Organize for your modality

Home / Canvas guides / Build content

Canvas guide · Build content

Organize for your modality

Choose how to organize your course based on how you teach it.

The single biggest structural choice in your Canvas course is how you organize it. Your teaching modality is the deciding factor. By teaching modality we mean how the course is delivered: in person, online synchronous (you meet live online), online asynchronous (no set meeting time), or hybrid (a mix). That delivery mode changes where students go looking for things, so it should change how you organize the digital materials. Get this match right and students stop asking where things are.

Modality note

Backward design is modality-agnostic; organization is not. Match the structure to how your students look for things.

Online / asynchronousEach unit holds everything for that unit (readings, media, discussion, and its tests and assignments), so students move through one self-contained package at a time.
In-person / synchronousGive assignments, tests, and readings their own clearly named places. Live students tend to look by type, so a week-by-week chronology can bury what they need.

Hybrid courses lead with whichever pattern matches where students do the finding, often by content type for the in-person spine with units for the online portions. Whatever you choose, be consistent and label clearly.

Related guides

Build with Modules and PagesPace with requirements and prerequisites