Generating a Table of Contents in Pages

wyelearning
Community Participant

We've released a free extension to Canvas that allows you to automatically generate a table of contents for larger pages in Canvas. The Table of Content app is available in the Edu App Center. It is launched from the Apps button in the Rich Text Editor anywhere in Canvas and will look for all level 2 and 3 headings in the text and then build a clickable table of contents that can be inserted into the page. Here's a short YouTube video of it in action (showing a table of contents being generated and then removed):

There are a couple of options when using the App:

  • Add "Back to Top" links next to each heading in the document to allow readers to easily jump back to the contents.
  • Make the table of contents "Collapsible" so that when the back loads it doesn't take up the first screen of contents.

If you subsequently update your page (to add, remove or rename headings) you can re-run the App and it will allow you to update the table of contents. If you decide you don't want to have the table of contents any more the App can also be used to remove all the inserted content from the page.

Currently it doesn't support other languages than English but if you insert a table of contents and change the words "Table of Contents" to something else that change should persist through updates.

The App runs in anonymous mode and doesn't get any personal details of anyone using it. The table of contents that is generated is returned to Canvas so if the App was removed from your Canvas instance all existing content would continue to work and it would just be the ability to add/update/remove them that was lost.

We hope you find it useful and if you have further suggestions for improvements do let us know.

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