What is the Dashboard?

The Dashboard consists of three main elements:

1. Global Navigation across the top of the page,
2. the Sidebar with various types of feeds, and
3. the Global Stream, which comprises the main body of the page.

The Dashboard is designed to answer the questions, "What is going on in all of my courses?" and "What do I need to do next?"

The Global Navigation directs users to menus or pages that display:

1. all of a user's courses and groups,
2. all of a user's assignments,
3. a grade summary page, and
4. the Calendar.

These four menus and pages will display different items depending on whether you are a student or an instructor. Under Assignments, for example, Instructors will see assignments that need to be graded and students will see assignments that need to be turned in.

The Sidebar contains three helpful feeds:

1. The To Do feed lists the next five assignments you need to turn in (if you are a student) or you need to grade (if you are an instructor). Assignments will still show up in this list even if they are past due. Click on the links to go directly to the Assignments page.
2. The Coming Up feed lists the next five assignments or events coming due in the next week.
3. The Recent Feedback feed lets students know when their instructor has left a comment or a grade for one of their submissions. The same feed will let instructors know when students have left comments about work they have evaluated. This feed helps students and instructors keep the conversation alive around Assignments.

The Global Stream contains a stream of recent activity from all of your courses. There are announcements, discussions, assignment notifications, and conversations. This activity stream helps students and teachers to stay on top of what is going on in the course and allows them to easily ask questions and post to discussion forums. You can view the details of each section by hovering in the section area and clicking the Show More button.

Click the Canvas logo in the Global Navigation to return to your Dashboard.