Better Course Pages from the Awesome Canvas Community!

The Canvas Community is a place you can find answers, join groups and share ideas with others using the Canvas LMS.  The link to the community is located in Canvas on the global navigation bar under Help > Ask the Community.

As an example of what is available in the community, there is a “2020 Course Design Essentials” group made up of members from Instructure’s Instructional Design Team. On the first launch of their blog in January 2020, they provided free home page button images you can use in your course.  Their February 2020 post discusses Accessibility Clips, Tips & Tricks. In this post, a link is provided to a document with recommendations and resources to meeting accessibility in your Canvas course. This document provides a recommendation to not use tables for home pages:

Recommendation

Do not use tables for layout design. There are two reasons many designers use tables in a course: 1) to display data, and 2) for layout design. Screen readers treat layout tables and data tables very differently. Though it is possible to make a layout table accessible, it usually takes additional knowledge and training. For this reason, we recommend that those without requisite training only use tables to display data in Canvas. 

Combining the two blogs, the CET has created a page in The Exchange course utilizing a flexible grid instead of a table and the free images.  You can find more information about using the flex grid in the Canvas community at Flex grid tips. Matt Hanes is using an example of a grid that is three columns without images, the page in The Exchange has been modified to four columns and includes images.  See the flex!  The page has student access to edit the page, to allow you to copy the HTML code.  Don’t worry about making an error, we have a copy!

To create your images, use these image sizes in pixels:
Full image size: 175 x 200
Top image: 175 x 140
Text image: 175 x 60

You can follow people, places, or content in the Canvas Community. Comment below on how you are designing home pages without tables and/or about your experience using the Canvas Community.