[Pages] Dynamic Home Page Content Based on Date

[msgarcia]

The home pages are a critical part of any course as they offer students guidance on where to begin when they first log in to a course. For many of our faculty, these pages serve a very specific purpose during the beginning of the semester, but, once students have familiarized themselves with the content of the course, the content on this page is then deprecated. At that point, faculty may change the page/content that they have set as the Home page.

Many of our instructors do things like this:

Timeframe	Home Page
First week to two weeks of courses	"Welcome" page or "Start Here" page or "Syllabus" page
Remaining weeks of semester	Modules page

My idea is to give instructors the option to set multiple pages in their course that would act as the Home page, and set dates for when each of those pages would become the Home Page. This automation would make it so that Instructors could make their courses somewhat responsive to the timeframe of the semester.

If only one Home page was specified, then the default state of the home page would be set for the entirety of the course.

However, if the instructor sets multiple pages as the home page, then he or she must dictate timeframes for each page, with the first page having a starting date that matches the date of the creation of the course, and the last page having no ending date, and being the page that would exist permanently for the duration of the course. Below is an example of the start and end dates for a collection of home pages in this proposed structure:

Home Page	Start Date	End Date
Syllabus Page	Start of course	08/14/17
Exam I Main Page (First page of Exam I Module)	08/15/17	09/15/17
Exam II Main Page (First page of Exam II Module)	09/16/17	10/16/17
Exam III Main Page (First page of Exam III Module)	10/17/17	11/17/17
Final Exam Main Page (First page of Final Exam Module)	11/18/17	End of course

I know that this would require a lot of modifications to the way that Canvas handles home pages, but it would make the courses far more dynamic and versatile, with little need for manual manipulation by instructors beyond the starting date of classes.

[KyleReynolds]

My school uses "pages" to give our daily lessons, but there is no easy way for students to find the current page each day.  Could Canvas have a "current lesson" button or something similar that could direct students to a certain page?  We use our "Home" page to feature the syllabus and other relevant course materials, so there is no easy way to link to the "page" that features the plan for the day.  Currently, some teachers make an "announcement" for each class with a link to a page, but it is clumsy to set up daily and the students are often confused by the "Announcement" heading and don't think to look for a link to the current lesson in that spot.  Thanks for considering!

[KyleReynolds]

Anyone else looking for an easier way to direct students to daily pages that change?

[dspiel]

This seems like a no-brainer and truthfully shouldn't be that difficult to implement by just having a means of setting a date on a page when it becomes active as the "Use as front page" to rotate them whenever needed through the quarter/semester.  Possibly even having an option of a Set Page dates under the dots similar to how you can do with assignments as well.