Create A Dynamic Home Page

Last updated on May 23, 2023

“You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.” We’ve heard this saying time and time again, but isn’t that the point of a book cover? First impressions matter whether you’re choosing a new book or signing in to an online course for the first time. By creating a dynamic home page, you can engage students as they enter your online class and inform them of course events throughout the semester.

The home page is the first page students will see when they enter your course. Although your course shell includes a short “Welcome!” announcement, designing a thoughtfully created home page will draw students in, encourage exploration, and inform learners of their imminent tasks. The home page includes announcements by default, but it can be tailored by adding a page with pertinent information. A few key additions to your home page personalize you as an instructor and offer an appealing, engaging environment for learners. 

Incorporating a course image and welcome video can establish the tone of your course, providing students with a glimpse of what they can expect, and at the same time, connecting with them through your presence. Furthermore, by creating a table to serve as a Week at a Glance schedule, you will ease navigation and orientation as your course proceeds, making it easier for students to find information and prioritize tasks. While the format of your home page is highly customizable to your specific needs, this spotlight will offer you a few foundational strategies to bring your home page alive.

Best Practices

Why should I use this?

• Dynamic home pages can significantly enhance student engagement in an online course. By using multimedia elements such as images, videos, and announcements, instructors can create visually appealing and interactive home pages that capture students’ attention while incorporating instructor presence.

• Creating a table to use as your Week at a Glance schedule can serve as a central hub that helps students navigate through the course materials. With this schedule, you are able to assign tasks and inform students of what they should be working on throughout a week. This is a great way to assign a project or assignment that may require ongoing work but isn’t due until a future date. 

• Creating a well-designed home page will save you time communicating with students about scheduling questions or what their tasks are for the week. Making your course easy to navigate and understand will spare you from answering these types of questions in the long run. 

• Dynamic home pages can be easily updated and modified to reflect changes in the course content or learning activities. Instructors can add or remove content, update announcements, and customize the home page layout to adapt to evolving instructional needs

How Should I Start?

• Generally, creating a dynamic home page should be done prior to the semester starting, before students enter the course. This ensures students are not confused by sweeping changes to your home page and receive a positive first impression of the class. 

• Creating pertinent announcements, adding a course image, a welcome video, and a table that serves as your Week at a Glance schedule are great places to start creating a dynamic home page. 

• Find a visually appealing and relevant course image to add to your home page. A high quality course image should be related to the course’s content as well as follow copyright laws. Try not to choose images that are overly cluttered, low image quality, or offensive. You can find unlicensed images from websites such as Pixabay, Pexels, or Unsplash.

How Do I Maintain My Homepage?

• Maintaining a homepage can be done with fairly little effort. Each week, make sure to update your course’s Week at a Glance schedule. If students should be working on a project or have a task assigned, for instance, this is a great place to let them know. 

• Create announcements for significant events, such as an exam opening, schedule change, or updates to major grades. Review the CTLD tutorial on how to create an announcement for more information.

• Canvas makes it easy to link to pages in your course. Doing so increases the ease of navigation in your course. For more information on creating links to course files using the Rich Content Editor (RCE), see the CTLD tutorial on inserting links using the RCE.

Let’s walk through it together

Directions 

Set Your Home Page

1. Go to MSU Denver’s Faculty and Staff Hub.
2. Click Canvas in the Teaching & Learning section.
3. Log in to your Canvas Account.
4. Select the Course you’d like to work in.
5. Click Pages in the course navigation menu to the left.
6. Click + Page in the top right-hand corner.
7. Enter the Page Title.
8. Scroll down to the bottom of the page.
9. Click Save and Publish.
10. Click Pages in the course navigation menu to the left.
11. Click on the 3 Vertical Dots to the right of your page title. 
12.  Select Use as Front Page from the drop down menu.
13.  Click Home in the course navigation menu to the left.
14.  Click Choose Home Page from the menu in the upper right corner.
15. Click Pages Front Page from the menu.
16. Click Save.

Add a Course Image to Your Home Page

1. Click Home in the course navigation menu to the left.
2. Click Edit beneath the announcements, next to your home page title.
3. Click the Image Button.
4. Select from the Drop-Down Menu one of the following options:
   • Upload Image: The image is located on your computer.
     1. Locate the File.
     2. Click Open.
   • Course Image: The image is already in your course files.
     1. Add menu will appear at the right.
     2. Click on the desired Image.
5. Click on the Image.
   • A blue box surrounds the image with little squares at the corner.
6. Click and drag the Blue Square at One Corner of the Image.
7. Click on the Image.
8. Click on the Options Caption that appears.
   • Image Options menu opens on the right.
9. Type Descriptive Text of the image in the Alt Text box.
   • Select Decorative Image if the image is only decorative.
10. Click Done.

Add a Welcome Video to Your Home Page

Note: These instructions are for welcome videos that were recorded in YuJa. To learn more about YuJa and embedding videos into your course, review this CTLD Spotlight on incorporating YuJa into your course. 

1. Click Home in the course navigation menu to the left.
2. Click Edit beneath the announcements, next to your home page title.
3. Click in the Main Text Box  where you want the Welcome Video recorded in YuJa to appear.
4. Click the YuJa Button from the toolbar at the top of the rich content editor box. A YuJa window will open. This is the YuJa Media Chooser.
5. Select the WelcomeVideo that you wish to embed.
   • Note: You can search for videos in your connected YuJa account by starting to type the title of the video in the search box.
6. Click Insert Content at the bottom left of the window.

Add a Table to Your Home Page to Use as a Week at a Glance Schedule

1. Click Home in the course navigation menu to the left.
2. Click Edit beneath the announcements, next to your home page title.
3. Click in the Main Text Box where you want the Week at a Glance schedule to be located.
4. Click the 3 Vertical Dots on the right side of the RCE toolbar.
5. Click the Table Icon from the drop-down menu that appears. 
6. Hover over Table at the top of the drop-down menu that appears.
7. Hover over the Cells you would like to create in the pop-up window that appears.
   • Note: This tutorial demonstrates creating a 2×7 table. 
8. Click in the Pop-out Window when you are done creating a 2×7 table. 
9. Click and drag the Divider between the left and right columns to make the left column smaller than the right. 

Make Your Week at a Glance Schedule Accessible

1. Highlight the Cells in the left column.
2. Click on the Table Icon from the drop-down menu that appears. 
3. Hover over the Cell Option in the drop-down menu that appears. 
4. Click Cell Properties.
5. Click in the Text Box for “Cell Type”.
6. Click the Header Cell option that appears in the drop-down menu. 
7. Click in the Text Box for “Scope”.
8. Click Column from the drop-down menu that appears. 
9. Click on the Three Vertical Dots to the right of the RCE toolbar. 
10. Click on the Table Icon from the drop-down menu that appears. 
11. Hover over the Cell Option in the drop-down menu that appears. 
12. Click Table Properties from the drop-down menu that appears. 
13. Click the Show Caption checkbox from the menu that appears. 
14. Click the Blocks button from the toolbar above the RCE (it may read “paragraph”.)
15. Click Heading 2 from the drop-down menu that appears.
16. Type Week at a Glance in the space that appears above your table. 

Enter Information in Your Week at a Glance Schedule

1. Type the Days of the Week in the left column.
2. Type Relevant Information about the week’s events and tasks in the cells that correspond with the day they should happen on. 
3. Link to Relevant Assignments, Quizzes, or Pages where possible.
   • Review the CTLD tutorial on inserting links using the RCE if you are unfamiliar with inserting links into a page in Canvas. 
4. Update your Week at a Glance schedule weekly to stay current with the tasks your class needs to know about.