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Canvas - Course Home Page and Announcements
The Universities of Wisconsin (except for UW-Madison) Canvas course design standards controls Canvas Home page navigation, including how course announcements are displayed. This document clarifies which options/settings are fixed (the same for all courses) and which are flexible (can be changed at the course level).
The Home Page
The Course Home Page is the first page students see when they open a course in Canvas. The Home Page provides students with a consistent and familiar user experience when accessing a course so they can easily navigate to course resources and tools. All for-credit courses offered through Universities of Wisconsin institutions (except UW-Madison) have the Home Page set up to display recent Announcements and Modules.
Why is the Home page a fixed item always set to Modules? The initial design of the Digital Learning Environment (DLE) was informed by extensive, multi-year stakeholder engagement across all UW System institutions through the 1) 2014 UW System Roadmap Project, 2) the 2015 LENA Project, 3) a rigorous teaching and learning technology requirements gathering process in 2016, 4) a Request for Proposal (RFP) for a Digital Learning Environment (DLE), and 5) DLE Implementation Workstreams including the Course Template workstream.
Stakeholder engagement yielded rich feedback from students, instructors and staff. In particular, students clearly articulated that having a non-standard entry into the learning management system was confusing and frustrating when trying to find materials, navigate the course, and knowing what was expected of them. As a result, one of the core principles of the DLE is to ensure that the technology does not get in the way of student success. A standard approach to the course home page ensures students have easy and consistent navigation within their Canvas courses, regardless of which institution offers the course. The DLE is designed to support student access by creating consistency among UWS institutions and yet have flexibility to meet institutional needs.
Where Announcements Appear
Within a Canvas course, announcements appear in two places.
- Home: The Course Home Page will always display a preview of your most recent announcements. Typically this means the most recent 3 announcements, but as a teacher, you are able to adjust this number between 1 and 15.
- Announcements: When left enabled, the Announcements page allows students to view and filter course announcements. Students can go back and look at any previous announcements from earlier in a course. If you wish to turn off the Announcements page, go to course Settings, then the navigation tab, and drag Announcements into the list of disabled and hidden items.
What Course Elements are "Fixed" and Why
The Home page is fixed to always display course modules and at least one announcement. In an effort to provide students as consistent of an experience as possible across courses and campuses, the Universities of Wisconsin has opted to lock Modules as the display option on the Course Home Page. This decision is based on feedback from students about the ease of use in quickly accessing course content through the Home Page.
Announcements are fixed to always appear on the Home page. In an effort to provide students as consistent of an experience as possible across courses and campuses, Universities of Wisconsin has locked Announcements to always display on the Course Home Page. This decision arose from best practices of prominent forward-facing announcements paired with a desire to provide a consistent student experience.