Introduction

This page will help you customize your course home page and navigation menu to make it easier for your students to find what they are looking for.

On This Page:

Recommendations for the home page and navigation menu
View example home pages for inspiration
Create your own home page
Customize your course navigation menu

Recommendations for the home page and navigation menu

The home page and navigation menu are two important parts of your course. The home page is the first thing your students will see when they enter your course, and the navigation menu will be used each time a student enters your course. Below are some general recommendations for your home page and navigation.

NOTE: See Course Design Recommendations for additional suggestions from Penn State's LMS Interface Task Force.

Home Page Recommendations

Make your course home page a place that welcomes students
Use the home page to make it clear to students where to go and what to do first
Set one of the following as your course home page: a page, recent activity, modules, assignments list, or syllabus

Navigation Menu Recommendations

First and foremost, keep your course navigation simple, avoiding redundancy as much as possible.

For most courses, we recommend making the following links visible to students in the course menu: Home, Syllabus, Modules, and Grades
For most courses, we recommend hiding the following links from your course menu - these are all parts of the course that are useful for instructors and course builders, but aren't easy for students to navigate: Pages, Files, and Outcomes
If you use modules to organize the content and assessments in your course (as recommended previously), we recommend hiding all of the remaining links from your course menu, including: Assignments, Quizzes, Conferences, and Discussions

View example home pages for inspiration

Visit the example course home pages below to get a sense of the wide range of design options available for your home page. You can also visit the example courses on Canvas Intro & Example Course for more inspiration:

Introduction to Openness in Education (External resource)
U.S. History 2 (External resource)

Create your own home page

The home page in your course is associated with the Home link in the course navigation menu. You can select one of five different options for your home page depending on your preference. Your options include recent activity, a page, modules, assignment list, or the syllabus.

Read the following tutorial, and/or watch a short video to learn more about selecting and customizing your home page:

How do I change the course home page? (External resource)

How do I change what is displayed as the Course Home Page video, 1m 45s

Using a Custom Page as Your Home Page

If you are choosing to use a custom page as your home page, you must first select a "front page" using the steps below:

Click Pages in the course navigation menu.
Locate the page you want to set as your front page.
Click on the Settings icon to the right of the page title.
Select Use as front page.
NOTE: Only published pages can be set as the front page.

After selecting your front page, follow the steps below to complete the process of selecting your home page:

Click Home in your course menu.
Select Choose Home Page button from the Home page sidebar.
Select which option you would like to use as your home page.
Click Save.

Customize your course navigation menu

If you are using modules in your course, you may want to hide various links in your course navigation menu to avoid redundancy. Since your modules will include all relevant course pages, files, and assignments, it is a best practice to hide the separate links to those items from your navigation to simplify the navigation process for your students. Follow the steps of this tutorial to customize the visible links in your course navigation menu:

How do I reorder and hide Course Navigation links? (External resource)