Canvas LMS Tips

Strategies for creating engaging and meaningful online learning experiences using Instructure's Canvas LMS

Make the Canvas Syllabus Page Your Start Page

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Consider making Canvas’ Syllabus page your course start page. See my post on creating a start page for details on how a start page works.

The Syllabus has its own dedicated link in course navigation, making it easy for students to refer to.

A useful feature on the Syllabus page is the table of assignments that appears at the bottom of the page. This outline is automatically created and updated as you create and update events and assignments in your course. All events and assignment due dates appear in chronological order, making it easy for students to see which event or assignment comes next.

The assignment table shows the title and due date of each assignment. If you need more information in your course schedule, I’d suggest you avoid using the Syllabus page altogether: the assignment table cannot be removed from the page and it would be confusing for students to see two lists of assignments on the same page.

I highly recommend that all of your course activities be either events or assignments so they appear in the syllabus page. It will automatically update whenever you make changes to assignments or due dates. See my post on creating events and assignments for more reasons why making all of your activities either events or assignments is a good idea.

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Create a Course Start Page to Orient Your Learners

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I highly recommend that you include a start page in each of your courses to orient new learners to each course.

The start page is a special content page you create yourself, designed to be the first page new students visit after the home page. The start page makes clear what students are to accomplish over the duration of the course and how they will get there. It’s also the first opportunity for you to personally engage with your learners, to create a connection with them.

The start page fulfills the role of the syllabus in that it provides the important details about the course including contact information, prerequisites, goals and objectives, required materials, schedule, activities, assessment, as well as course and institution policies. The start page goes much farther, however, in that it allows you to provide an informal tone, rich media content, and interactivity that facilitates a conversation with your learners in a way that a syllabus cannot.

If your institution has a standard format for the course syllabus, you may not have the freedom to develop a syllabus that fully engages your students. If this is your case, I recommend that you substitute the official syllabus as required course reading with the start page. Just be sure that all of the syllabus content is in the start page. If you have the freedom to create a syllabus of your own design, however, then the start page can be the course syllabus itself!

I don’t recommend that you split the introductory course information between the syllabus and the start page, thus forcing your students to read both. It’s easier for your learners to have everything in one place, the start page, and include a link to the official syllabus on the start page just in case a student wants to refer to it.

Be sure to include enough information in the start page to make clear what they can expect from the course as well as what you expect from them. There may be a lot of content on the start page, so be sure to keep the information brief and to the point so students aren’t tempted to skim through it.

Look for my posts in the Course Expectations category for tips on elements to include in the start page.