In the classroom, your body language and the friendly tone of your voice help to ease any anxiety students might be feeling as they enter your classroom on that first day of the semester. Fears are calmed as you answer students' questions, clear up confusion, allow students to introduce themselves, and provide the class with instructions on what they should be doing next.

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How Do We Do This Online?

Our online students also have anxieties and questions about getting started in our course, but we aren't with our students as they login to Canvas and begin clicking around our courses. Think of your home page as your opportunity to welcome your online students and ease their anxiety by providing just enough information to get them to the next step. It's tempting to try to put everything on the home page of your course. This can overwhelm our students and create more confusion and anxiety about "where should I click next?" If we provide them concise and clear instructions then we'll reduce confusion and increase the likelihood that they'll click where we want them to.

Elements of a Home Page

The Home page is the entry point for students into our Canvas class. As the initial landing page, the Home page should include key information about the course without overwhelming viewers. Here are some elements that can be incorporated to reach the balance between "informative" and "manageable."

• Course Banner: A banner along the top of the Home page can give students a quick visual cue about the class.
• Course Summary: The instructor can provide a brief overview of the class. Rather than copying the official course description, try presenting the course information in your own words so that there's a warm and welcoming tone.
• Instructor Statement / Instructor Introduction: Instructors can include a brief introduction to humanize themselves. This introduction can include things like the instructor's background and interest in the subject, teaching philosophy, personal interests, and goals for the class.
• Instructor Contact Info: This can be a bullet-point list that includes logistics for contact (email address, Zoom link, response times, etc.).
• First Steps: This section provides students who are logging on for the first time information about first steps for the course. For example, this section could include a statement like "For our first week, please go to the Orientation module and complete the Introduction assignment."
• Recent Announcements: Instructors can toggle on announcements to appear on the Home page so that students don't need to click on the separate Announcements page. If you choose to enable this, it's encouraged to limit the number of announcements that appear on the Home page so that it doesn't get cluttered. (For instance, you can set the Home page to only show the most recent three announcements.)

Where Should Students Go Next?

This will be up to you. We recommend creating a module to organize all the preliminary resources and materials that students should know about prior to starting the course content. An orientation module is a nice "catch-all" that prevents the home page from getting cluttered with links and information, and can serve as a pre-requisite to the content module. That's how we set it up in this course, remember? We have a Deep Dive on building an orientation module, so be sure to check that out!

Changing Your Home Page

You don't have to keep the same static home page for the duration of the entire 16 week course. This might get stale after awhile. Students' needs will change, and you can update the home page to best meet those needs and freshen things up each week. This can be an effective way to catch students' attention and provide navigation specific to that week's instruction. Just be careful to not change things up so much that students become disoriented and need to relearn how to navigate your course.