Canvas Course Design Best Practices
Canvas Course Design Best Practices
A user-friendly, appealing, and intuitive learning space allows students to dedicate more time to learning. Inconsistent, unappealing, or confusing interfaces force students to spend excessive time figuring things out, leading to frustration. A well-designed Canvas course should minimize time spent navigating and maximize time spent learning.
The most important thing is to keep it simple—for you and your students! These tips will help you do just that.
When students access your class, this is the first page they will see. Make sure that it conveys the most relevant and up-to-date information. Two recommended homepage options are:
- Front Page: design your own home page to orient learners around the course with information about you, the course, grades, and buttons that link to content within the course.
- Modules: shows all of the activities by modules, however you organize them.
Simplicity and clarity are crucial when designing the course navigation. Keep the left-side course navigation menu as simple as possible by hiding unused tools or tabs from view. A long menu bar can be overwhelming and disorienting for students. Consider the following tips:
- Hide Unused Tools: Remove any unused or unnecessary tools or tabs from the navigation to streamline the student's experience.
- Use Modules: Use Modules to organize course content in a logical flow, allowing you to remove most navigation links. For example, if you have files added to specific modules, hide the files tab from student view to streamline navigation inside the course.
Organize your course into Modules. This is the most logical, comprehensive way to tell students what they have to do to complete the course.
- Chronologically: Break down your course content into logical units. One popular option is to create a module for each week of the semester. This makes navigation easier and allows students to know what they should be focusing on.
- Consistency: Maintain a consistent layout and design through the module. Use clear headings, subheadings, and formatting. For example: Module 2 with all items in it numbered as Week 2: Discussion, Week 2: Lecture Powerpoint etc.
- Accessibility: Ensure that all course materials are accessible to all students. Use alt-text for images, provide captions for videos, and use accessible document formats.
Setting up the gradebook at the beginning of the semester helps students see accurate grades and minimizes required work at the end of the semester.
- Consistent: Make sure your gradebook matches your Syllabus.
- Clear: Provide grading breakdown and policies.
Once you have Completed building out your course (adding content, creating assignments, etc.), check how things look.
- Verify Links:Broken or incorrect links can lead to frustration for students. To avoid this issue, use Canvas's built-in course link validator. The link validator automatically scans through all the links present in the course and checks their validity.
- Student View: To understand how your course appears to students and test its functionality, use the "Student View" feature. This feature allows you to simulate the student experience and ensure that everything works as intended.