Homepage

Use a Home Page to help "brand" your course, providing students with a visual and thematic way to connect with course content.

Teach Nursing? Fire Science? Sociology? Real Estate? Like a magazine cover, your Home Page can create interest and lure students into your course through enticing visuals, commentary, or even audio clips and videos that personally connect them to the course. That's why web designers call the home page of a web site the "splash" page: it makes an instant impact with students. Consider putting together a Home page that helps tie your class together.

Savvy instructors even like to change their Home Page on a regular basis. Starting a new unit or theme in the course? Want to point students towards a specific Module or Activity? This is where you can provide direct links to usher students to the activities at hand.

Why Create a Home Page?
Step 1: Create a Front Page in Pages
Step 2: Set your Home Page
Rotate Home Pages

At the start of the term, it's important to help students get familiar with course basics.

The Front page is a perfect place to provide students with the course need-to-know info. The SWC Course Template in Canvas Commons provides a boiler plate course and Front page.

home page - annotated by content.png

Common information to include on your start-of-term Front page includes:

Course name, number, and section
Course description
Instructor info
Helpful resources
Images/photos to brand the course
Links to course content
Welcome info from the instructor to the students

Tip! Students also love to see a welcome video from the instructor! If you're new to video, the OLC can assist you: 619.482.6595.

Step 1: Create a Front Page in Pages

Create a New Page in Pages
Click on the gear for your Page to view the pop-up menu
* Make sure your Page is published
Select “Use as Front Page”
A gray "Front Page" stamp will mark your Front Page

Step 2: Set your Home Page

With your Front Page set in Pages, you can then direct Canvas where to open your course each time students log in.

Click on the Home link in your Course Menu

Select "Choose Home Page" on the right side of the screen
This will bring up a pop-up menu where you can select "Pages"
The system will automatically use the Front Page you selected in Step 1

choose home page menu.JPG

Think of a newspaper or web site front page: it's constantly being refreshed to pique interest and keep web traffic up.

You can do the same with your Canvas Home page as well! Consider adding and rotating your course Home pages according to new themes: a new unit, new week, new topic.

Week 1 Front page: Start of term info
Week 2 Front page: Introduce new unit/topic (Chapter 1, etc.)
Week 3 Front page: Switch to next topic in unit (Chapter 2, etc.)
Week 4 Front page: Preview of unit exam (Chapters 1 & 2)
Week 5 Front page: Begin new unit (Chapter 3)

This is especially helpful for students in fully online classes.

Simply change the Front Page from one page to another in Pages to debut a new Home Page to your students on an ongoing basis.

use a front page button

Before you click "Next," please work through all the tabbed sections on this page.