Introduction
GLOW (Canvas) provides 5 options for faculty to choose what students see first when they enter a GLOW course. This design flexibility empowers faculty to intentionally select the most pedagogically useful starting-point for students in their specific course. The default home page in GLOW is the Syllabus option. Faculty can change this by using the Choose Home Page button, then selecting and saving their preference from the dialog box. Your department’s Academic Technology Consultant can be an excellent partner in implementing your specific pedagogical designs in the GLOW environment.
The 5 options are: Activity Stream, Front Page, Modules, Assignments List, and Syllabus.
Activity Stream
When set as the Activity Stream, the Home Page displays a dynamic list of notifications of recent activity within the course (e.g. posted Announcements, or activity in Discussions). This option may be desirable for courses where new content is posted frequently, or with an emphasis on student interactions.
Front Page
When set as the Front Page, the Home Page displays any specific Page which the faculty has tagged as “Front Page” in the Pages index. This option may be desirable for courses where the Home Page changes frequently (e.g. by week), or where the syllabus is provided as a file document (rather than the Syllabus page of GLOW).
Modules
When set as the course Modules, the Home Page displays the index of course Modules which the faculty has curated to organize and present their materials thematically. (See the GLOW Modules guide for more details.) This option may be desirable for courses making deep use of a variety of different digital resources and activities.
Assignments List
When set as the Assignments List, the Home Page displays the Assignments index (identical to clicking Assignments in the navigation: note that, by default, students view this list sorted chronologically by due date, which is not identical to the default faculty sort). This option may be desirable for courses that use few or no other types of resources than Assignments in GLOW.
Syllabus
When set as the Syllabus, the Home Page displays a special course Page which, in addition to faculty-composed content, automatically builds a dynamic Course Summary table listing chronologically all Assignments and items in the course which have a due-date. This option may be desirable for courses where the syllabus is prioritized as an important starting-point for students.
