What, Why, and Why Not

All modules in the DE Handbook have a number or letter designator, and all pages in the DE Handbook begin their names according to a convention of [module designator].[page designator] - e.g. 1.1 is the first page of the first module; C.1 is the first page of appendix C.

For regular classes, this idea can be useful in several ways:

Students know "where they are" within the course at all times based on the name of the Canvas item they are on.
If you use the "Pages" area of Canvas for navigation, it presents your pages in an intuitive order.
If you use internal links within your Canvas course to take students to other pages or items, it is much quicker to find the link when you are creating it if you use a naming pattern like this.

The downside is that hyperlinks to Canvas items (pages, assignments, etc) are based on the name of the item, and change if you change the name. If you need to rename a page because you add other pages and it changes the sequence within a module, internal links to that page which you manually added elsewhere will need to be updated. (Another reason the Canvas Link Validator tool can be an important friend!)

A "table of contents" at the beginning of each module can allow students to navigate in a non-linear fashion from the first page of a module to where they need to go. This might feel like overkill in some classes, but if you have lengthy modules, students may appreciate the navigational shortcut. It's a good idea to create the placeholder for a table of contents on the first page of a module, but to hold off on filling it in until you are really confident that you have all content finalized in the module (so you have a minimum of work renaming and relinking items in the table of contents if you should add or delete items within the module). You might also like to add a table of contents on the conclusion page of each module, if students arrive there but need to go back to an earlier point in the module to review content or complete work they may have skipped over.

How

As mentioned above, name your Canvas items based on where they are located within a module, and rename them if you add, remove, or re-sequence items. Hold off on creating internal links to Canvas items until you are quite confident in your course content and sequence.

If you want to use a Table of Contents, regardless of how you're naming your Canvas items, create a placeholder anytime by inserting the following code into your first and/or last page of a module. Once the Table of Contents code is added in the HTML editor, your edits to add in the actual page names and links (when reasonably finalized) can be done in the visual rich content editor - you don't need to do it in the code.

<div style="border: 2px solid #233dff; background-color: white; float: right; margin: 20px; border-width: 15%; padding: 10px 10px 10px 10px;">
    <h2><strong>In this module:</strong><em>&nbsp;</em></h2>
    <ul>
        <li><a title="page name here" href="https://miracosta.instructure.com/courses/19220/pages/1-dot-2-online-and-distance-education-at-miracosta-background" data-api-endpoint="https://miracosta.instructure.com/api/v1/courses/19220/pages/1-dot-2-online-and-distance-education-at-miracosta-background" data-api-returntype="Page">Page Name Here</a></li>
    </ul>
</div>