You can view a course the same way that your students view your course through Student View. Enabling Student View creates a Test Student in your course.

To see the student's perspective on Canvas, use Student View to:

View the course - make sure everything published and is displaying correctly
Post and reply to discussions
View and Submit assignments
View and Take Quizzes
View grades
View people
View pages
View the syllabus
View the calendar

You can reset Test Student data at any time; however, Test Student activity that involves interactions with other students cannot be removed, such as discussion replies.

Quick Start: Enable Student View

To view your class from your students' point of view, look for the Student View button (glasses icon) throughout your course. Your view will begin at the location the icon was clicked.

open student view.png

The screen will be outlined in bright pink and you will now see what your course looks like to a typical student who is enrolled in your class.

Test Student is automatically enrolled in your gradebook
Use it to be sure your course is just the way you want/need it
Double check that everything is published and available
Participate in your course as Test Student to verify Canvas functionality
Submit work as Test Student to have student submissions to test Canvas grading options
Reset Student when you need to clear out test student data and start over

When you are finished viewing the course as a student, click on Leave Student View at the bottom of the pink window.

👉 Heads Up!

If your course is still unpublished, your students will not see anything. The Student View shows you what your students will see once your course is published. Unpublished images will appear as a large grey padlock.

padlock image

🤿 Deeper Dive Guide

How do I enable Student View?