Advice books on excellent college teaching sometimes talk about the importance of the first day of class, as a way to invite students to participate fully in the learning that will take place. The idea is to engage the students right from the start, in the hope that they will become intrigued by the questions the course will try to answer. Faculty sometimes use an arresting visual image on the opening page of their Blackboard or Moodle course to serve a similar purpose – in other words, to welcome students to the course in a way that (you hope) will attract the students’ attention and invite their active participation.
Here, for example, is an image from an “Acting I” class in Blackboard that definitely provides a stunningly appropriate opening image, inviting students to “get their hands dirty” by involving themselves physically and intellectually in the course material:
Below is a similar attention-grabbing example for a Moodle course on Shakespeare and film:
If you want to add a banner image to your Blackboard course, you can find instructions on how to do it here. For Moodle, you can find the relevant instructions here.