Instructional Design If You Do Nothing Else in Canvas...

This page focuses on the most basic pedagogical elements in an online classroom environment. Whether you teach face-to-face, fully online, or anywhere in between, these are the three things every Canvas course should have to set your students up for success.

Students First!

Set a Home Page

Think of your Home page as how you welcome students into a course. It sets the tone for how they will interact in this online environment. You have several options for your Home page, so you can select the one that best fits with how you want your students to use the Canvas environment for your course.

"Choose Home Page" option in the Sidebar and it's pop-up are surrounded by UNC-Persimmon border in Course View.

The "If you do nothing else in Canvas..." video demonstrates how to choose your home page, or you can use these guides to walk you through the steps:

Post Your Syllabus

Posting your syllabus in Canvas makes it always available to students. Not only does this support students' self reliance, but it saves you time from emailing, copying, and managing students' access to the syllabus.

Screenshot of syllabus page with a persimmon box around the posted syllabus file.

The "If you do nothing else in Canvas..." video demonstrates how to post your syllabus, or you can use these guides to walk you through the steps:

Provide a "Start Here" Module

Providing students with access to technical and support resources is a critical element of equity and inclusion.

You can create a module full of resources yourself, but IDD has gathered some of the most commonly used resources for you to use and customize.

Start Here module is surrounded by UNC-Persimmon border in Course View.

You can download the Student Start Here module from Commons. Keywords: #UNCO_LE@RN #StartHere

How do I use Commons?

Video: If you do nothing else in Canvas...

Reflection - Part II Complete

You should now be ready to go into your own Canvas account and try out these tasks for yourself while they are still fresh in your mind.

Navigate throughout your course (Review: Your Canvas Course)
Set a Home page and post your Syllabus (Review: current page)
Know where to import a "Start Here" module (Review: current page)

When you are ready to move on, we will look at a specific Canvas course and how you can create and organize content and facilitate Student-Content engagement.

Learning Target

Identify the integrated tools that are available through Canvas.

Select the appropriate tools to use in Canvas.