can change your course site to create an online space that is easy for you and your students to use and find content.

 

Modules

Use this tool to add and organize all of your various course materials and present them to students. Any files that you upload into Modules also get automatically saved in Files. You can move content more freely and add virtually any type of content that you would like. See this Canvas Guide for instructors: What are Modules? 

Customize the Course Navigation menu

The Course Navigation Menu is a series of links on the left side of your course site that help you and your students access its various areas and/or tools. You can’t rename these links. Links that are hidden from students are indicated by the Visibility icon (an eye with a slash through it). A link may be hidden to students because the feature area has no content or because the link is disabled. See this Canvas Guides:

Set the course home page

By default, the Home page of any bCourses course site is a space called the "Course Activity Stream," which lists recent activity in the course. You can change the Home page so that everyone in your course sees the content that you deem is the most important as soon as they enter the site. See this Canvas Guide for instructions: How do I change the Course Home Page?

Adding/deleting sections

During the process of creating your course site, you have the option of adding sections that you want to be included in the site. If you find that you would like to add other sections to or delete existing ones, you can use the Create & Manage Sites tool. See this bCourses help article for more instructions on how to use this tool: How do I add or remove a section roster from my course site?

Sample sites

Below are some sample sites, so you can see how other Canvas users organize their course materials:

For more on Getting Started with bCourses, see these articles: