As an Observer in Canvas, there are a couple different places that you can check to see what you student needs to do each day. This article will walk you through each option.
Home pages
The best place to get a complete list of everything that your student needs to be doing for a course on any given day, is that course's "Home Page." If you select a course on your Canvas dashboard, you will immediately be taken to that course's "Home Page." This page will include a tab for each day of the week that lists any assignments or tasks your student should complete for that day. Home pages are the only place to see a complete list of daily tasks for any given course, as any tasks that do not have an associated page or assignment in Canvas will be listed here. If you want a complete list of what your student should do on any given day, you should check the home page for each of your student's courses.
The "Grades" section
In any of your student's courses you can click "Grades" on the left to see a complete list of all upcoming and past graded assignments in that course. This is a great place to see if your student has missed any work, or if they have any unfinished assignments due soon. Clicking on an assignment on this page will take you to your student's submission for the assignment. To view the assignment itself, click "Assignments" on the left, and navigate to the same assignment. The following guide walks through how to access and navigate the "Grades" section in your observer account:
How do I see my observed student’s course grades?
Other places to check assignments that are due:
There are a couple other places in canvas you can check to see upcoming assignments across multiple classes. These can be convenient resources, but do not function as complete lists of everything that your student needs to do. For that, you should check the home page, or grades section in a course.
Upcoming assignments on the Dashboard
On the right hand side of your dashboard, there is a section labeled Coming Up that shows all the soon to be due items for your student. This will update automatically with the most recent assignments.
The Calendar
In the calendar, you can view a similar To-Do list type view by clicking the Agenda icon in the top right. Alternatively, you can cycle between the weekly or monthly view as well. We recommend just viewing the calendars you'll need to view as they can get overwhelming if there are too many calendars checked off. Items in the weekly view will more than likely be at the bottom of the screen -- the default due time for an assignment is 11:59 PM.
In the Canvas Parent mobile app
If you are using the Canvas Parent app on your phone or tablet, you can check to-do dates under the calendar. This will show all assignments, quizzes, and discussions that are due for the selected date. You can get to this view by pushing the Calendar button along the bottom of the screen within the app.
For more information on installing the mobile app, check out this article:
How do I access the Canvas Parent App?
Need some help?
You can check out our Observer Day in the Life course for a more in depth look into Observer Accounts.
If you're not able to see certain things or the above are not working for you, don't hesitate to get in touch with our support team!