Creating an Easy, Custom Homepage for your Canvas Course

Creating an Easy, Custom Homepage for your Canvas Course

Homepages can make or break student retention and success. If students can’t figure out how to navigate at the “front door” of your course, then it’s unlikely that they will stick around for long. 

This Tech Tip is about creating an easy, custom homepage for your course using templates that have already been created and made available in Canvas Commons. 

Check out this 4 min video that takes you through the process!

Interested?  Follow the steps below to set up one of these homepages in your class today!

Step One: 

Go to your Canvas Course “Home” in a class that you will be working on and click Import from Commons on the righthand side of the screen (highlighted in red, below): 

Image of Course Home with "Import from Commons" highlighted

Step Two: 

Once in Canvas Commons, type “CSUCI HOME” in the search field and click the magnifying glass icon: 

Canvas Commons with CSUCI HOME typed into Search field

Step Three: 

There should be several choices on the screen; four of them are customizable home pages. You can open each one to see which would work for your course. Choose one by clicking on the blue Import/Download button on the righthand side of the screen: 

Highlighted Import/Download button

Step Four: 

When you click on Import/Download, a list of your Canvas courses will pop open from the right-hand side of the screen. Click on the course(s) that you want to import this homepage to and you will get a message that says, “this may take a few moments”. 

 

Step Five 

You can now return to your class, click on PAGES in the left-hand navigation menu and you should see the hompage you imported: 

Pages area of Canvas shell with newly imported customizable homepage highlighted

Click on the homepage link inside Pages and you can now start to customize it. Please see the video for ideas on how to create a homepage that fits your course’s needs. 

There are a number of these homepage options in Canvas Commons – this is just one example.  Have fun! 

Your Tech Tip Team,

-Lynn Hawley and Jenn Azzaro