On the 5th Day of Canvas - Link Validator

You are at your desk and it is an eLearning day and then the emails start coming in..... Your students are letting you know that some of the links in your course are not working. They either take them to the wrong content, it is a broken link, or what you linked to is no longer there.

As an instructor, you can verify links to course content throughout your course to ensure they are valid. You can check these links using the course link validator, which searches through course content and returns invalid or unresponsive course content links in both published and unpublished content. However, please note that some links flagged as unresponsive are inaccessible by Canvas servers and will still work for students.

The link validator also includes deleted links. Deleted links are links that are still in the course, but their linked content has been deleted (such as a course file or page).

In your course click Settings, then choose validate links in content.

Link Validator

Broken Links using the Link Validator

The validator displays broken links and images by item type [1]. Broken content is identified as either a link or an image [2]. Non-existent content means that the object is invalid and should be replaced [3]. Unreachable objects mean the image could not be displayed [4].

Note: Course Cards are a supported object type. Any deleted course image added from Unsplash displays as an invalid image.

Once the links have been corrected re-run the link validator to check to see if there is anything else that needs to be corrected.

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