Pages are a powerful tool that enable you to create and display course content. The Page Enhancement tool has been built at Oxford to make it easier for users to design and build pages (particularly home pages) that are aesthetically pleasing, offering options for a banner image, textual information, and automatic display of existing modules in the course. (The default Modules view is very linear and can involve lots of scrolling, so it may be preferable to provide links to existing modules (in the Modules tool) in a visual display.)

Please refer to the guidance on creating and editing pages for more information on pages in general.

The Course Presentation and Navigation tool previously enabled you to display existing modules as a tile-based home page. That tool still allows you to enable a sub-menu of module titles on the course navigation menu, and page icons (at the bottom of each module item) for ease of navigation between module items. The Page Enhancement tool is a new tool that enables the display of Module Titles as either a Tile view or List view, as well as added advantages of being able to insert a banner of your choice, as well as textual information to provide structure and context to the page.

The video below is an instructional guide on how to use the Page Enhancement tool. It demonstrates all the actions described on this page.

The video contains closed captions and a voiceover, but the captions can be switched off, and the voiceover can be muted, if preferred.

Index

1. The purpose of the Page Enhancement tool

The Page Enhancement tool enables users to create a page (e.g., a Home Page), and include a banner image on that page, as well as a series of tiles (or a list view) of course modules that students can easily navigate to. The banner image and module navigation tool can be incorporated separately or together, to provide a consolidated page of information for course participants, together with the ability to navigate to supporting modules, all from the same page. For example, this tool could be used to design a course Home Page, with a banner image, introductory text (added using the rich content editor – RCE), and links to existing course modules (in the Modules tool) for ease of navigation.

After creating and publishing your new page (see sections below), you can set it to display as your Home Page in one of two ways:

From the existing Home Page, select Choose Home Page from the right hand menu, OR
From the Pages tool, click View All Pages, then find the title of the new page you have just created. Select the three dots on the right hand side and select Use as Front Page.

Select the second option (Pages front page), and change the page identified, if necessary. Then click Save. Your newly designed page will now appear as the home page in your course.

2. Adding a page and inserting your own banner image

Images added when inserting banner images are automatically marked as decorative because the images are purely for decoration. For more information about alt text, the AbilityNet website has an article which explains how to include compliant alt text with images..

Add a page to a module, giving it a name and choosing whether to indent it
Select Add item
Use the edit button to edit the page
To add a banner image select the Apps icon from the icons in the rich content editor (RCE) then choose View All

If you have previously selected Page - Banner Image before it will appear in the list of Apps. You do not need to select View All each time.

From the list of Apps select Page - Banner Image. If you haven't used it before you will have to grant permissions to access it
The first tab is Upload a new banner

You can choose whether to drag and drop a banner image in or choose to browse your computer by clicking inside the box
If you are browsing your computer, find the picture that you want to use as part of the banner image and select it from your computer files

If the image isn't at least 1920 pixels wide an error message will appear asking you to select a different picture.

Use the blue box to highlight the area of the image that you want to make your banner image

Select the aspect ratio for the image. The default is 16:3 but you can choose 16:2 or 16:4. This will decrease or increase the height of the blue frame used to select the portion of the image you want to use.

If the image is below a particular height then the 16:4 option will be greyed out and cannot be chosen.

Choose the usage rights (mandatory) from the drop-down menu and add a copyright holder (if required)
Use the Insert Banner button to add the banner image to your page
If, after adding the picture to the upload function you no longer wish to use it, use the bin icon to remove the photo and choose another one

3. Adding a page and inserting a default banner image

Add a page to a module, giving it a name and choosing whether to indent it
Select Add item
Use the edit button to edit the page
To add a banner image select the Apps icon from the icons in the rich content editor (RCE) then choose View All

If you have previously selected Page - Banner Image before it will appear in the list of Apps. You do not need to select View All each time.

From the list of Apps select Page - Banner Image. If you haven't used it before you will have to grant permissions to access it
Go to the Pick a default banner tab
Select one of the images underneath it

There are only two banner images available in the default list so there is no scroll functionality available. Select which image you want to use and follow the remaining steps below.

Use the Insert Banner button to add the image to your page
The new banner image will be added to your page. It is already marked as a decorative image and does not require Alt Text
To remove the image, select the image so that it is highlighted and delete it using the delete button or the backspace button

4. Adding Module Titles to your page

Add a page to a module (if you haven't done so already), giving it a name and choosing whether to indent it
Select Add item
Use the edit button to edit the page
To add a banner image select the Apps icon from the icons in the rich content editor (RCE) then choose View All

If you have previously selected Page - Module Titles before it will appear in the list of Apps. You do not need to select View All each time.

From the list of Apps select Page - Module Titles. If you haven't used it before you will have to grant permissions to access it.
A tiled view will appear of all the modules that are attributed to the course that you are installing the Module Titles tool in.

Use the Module View button to choose between Tile View (the default tiled view) or a List View (where the Modules will appear in a list instead)

Important notes:

You can select only one option per page. If you try and add a Tile View and a List View layout, an error message will appear.
You must not hide the Modules tool on the course navigation menu. If it is hidden, students will see an error message when they click on a tile or button: "That page has been disabled for this course".

Once you have selected your preference, use the Insert button to add the Module Titles to your page

Unpublished modules will still show for course administrators and teachers who are using this functionality, but will not be displayed for students. If you know a module is not yet published but appears in your module titles view, you can use the 'Student View' option in the course to check that students will not see unpublished modules.

5. Sample of a completed page

The image below shows an example of a home page with a banner image, some sample text and the Module Titles, displayed as the 'Tiles' view.