This article describes how instructors can customize the graphical elements of course pages including the home page that is provided in the U of A Custom Template. Custom branded graphics for individual faculties and department for this purpose have been added to the University of Alberta Canto site.
 

Accessing graphics for your course

U of A Digital + Creative has released a repository of faculty and department-specific banners and course card graphics for instructor use through the Canto digital asset management tool. Instructors can access graphics by signing in with their CCID using the option Login Using SSO:

There are 2 different resources for instructors:

• Graphics course banners for courses in Canvas
• Graphics course cards for courses in Canvas

Adding a banner

To add a U of A branded course banner, access the course banner Canto library and hover your mouse over each banner. The image will then display the name of the department or faculty for which the banner is recommended for and will display a download button near the bottom left:

Once you have downloaded a banner, go to the Home or Pages link in the left course navigation menu and click on the Edit button at the top right of the page to edit the default home page. Alternatively, click on View all pages to add the images to a different page or to create and edit a new Page:

Then to replace the home page banner click the image to select it so that it takes on a blue background, then click delete on your keyboard:

Then leaving the cursor where it is, click the Image icon, select Upload image, then drag-and-drop or browse for the downloaded graphic, and click Submit:

It is also possible to use any other images that are already in your course by selecting them from Course Images or User Images stored in your course Files folder (see below.)

Adding a new course card image

To change the image in a Dashboard course card to a different U of A branded image, access the course card library in Canto. Like the banner images above, you can hover your mouse over an image to determine the appropriate faculty or department and download it.

To change the course card, go to Settings at the bottom of the left navigation menu. At the top of the Course details tab, you can choose a new image to upload or remove an image:

Using other elements from templates

The Custom U of A Template contains a number of other graphics for instructor use in the Files area. You can scroll down through the course image files, other alternate banners, buttons, and more:

In the Icons folder, you will find more than thirty Canvas icons like these:

In addition from the buttons available under Files in the course template, you can also modify or add additional rectangular buttons (with different text) on the default Home page:

Instructions for creating new custom buttons are available from the Modules page in the "Instructor Module (Do Not Publish)' under the link 'Template: Icons, Banners, & Buttons Customization Options':

Scroll down to 'Customizable Home Page Button Options' and click on the link to the Google slide show. The slide show has instructions on how to modify the slides to create custom buttons and how to save them as PNG images you can use in your course.

Additional notes:

• If your course doesn't have the default template, you can still get the rectangular template buttons slide show by directlycopying the slides with instructions from Google Drive.
  
  
• Instructors can also replicate the Onetopic format from eClass Moodle with the instructions in Recreating Tab Displays / Onetopic Course Format in Canvas. You can use the tables described in the article or replace them with custom buttons you create using the instructions in the template 'Customizable Home Page Button Options.'