Canvas To Do List, Calendar, & Canvas Notification Preferences for Students

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• To Do List 
• Canvas Calendar 
• Notification Preferences in Canvas 

To Do List 

Once inside Canvas and after clicking on the “Dashboard” icon on the left-hand side, students will see their courses in a card format and a sidebar on the right with information. The sidebar shows various action items in all your courses and is named the To Do List. These items include assignments and events in your Canvas sites. You can click on a To Do List item to open it.  

• The To Do List shows up to seven items with due dates or event dates in the upcoming weeks, including ungraded quizzes, assignments that do not require a Canvas submission, and course announcements.
• Assignments submitted through Canvas disappear automatically from the To Do List after they are submitted or remain on the To List for four weeks after the due date. 
• Assignments that are not graded or do not require an online submission only display until the due date.  
• No-submission assignments (submitted on paper/in class) can only be removed from the list manually. To remove a To Do item, click the X icon to the right of the item. 

Important Note: 

The Canvas Calendar will show all of your current courses that have Canvas sites. To help manage your Calendars, courses customized in the courses drop-down menu as a favorite course will always be listed at the top of your Calendar list in the Calendar sidebar. By default, the Calendar displays a maximum of 10 course Calendars. You can toggle which courses appear in the Calendar by selecting the box to the right of the Calendar grid.

Instructors may choose to set up appointment times in the Canvas Calendar to meet with them, to learn more about signing up for appointment times in Canvas please see our Appointment groups page.

For more information about the Canvas Calendar, please refer to How do I use the Calendar as a student? 

Notification Preferences in Canvas 

To make sure you are not missing any important announcements in your Canvas courses, please set up your notification preferences. It is very important to add and confirm your contact methods as well. 

Important Note:

• Unregistered contact methods will appear in notification settings but will not receive notifications until you confirm the registration. 

For more information, please refer to How do I manage my Canvas notification settings as a student?

If you need assistance with any of the topics above, please reach out to us at online-learning-help@sas.upenn.edu