Introduction

All courses have at least some content that needs to be shared with students. You may provide videos of recorded lectures, PowerPoint slides, course readings, handouts, and a variety of other materials to your students throughout the semester, and including those items in the LMS can help students keep up with required materials, even if they lose a handout or miss a class. In Canvas, you can organize all of your course content within your module structure, but first you need to add the content to your course using Canvas' basic building blocks: Pages and files.

Review relationships between pages, files, and modules

In case you missed it: See page 2a in Course Design for more information about the relationships between pages, files, and modules in Canvas.

In Canvas, you can add text, documents, videos, links, images, and more to pages (sometimes called "course pages" or "wiki pages"), and then you can add those pages to your course modules:

Why Use Pages?

Creating your course content in pages allows you to provide contextual information about the items you are sharing with your students, and it makes it easy for you to collect a number of related resources in a single location.
Adding files (PDF, Word, PowerPoint, etc.) to your course pages instead of adding them directly to modules allows students to preview the file in context, without having to download it or leave the page.
Creating pages that contain a number of related files, images, and links all in one place can also help keep your modules from becoming too long and difficult for students to navigate.
If you use videos in your course, adding any YouTube URL to a course page enables students to preview the video directly within the page.

Upload and manage course files

IMPORTANT:

The Files area in your course is a place where you (the instructor, instructional designer, or support staff) can upload, organize, and store files to be used in various parts of your course. This is not the recommended way to provide content to your students! In fact, we recommend the Files link on the left-side course navigation menu is always hidden from your students.

Watch the following video or read the tutorial to learn how to upload and manage your files in Canvas:

Files: Add course content (6 min)

How do I use files as an instructor?

If you have files or other media on your computer, you can bulk upload them into Canvas. This is only possible with files, not folders. Follow the tutorial below to bulk upload files to your course:

How do I bulk upload files to a course?

Recommendations for page design

Designing for Mobile

Keep the following best practices in mind as you create pages in your course to ensure a positive experience for students accessing them via the mobile app:

Large images tend to be cut off when viewed through the app.
Keep page titles short but descriptive; long titles tend to run off the page.

Designing for Accessibility

Visit the following resource to learn about general accessibility guidelines for pages and to learn about using the Rich Content Editor in the context of accessibility:

General accessibility design guidelines

Create course pages

Follow the steps in this tutorial to create a new page in your course:

How do I create a new page in my course?

As you create your page content, you will be using Canvas' Rich Content Editor. Watch the following brief video to learn about using the Rich Content Editor in multiple areas throughout your course:

Rich Content Editor (5 min)

Add videos, files, links, and other content to course pages

Now that you are familiar with the Rich Content Editor and you have created at least one page in your course, use any of the following tutorials to learn how to incorporate images, videos, files, and more into your course pages:

How do I insert links to course content…?

How do I create a file link in a page in my course

How do I embed a video in a page in my course?

If you use videos in your course, be sure to format using captions so they are accessible.

Watch this video to learn how:

Using the Rich Content Editor, you can link to your Office 365 files on a page.

How do I create a hyperlink from Microsoft Office 365 in the Rich Content Editor as an instructor?

Quick Navigation

Click the Next button in the lower right to continue through the Learning Path,
or use the button below to return to the Canvas Learning Center Home Page.