Can I create a personal course as home page that links to other courses?

[misty_gatlin]

I've searched to see if this question has already been asked, but I haven't found anything. I have many different courses because of the type of campus I'm on. That means I have so many options to search through to find a particular course, and I can't put them in the order I would like.  I need something more organized.

I've created a class called "Gatlin Home" where I am the only one who will be in the course. I've created tabs for each type of course (Spanish, English, Creative Writing, Staff). In each tab, I've created buttons for each course I teach that belongs in each tab (Spanish 1A, Spanish 1B, Spanish 2A. . . ) 

I would like to create a link that will take me to the home page of the particular course, but I'm not sure if that's possible. There's not a link on the menu that leads me to a different course, so my next step is to try to add the url into the link box to see if that might work. I'm just wondering if there's something easier. I can do, or is this even possible?

Thanks in advance! hope I made sense

[Stef_retired]

 @misty_gatlin , for those of us who have the ability to create a new course (not every institution enables this option for teachers), your approach makes a considerable amount of sense. Canvas doesn't have a built-in way to drop links to courses into courses, so creating links by harvesting the URLs to the courses, and creating them as links in a content page as (I think) you have been doing, is a fine way to accomplish this.

Just so that I fully understand what you're doing, do you mean that you're creating navigation links for content pages representing categories in the left menu using the Redirect LTI, and then organizing the courses into each of those content pages? Or are you creating a tabbed interface on a single page and putting the links to the courses themselves in their respective tabs? I can see either of these approaches working.

Also, I've changed the format of your post to a discussion, rather than a closed-end question that implies that there will be a single uniquely correct response, as I suspect others might contribute some creative organizational suggestions.

[misty_gatlin]

stefaniesanders​

I think what I'm doing is kind of a combination of your first and second options.  Here is a screen shot if that helps.

I currently have master courses because we just implemented Canvas about 2 months ago, and I'm working on the courses constantly and kept having kids click to complete assignments that weren't ready to be used, and it just got very confusing. Right now I'm working solely in the MASTER courses I created until things are ready to be used and moved to the courses that currently have students in them.

Hopefully that helps. This is just going to make things much easier. Here are 2 screen shots of 2 courses. I just did this super fast, so I'm not certain this is how it will look, but it's a start.

[Stef_retired]

This looks great, and thanks for sharing! By the way, what application did you use to create those elegant buttons?

[misty_gatlin]

stefaniesanders​ Thank you.

I actually created the buttons myself through power point and then saved as a picture. I don't like text everywhere, and I really dislike the navigation menu Canvas has, so from the very beginning I started creating navigation buttons for my students. I must admit, I'm a bit OCD as well and want everything to look a certain way.

[misty_gatlin]

stefaniesanders​ OH I also set it up to where this Home Page is what opens up when I first open Chrome. I also set it up so the links will open in a new tab. That way this home page will always stay up.

[lane_worrall]

Thanks for sharing this  @misty_gatlin ​--this is a great idea for those of us with oodles of courses!

Re: stefaniesanders​ question about the buttons, I've used Dabuttonfactory before and that's pretty easy--although I will say that the buttons are not quite as nice as  @misty_gatlin ​!

Also,  @josh_emmitt ​ shared some of his course buttons and the pptx template he used to create:  Creating a "button" oriented syllabus page

[misty_gatlin]

 @lane_worrall ​ and stefaniesanders​ You literally can use anything to make a button. You can use an image, shape, word . . . just add a link to it.

[Stef_retired]

Yup, I know,  @misty_gatlin  (and I have made some strange things "clickable" in my courses, more for my own amusement than anything else)--it was just those particular buttons I was curious about. :smileylaugh:

[Chris_Hofer]

This is awesome!  I like the layout with the tabs and then essentially embedding buttons in each to get to the course you need.  Have you thought about setting up something similar as bookmarks in your favorite web browser of choice?  What you could do is create folders for each subject, "SPANISH", "ENGLISH", etc., and then you could bookmark the home pages for each course in each of those folders.  Once you're logged in to one course, you shouldn't have to log in again...as long as you have your school's Canvas instance open in a window.

[misty_gatlin]

 @Chris_Hofer ​ I'm not 100% certain I know what you're saying, but I have it set up so that when I open Google Chrome, my home page is this new homepage. That way I don't have to search for any of my courses, and I'm having to get into several of them throughout each hour of the day. Keeping this page open will save me a lot of time.

Is that kind of what you meant?

[Chris_Hofer]

Hi  @misty_gatlin ​...

Sort of...not exactly.  Check out this screenshot.  I created folders in my "Bookmarks" menu...one for "ENGLISH" and another for "SPANISH".  Then I put some random website links in there to use as examples.  So, if I wanted to go to Yahoo's home page, I just go to "Bookmarks" >> "ENGLISH" >> "Yahoo".  The same could apply to your courses.

[misty_gatlin]

Oh I see. I think that might end up being a little more difficult for me than what Canvas offers that I've been doing. I have too many courses, and if you could see my bookmarks right now. :smileylaugh::smileyshocked: It's a scary place to venture.

However, for someone who doesn't have many courses and doesn't want to leave their Canvas page opened, you could do exactly what you're saying but add it to your bookmarks bar. That's where I keep everything I use regularly, and I could see that being incredibly beneficial.

[Shar]

I also like  @misty_gatlin ​ Courses Portal method since  she could theoretically log in from anywhere, someone else's computer, and still have access to all her courses in an instant. The only drawback will be in maintaining the live courses as they change, but if it's only once a year that makes it a wonderful time to review all the course links.

And I love your buttons, I use PowerPoint the same way as well to create quick graphics the way I want them to look. Your buttons are great especially since you can get double-line text on them.

Cheers - Shar

[misty_gatlin]

Thank you ishar-uw​ . I will not always have separate live and master classes.  We had our first introduction to Canvas in January, and I could see immediate benefits of using it in my classes, so I've been working little by little to add things. Most of the things I add will be during the summer, and then I'll use my master classes as my live classes.  My campus is very different where everyone works at their own pace, so it was getting confusing to add assignments to a live class, and when I published or imported something already published, students started clicking to do them even though they weren't for them, and it just became a mess. I needed another area to work and make it much less confusing - although I'm thinking it might sound confusing who aren't familiar with this type of setting.

[jamely]

Really cool hack to adapt Canvas to your own uses. Thanks for sharing this 😜 I hope I never teach that many courses at a time :smileyshocked:, but if I did, I would totally do this!

[misty_gatlin]

 @jamely ​ Thanks. I don't even have the Credit Recovery courses or English 1, 2, 3 (A & B for each), but I rarely ever teach those courses. I am definitely kept constantly busy. . . especially when we do not have a planning period. :smileyshocked: I love it though!

[kona]

 @misty_gatlin ​, yes, it makes perfect sense and is a cool idea for someone with a huge number of courses being taught each semester.

If you get the URL for the home page of each of your courses and add it as a link in your "Gatlin Home" course then yes, it will take you directly to the course home page for each course. And no, there's not an easier way to do this.

[misty_gatlin]

Thank you. I believe you and I posted at the same time. I did that, and it seems to work. This will be so much better than what I've been having to do. Thank you again!

[misty_gatlin]

OKay I believe I answered my own question. I just used it as an outside link and also set it up to open in a new tab. Fingers crossed this works.

[kona]

Yes, it will definitely work because you have access to both courses. The only way this wouldn't work is if you had someone else trying to use what you created and they didn't have access to all of your courses. In that case they'd get an error message saying they can't access the content because they weren't a member of the course.

[misty_gatlin]

Well it was good while it lasted (about a week). I opened up this morning to see this, but my English buttons are all working. Not sure what's going on??

:smileyconfused:

Does anyone know what could be the cause?

[jamely]

It looks like all of your button image links are broken. Did you save the button image files into your Canvas file for this holder course and then link from those images? Or did you happen to use the generated image (hosted on the server that you designed the button on) html link? If you did that, the image might have expired on the button maker server. In that case, you would have to go and make them all again and this time download the image and then upload into your Canvas files, and then embed and link the button image again 😜

[misty_gatlin]

 @jamely ​ Thank you for your response. I did save the button images to my Canvas files. They are saved along with the English buttons, which are not broken and are working perfectly fine. I did both of those sections exact, so I would think if Spanish wasn't working, then English wouldn't be either or vice-versa.

They are all uploaded as files in this Canvas course, and I've attached a link to my other Canvas courses from them. They worked all last week, but this morning the Spanish only were all broken.

[jamely]

Without looking at the code (and even then) I can't guess what happened. Do the links still work, just not the images? Just gotta love those annoying bugs;p (smoouusch)!

[syeo]

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