T2MTU: Validate Course Links in Canvas
March 22, 2022
by Amanda Dills
It’s pretty common for links to external websites or documents in a Canvas Course – or in any website for that matter – to break over time. If you’re using a YouTube video that you have found in your course, for example, you can’t control whether or not its owner takes it down at some point, and if that happens, you will have a “broken link.” The same thing could occur if, for example, you copied a Page from one Canvas course to another, but didn’t copy the files that were linked on that page.
It will be pretty obvious to your students if you have any broken links in your course, but it can be tricky for instructors to keep up with making sure all their links are updated constantly, especially if they’re linking to a lot of external resources beyond their control.
Luckily, you can check the status of ALL the links in your course with just 2 clicks, using Canvas’s Link Validation tool, which is the topic of this week’s Tuesday 2-Minute Tune Up.
To Check all the Links in Your Canvas Course
- Go to “Settings” in the course you want to Validate.
- Click on the “Validate Links in Content” button on the right hand side of your screen.
- This will bring up a list of any potentially broken links in your course.
I am told that if you have no broken links in your course, then you will get some confetti pop up, but honestly every time I’ve ever tried this in a course, there’s been at least one broken link.
When possible, for each problematic link listed in the results, Canvas will link to the assignment or item where the broken link is located. From here you can go directly to the broken link and fix or remove it.
If you do this Link Validation process and the reports are confusing or tough to translate, then don’t hesitate to reach out to your ID3 Specialist for help.
