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Introduction

The AU Course Template provides the foundation on which you will develop your myLearning courses. It aims to make course development easier for you, and to ensure a consistent approach to course structure across Adelaide University, so that students will be able to easily navigate any course from any discipline.

The AU Course Template is a collection of templated modules, pages and page elements that are pre-populated into course development shells and teaching sites. It also includes the AU Course Template Homepage.

More about the AU Course Template's components

AU Course Template Homepage

The first thing you will see when you open a course is the AU Course Template Homepage. The AU Course Template includes two homepages:

The Dynamic Homepage: The Dynamic Homepage was made specifically for Adelaide University courses to present modularisation efficiently and in a visually appealing manner. It features standarised module/topic ordering and numbering, as well as expandable topics, which update automatically based on your course modules.
The 2025 Standard Homepage: The 2025 Standard Homepage is an alternative homepage option. It presents course modules more linearly, but requires manual editing. This homepage should only used in courses where the Dynamic Homepage is not suitable, such as those that cannot be modularised.

The Dynamic Homepage

The Dynamic Homepage includes your course name, an adjustable course banner image, an Acknowledgement of Country and dynamic course navigation blocks (which automatically update themselves to reflect the Canvas modules in your course).

The Dynamic Homepage's navigation blocks will include an 'About this course' block for Template administrative modules, multiple curriculum module blocks to group your curriculum module topics, and an 'Additional resources' block for anything and everything else.

Note that these blocks will reflect whether content is locked to students (due to availability dates or module requirements/prerequisites), and allow students can navigate to specific content items (e.g. pages) within a topic, rather than the topic's Canvas module.

How does the Dynamic Homepage work?

The Dynamic Homepage recognises how your course is structured based on how your Canvas modules are named. In other words, it only works if your course modules are named in a way that it recognises.

For the Dynamic Homepage to correctly display curriculum modules/topics, their associated Canvas modules must be named according to the format: 'Curriculum module title: Topic title'. The colon is important. The Dynamic Homepage views whatever is before the colon as the 'Curriculum module title' and whatever comes after it as the 'Topic title'. If you use a different separator (like a hyphen) or use multiple colons, then this won't work.

The Dynamic Homepage groups topics together into curriculum modules if they have the same 'Curriculum module title', then numbers both curriculum modules and topics based on how their Canvas modules are ordered. Template administrative modules will automatically populate the 'About this course' block, and anything else will automatically appear in the 'Additional resources' block at the bottom of the Dynamic Homepage (regardless of where they sit in the course modules).

Templated modules

The AU Course Template includes several template Canvas modules (as a reminder, Canvas modules are not the same as curriculum modules). These include modules for administrative information as well as course teaching content. You will be able to add content to these modules as required, including pages, text headers (used to split content up), assignments and more!

Course information: This module will be automatically populated by course overview, schedule, contacts and assessments data from CurV, including your Course Outline (this is the one module you shouldn't add anything to).
Getting started: This module is where you will add a course welcome message, Course Roadmap and any other administrative information about your course.
Graded assessments: This module is where you will list all graded assessments in your course.
Topic modules: These are where you will put your course content (one per curriculum module topic). While the AU Course Template only includes six of these, you are free to add more as required for your course.
Course conclusion: This module is where you will add a course summary.
Educator notes: This module is hidden to students and can be used to store educator-only information like teaching notes

Module tagging

Modules are tagged to help you identify where they will appear on the Dynamic Homepage. Note if your topic modules are appearing under 'Additional resources', it means they're not following the correct naming conventions. If your modules don't have a tag at all, it's probably means they're unpublished (unpublished modules do not appear on the Dynamic Homepage).

Templated pages and page elements

Most template modules will also come with template pages, though they will usually only contain placeholder text. These template pages are in the template Canvas modules to help you get a sense of how your module content will be structured. You can add content to these pages, though you will likely create new pages as well.

You will add content to your pages with help from a page editing tool called Cidi Labs DesignPLUS (you will also use Canvas's in-built page editor). DesignPLUS is covered more in the Staff Learning Centre's resources on pages, so there's no need to worry too much about it just yet. For now, all you need to know is that you will use DesignPLUS to add content blocks to your pages. Content blocks are essentially just sets of blocks (blank and pre-formatted) that you can stack together to build a page. For example, you could stack together an introduction block, then a blank block for content, then a video block, then an activity block, and you would have built yourself a page!

Each template page will have a blank content block, and each content block will include some instructional text to help you use it.

The process of adding content to your pages (including page elements like text, headers, images, videos and more!), regardless of how you do so, will likely be the most time consuming part of developing your course. However, with time and practice, you will get the hang of it.

Frequently asked questions

Can I opt out of using the Dynamic Homepage?

The Dynamic Homepage has been developed to be suitable for the vast majority of courses and its use is strongly recommended. However, you can opt out of using the Dynamic Homepage if there is a specific need for a custom homepage in your course.

This will revert your homepage to the standard Standard Homepage (after some additional steps), which you can use or replace with an entirely custom homepage.

Why are my Canvas modules not showing on the Dynamic Homepage?

This is likely because your Canvas module is not published. Make sure to publish your Canvas modules to ensure that they appear on the homepage (this applies to the Dynamic and Standard Homepages).

Why are my Canvas modules being duplicated on the Dynamic Homepage?

This is likely due to case-sensitivity or slight differences in how the curriculum module name is written. If the curriculum module name differs between two Canvas modules, then they will appear separately on the Dynamic Homepage. For example, the below Canvas modules will not be grouped on the Dynamic Homepage:

"Mars's characteristics: Planetary features" vs "Mars's Characteristics: Planetary features"
"1. Mars's characteristics: Planetary features" vs "2. Mars's characteristics: Geology"

Make sure to double check the capitalisation of your module names and ensure these are correct, and remove any additional details like topic or week numbers (which are applied automatically).

What is the 2024 AU Course Template Homepage?

The 2024 AU Course Template Homepage was the old version of the current AU Course Template Homepage. It was phased out in late 2025 and is no longer applied to new teaching courses. (Learn more about the phase-out of the 2024 Standard Homepage.)

What version of the Template will your course use?

Which Template your course development shell or teaching site uses will depend on when your course was created (see below table).

Note from late-October, 2025, content from course development shells will start getting rolled over into teaching sites. These teaching sites will all have the 2025 AU Course Template applied, even if the 2024 AU Course Template was used during development.

Course type and creation period	Template	Homepage
Development shells created before Jun 23 2025 (largely Cycles 1-10)	2024 AU Course Template	2024 Standard Homepage
Development shells created between Jun 23 and Oct 7 2025 (largely Cycles 11-13)	2025 AU Course Template*	2025 Standard Homepage*
All courses created after Oct 7 2025 (Cycle 14 onward), including teaching sites for Cycles 1-13, but excluding migrated courses	2025 AU Course Template	Dynamic Homepage
Teaching sites for UniSA migrated courses	Migrated course structure	2025 Standard Homepage
Teaching sites for UoA migrated courses	Migrated course structure	Migrated course homepage (or the 2025 Standard Homepage if no homepage in UoA course)

*Applied October 7 2025. These courses previously used the 2024 AU Course Template and 2024 Standard Homepage

What if I've already created a course homepage using the 2024 AU Course Template Standard Homepage?

Course homepages built using the 2024 AU Course Template Standard Homepage will be automatically converted to the 2025 AU Course Template Dynamic Homepage when rolled over into teaching sites.

In anticipation of this, the 2025 AU Course Template has already been applied to development shells created after Jun 23 2025 (largely Cycle 11-13 courses). These courses use the 2025 Standard Homepage by default, not the Dynamic Homepage.

You are not required to do anything immediately to accommodate for these changes, as there will be the opportunity to finalise your course as part of teaching readiness. However, you may wish to take this opportunity to update your module and topic naming to use the specific nomenclature which allows the Dynamic Homepage to work. The naming convention is 'Curriculum module title: Topic title' (e.g. Cell Division: Mitosis or Cell Division: Meiosis). The colon is key; this is what the Dynamic Homepage uses to identify your modules.

What if I added additional content to my 2024 AU Course Template Homepage?

Some development shells include additional content on their course homepages (e.g. things other than the standard course title and banner image, Acknowledgement of Country and course navigation block).

Please note that additional content on the homepage will be removed when your development shell is rolled over into its teaching site. This is to ensure navigational consistency across all myLearning courses. Note that content will have already been removed for development shells created after June 23 which have had the 2025 Standard Homepage applied.

If you have added any additional content to your course homepage, you should save this somewhere else (e.g. SharePoint), so you have a copy to refer back to. Alternatively, the TLI Support Team can help you recover any lost content from development shells.

What if I added a banner image to my 2024 AU Course Template Homepage?

Course banner images will be retained when homepages are converted from the 2024 AU Course Template Homepage to the 2025 AU Course Template Dynamic Homepage (or Standard Homepage). You can make changes to your banner image from your teaching site, if required.

Will the 2025 AU Course Template change anything other than the homepage?

Not really. You will create and structure your modules and pages the same as you did using the 2024 AU Course Template.

The only difference is that your course modules page will now include info boxes about module naming conventions and tags against each module indicating where they will appear on the Dynamic Homepage. However, these are just visual changes - not functional changes.

What if I haven't used the 2024 AU Course Template before?

There is no need to learn about the 2024 AU Course Template if you have not already used it as part of course development. If you aren't involved in course development, then you will only ever see the 2025 AU Course Template, so will not need to learn about the 2024 AU Course Template.

Get pedagogical/design support

There are several standard page types in the AU Course Template, like course welcomes and curriculum module/topic overviews. The Course Development Essentials Site includes a range of examples of how you can set these standard pages up, as well as ideas for how you can structure and style your content pages. (Contact the TLI Support Team if you cannot access this site.)

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