[ARCHIVED] Using Canvas as Web Site

[lhenson]

We are finishing Year 1 with Canvas and I want to make it more of a 'One Stop Shopping Trip' for our teachers.  I decided to create a course and enroll all of our teachers in it as students.  I have posted several pieces of information in modules (organized by topic), but it is getting a little overwhelming (at least to me).  Has anyone found a better way to organize information inside of a Canvas Course when there is alot of information?  I have thought about going back to adding it to an actual website and linking it in Canvas, but the idea is to get them interacting with Canvas directly and learning how it functions a little better.  Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

[KristinL]

Hi Leslie - We did this our first year also. We used modules to organize the bulk of the information, but we also designed the front page as a "home page" with buttons. That way, teachers could choose which style of navigation worked best for them. If items had due dates, we were able to communicate that through calendar events. I think hosting in Canvas is a great idea! Anything that encourages teachers to use Canvas from the perspective of a student is going to be helpful.

[lhenson]

It's good to know that I am on the right track.  I did exactly that - there is a Home Page which has links to each of the modules.  It just is a little overwhelming once on the Modules section.  Thanks for the info.

[jhough]

We have worked at linking to specific pages within the course. Users may never even seen the monster that is our modules! Lol

[joy_duncan]

Jennifer, I have 2 schools and set them up 2 different ways: linking homepage to modules and linking homepage to pages. Can you share a screenshot of what your "pages" then look like? Thank you!!

[jhough]

Here's a screenshot of our PD course. Each of the images with blue text is a link to a separate class that we are offering. For the course, each class is it's own Module. So, when a teacher clicks on the Apple Teacher, for example, they are taken to the first page of the Apple Teacher module. Then, on that page, there are links to the other module pieces. 

Here's the first page of the Apple Teacher Module. You see the links on the page, which link to the other content in the Module.

[kona]

 @lhenson ​ , we do something with links on the Home page (see image below) and it seems to work pretty well. We've been doing it this way since 2013 and faculty indicate (in our training and satisfaction surveys) that things are set-up and work ok for them.

[lhenson]

Thanks for sharing.  This looks like an awesome course.  Everything you wanted to know about Canvas and how to use it in your classroom!  I wish I had time to create something like this for our teachers, especially new to the district.  Maybe over the summer?!

[kona]

We share...

I'm trying to finish up our updated version for faculty (new UI stuff), but once it's done I'm publishing it to Commons and sharing it for anyone to use.

[lhenson]

Oh my gosh! You are awesome.  Thank you so much.  I look forward to seeing it.

[clong]

Yeah, this looks great Kona. Please let us know when you post it to commons.

via GIPHY

[ghill]

Yes Please! That looks like just the wheel I would like to create

Thanks in advance,

Greg

[jhough]

Many of us have also started doing buttons that link to other places. That way, the home screen stays clean and the same, but the information can change and grow in the background.

[hochmucr]

We have just started building our Faculty site inside of Canvas - for the same reason to get the faculty more engaged with Canvas rather than send them elsewhere. I built a tab page as the home page, with the first tab being an introduction to building your Canvas course, the second being an embedded school master calendar from Google and the third being a set of interesting links to help blogs for Canvas, Google and You-Tube playlists on Canvas.