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Student View highly impractical

Andreas_Hopf

We are an architecture, design, and engineering education, and so, Pages and Assignments are fairly elaborate, with texts, images, etc., carefully designed within the limitations of Canvas. I need to test newly designed Pages and Assignments before a course is published and well before Pages and Assignments become available to students. I also need to share the designs with co-teachers to adjust the layout, typography, etc.

Why is it not possible to preview Pages and Assignments at any time in the course design process with Student View?

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Canvas LMS

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Chris

Hi @Andreas_Hopf,

I'm curious at what kind of design elements you're using that you think would render differently in student view than teacher view. I' always careful about making blanket statements, but when talking about page/assignment content, the rendering of that content shouldn't really change based on the user's role. The couple exceptions that come to my mind are that a teacher may have a sidebar that student's don't (but HTML should generally be responsive, so that shouldn't matter much) or that images are being stored somewhere the teacher can access but the student can't and you're trying to use student view to test that.

I guess I'd say there's a fine line with what users really want to test with student view. Previewing what content would look like is on thing (sounds like what you'd prefer), but at the same time teachers often want/need to test out access rules, dates, etc which is likely why student view was designed as it is, a pretty true representation (again with a few caveats) of what a student would see in the course on that day.

I saw a few screenshots somewhere recently, I think related to the new Block Editor that Instructure is developing, where content could be previewed in desktop/mobile view and also in light/dark mode. That may b exactly what you're looking for, but I'm not sure if that kind of preview will only be available in the block editor or for regular RCE content too (or if/when it'll become available to production users).

If you could maybe give more info on the differences you're trying to test for between teacher and student view, someone may be able to give some advice on the best approach to take.

-Chris

Andreas_Hopf

It looks different, especially when you need to design with HTML tricks, because Canvas lacks many features to produce good looking Pages and Assignments. That in 2026 Canvas has no straightforward "simulation" view (like Wordpress with laptop, tablet, mobile previews as a bonus) that also other teachers can't take a peek at, is just plain bizarre. I'd have to change the course start and item available date and publish items - just for a simple preview? I can't even include a preview link here for sharing a typical Page or Assignment. Instead, I have to piece screenshots together as if it's 1993. This is not a fine line between anything, but shoddy UI/UX.

leward

I can see both perspectives. On the one hand, the current behavior helps instructors know which content is visible or hidden from students based on publication status, which can be important. But being able to preview any item in the course as a student, even when it is not published is equally important.

Andreas_Hopf

It is indeed very important. How can one properly design compelling content if one can neither easily preview or share it for a design review?

adam_c_voyton

Couldn't you use a manually created course / testing site, or a BluePrint course with no students enrolled?

Andreas_Hopf

No idea, sounds incredibly laborious. I have to update/redesign 5 BA/MA courses every year with tons of texts, images, and videos, and my colleagues are no different. All we need is a proper preview function, standard with so many other types of services since like forever. It really can't be that hard to code for something so very basic.

adam_c_voyton

It's not that hard to use a simple workaround either.

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