Welcome your Students

Students who feel safe and welcome in your class are more likely to engage with other students and be more invested in the course work. There are some simple strategies you can implement to make your students feel more welcome in your online course.

Change your Course Name, Color and Thumbnail Image in Canvas

When students login to Canvas, their current courses are organized by course number at the top of their dashboard. Students may not know the course number. You can help students find your course more quickly by assigning your course a nickname. You can also create a custom thumbnail image that relates to your course.

Canvas Dashboard snapshot

Click the three vertical dots on your course square on your Canvas Dashboard. Change the nickname to the course title, or an abbreviated version. The course number and the semester will remain underneath.
In that same place, change the color of your course. All of your course activities in the calendar will be color-coded to your course to help students stay organized among all of their courses.
In the course settings, you can add an image into the thumbnail that relates to your course to make it even easier to find for the students.

Reach Out to Students Early

Sending your students personalized messages at the beginning of the semester is a great way to show them you care about their success. Individually sending emails can be incredibly time-consuming, but Canvas has several built-in features that can help you speed up the process.

Through the Canvas Inbox, there is a way to email the entire student enrollment as though you sent it to them individually. It’s a small checkbox that says “Send an individual message to each recipient”. The result is an email that appears like it was sent only to the recipient.
Go to an assignment with low completion within the grades tab. If you click the three vertical dots icon on the assignment, you have the option to “message students who…”. Select the criteria that concerns you most and message the students who meet that criteria, such as hasn’t completed the assignment or received a low grade.

Have a Welcoming Home Page

A custom home page is a great way to welcome students to your online course. It can set the tone for your course and serve as a place to share important information or resources for success.

Canvas has a tab called Pages, which is a blank slate to create content. In Pages, you can type anything you want as the content and set it as the course home page. Insert a weekly video, type news updates, provide studying tips or whatever you want!
You can also make the course Announcements the home page so students see the latest news from you when they first get into the course. Students are automatically notified when Announcements are created, so they can login right away and see what’s new in the course.