New Courses App for Students Coming this Fall

Tue July 16, 2019

This August, students will be able to add the new Courses app within the MyUW portal, which will provide easy access to information about current and past courses. This will include course descriptions, textbooks and materials needed, schedule and location information, access to final grades, and a link to the Canvas course site if the course instructor is using Canvas. 

Learn@UW-Madison worked with MyUW-Madison Academic Application Development (MUMAA) and the Center for Digital Accessibility and User Experience to develop the new app. During the fall semester, the teams will continue to iterate the app before announcing it to campus in the spring. 

In preparation of the new app, Learn@UW-Madison assessed the current landscape of websites and dashboards with the goal of streamlining access to courses. As part of this, campus decided to decommission the Course Dashboard (coursedashboard.learnuw.wisc.edu) on July 30, 2019. 

The Course Dashboard was originally launched in February 2015 to provide students one site to access their courses no matter if their instructor used D2L, Moodle or Canvas. Now that campus has successfully transitioned to Canvas as the sole, centrally-supported learning management system, the dashboard is no longer needed. Instructors, staff and students can view courses by logging into Canvas at canvas.wisc.edu. 

The Learn@UW-Madison team asks partners to review their own materials and make any necessary updates. For instance, some groups provide specific instructions for their learners to access a Canvas course through the Course Dashboard. This is common among online training courses and will need to be updated to direct learners to Canvas.

In addition, the old Learn@UW-Madison website (learnuw.wisc.edu) will also be decommissioned on July 30, 2019. Information including key features, instructional uses and links to additional resources are available on the DoIT AT website for each of the Learn@UW learning technologies. Those are:

The “What learning technologies are available on campus?” guide provides more information on Learn@UW tools as well as other centrally supported and vetted tools not part of the Learn@UW suite. Our learning technology consultants are happy to help you choose the best tool to fit your need and start using it to improve student success. Instructors and instructional staff can request a consultation through the DoIT Help Desk.