Course Designations Knowledge Article

Course Designations is a tool in Webcourses that allows faculty to manage each course's designations (also called "emblems" or "badges") and choose how and where they should appear in each course. Course Designations include the following:

Quality Online Course Design
- Quality Online Course
- High Quality Online Course
- Quality Blended Course
- High Quality Blended Course
High Impact Practices
- Service Learning
- Integrative Experience
- Research Intensive
- Global Learning
Affordability Counts
The Chuck D. Dziuban Award for Excellence in Online Teaching
The Barbara Truman Award for Excellence in Blended Teaching

Accessing the Course Designations Tool

Faculty Tools

Directions regarding Faculty Tools link will be added soon.

Course Navigation

Open your course, then check the left hand navigation where the course "Settings", "Modules", and other navigation links are.

The link "Course Designations" should appear in the menu like shown below. Clicking on the text "Course Designations" will load up the tool for you to use.

UCF canvas course page with Course Designations Button Underlined

If the link is not in your navigation, follow these steps to add it.

Note: The first time you load the tool, the following message as seen below will appear, asking to authorize the tool to use Canvas API. You must click "Authorize" to allow the tool to link to your Canvas information.

Canvas course with a page and a menu in the center of page asking to authorize the API

Using the Course Designations Tool

Once you have the Course Designation tool opened up you can begin to use it. If your course has a designation assigned to it, it will be displayed as seen below:

Image of section of course designations showing all designations course has

If no designations are showing up, and you feel they should, check the troubleshooting section to help fix the issue. Below the designations there is a link which is called "Available Course Designations". This opens a drop down menu with information about all the availiable designations and links to follow up on in case you do not have the designation you were expecting.

Image of dropdown with text about designations activated with the link Avaiable Course Designations circled to show that should be clicked

Activating Designations Configuration

To set up and display the designation or designations you have on the course, you will want to ensure that the toggle for "Designations Activated" is turned on (there is a checkmark and its green) as shown below.

Image of the configuration part of Course Designations with the toggle boxed to show what to press to turn it on or off

By default it should be turned on when you use the tool, but if not and looks like this. Just click the toggle to turn it back on.

Image of the configuration part of Course Designations but now blank as toggle is off with the toggle boxed to show what to press to turn it on

You may also use this toggle to deactivate the designations if you do not want the quality designations displaying on your course for whatever reason.

Configuring Designations

Course Designations can are always displayed as a single group next to each other, and can be shown on various pages in Webcourses.

Picking Designations to Display

The first setting is the "Designations to Display" setting which is a checklist of all the designations you have obtained for the course. Any designations that are checked will be shown on the page and at the location that you configure later. At least one designation must be checked, otherwise you will get an error. If you don't want any designations to display, simply deactivate them as described in the previous section.

If two or more designations are selected, a new menu will appear allowing you to change the order by dragging the designation to the desired place. All selected designations will appear next to each other on the same page in Webcourses.

Location and Size

The next few settings as seen below determine the designations' location and style:

Display Page: Allows you to select which page will display your designations. Options include Modules, Assignments, Syllabus, Announcements, and Front Page (which is whatever page shows up when you click 'Home' in your course navigation).
Page Location: Specifies where on the page the designations are displayed. Options include Top of Page, Alongside Header, and Bottom of Page.
Size: Indicates the size that each designation's icon would display. Options are 100 pixels, 200 pixels, and 300 pixels.
Horizontal Spacing: Depending on how many designations are active, different options will display.

Image of the size and location settings to show case the settings used to change size and location of designation

Preview

As you edit the location, size, and which designations to display, a preview of what it potentially will look like on the page will be displayed below in the Preview section to allow you to get a sense of how your settings will be rendered. The preview may be slightly inaccurate, as it does not account factors such as unique course content etc.

Image of the preview section showing example to show what the section looks like

Save

Once you finish setting up how you want the designations to be displayed, you can you click the "Save Changes" button to commit the changes and have the designation or designations be displayed on the page. The Course Designation application also auto-saves as you make changes so clicking the "Save Changes" button is not required.

Image of save feature at the bottom of course designations

Clicked saved but not seeting the Designation on the page? This is a known issue that can be fixed.

Troubleshooting

This section will cover basic troubleshooting steps to help you fix issues you might run into when trying to use this tool.

Cannot Find the Link?

If you do not see the "Course Designations" link in your left-side course navigation, click on your course's "Settings," which is located in the course navigation.

UCF canvas course with menu button settings circled

Next, select the "Navigation" tab on the settings header menu.

UCF Canvas Course settings page with navigation button underlined

This displays a list of all the apps that are available for your course. The first group of options are the ones that should already appear in your course's navigation. The second group is installed, but not placed in the navigation so things don't get too cluttered. Scroll down and find "Course Designations".

If "Course Designations" is listed in the first group that you see, then it is already in your course navigation. Make note of the other options around it; it should already be on the screen.

If the "Course Designations" is in the second group (under the header "Drop items here to hide them from students"), it needs to be enabled before it will appear in your course navigation.

Canvas navigation page showing group of bars with labels saying these pages are disabled and hidden, one of which is Course Designations

To enable it, drag the "Course Designations" box into the top group (and place where you want the link to the tool to go between in the menu) or you may simply click the three dots on the right side of the "Course Designations" bar and click enable. You may then drag and drop the item to reorder it in the list.

The Course Designations bar showing the enable button menu that pops when clicking on the three dots

Make sure to click the "Save" button at the bottom to save these changes. "Course Designations" should then appear in your course navigation.

The bottom of the navigation page in settings containing save button which is circled

No Designations

If your course has not gotten any designations then the tool will look like this:

Course Designation Tool screen when no designations exist, just informational text

Because at least one designation is needed for the tool to work (and add the designation to the page) the majority of the functionality is disabled. However, there is text explaining information about all the designations one can get for the course and who to contact if you believe it is a mistake that your course does not have a designation assigned to it.

The Designation Is Not Displaying On Page

If the designations are not appearing in Webcourses after configuring them in the editor and saving, refresh your browser and they should appear.

Technical Support

If you have any additional issues, please contact Webcourses@UCF Support.