How students use the To Do List

When a student logs in to Canvas on a computer and begins on the Dashboard, they see the To Do list at the upper right. When they use the Canvas app on their phone, it's on its own screen. Either way the list combines tasks from all of their classes in order of due date. The Canvas home page for each class also has a To Do list which only shows the tasks from that class.

Quite a few students use only the To Do list to do their assignments. Some don't even use the Home or other pages you've created to guide them through your class.

Think about that for a moment. You've gone to a lot of trouble to write directions, organize Modules, or create Pages to guide students through the readings, assignments, forums. But what many students are using is just the task list for all their classes together, in a jumble. Some get through the week by just clicking on one task after another.

Approaching the To Do List

As an instructor, you can think of this in two ways:

The To Do List is a great tool for helping students stay organized, so we should work with it as effectively as possible

or

The To Do List undermines your entire pedagogy and you don't want them using it for your class

Let's Get to Work

Step 1: Make your decision

What do you want to do?

If you like the To Do list, or want to use it even if you don't like it, stay tuned.

If you hate it and don't want students using it, you have to delete all the Canvas due dates for all your assignments (and pages, if you've added due dates for them to add them to the To Do list).

Step 2: Implement a strategy

Remember: you have a choice here. If you don't like the To Do list, you don't have to enable students to use it!

If you want to explore removing everything from the To Do list, go to the Next page.

If you would prefer to continue to use the To Do list, skip ahead to the page that describes how to do that well.

→ Click "Next" for How To Not Use the To Do list