Canvas Designer Guide

Canvas Designer Guide

1 Resources for Designers

1.1 The Designer Role 5

1.2 Staff Picks 6

1.3 Public Courses about Canvas 7

1.4 Improving the Accessibility of Your Course 8

2 Assignments

2.1 Organizing Assignments 10

3 Calendar

3.1 Using the Calendar to remind students about readings and Assignments 12

4 Course Home Page

4.1 Building the Course Home Page 15

5 Discussions

5.1 Posting and responding to Discussion topics 21

6 Files

6.1 Sharing files with students 25

7 Modules

7.1 Organizing course content in the Modules page 27

8 Outcomes

8.1 Writing course-level learning outcomes 34

9 Pages

9.1 Using Pages 36

9.2 Previewing documents in a page 37

10 Quizzes

10.1 Different ways of using Quizzes and Polls 40

11 Rubrics

11.1 Using rubrics to evaluate student submissions 49

12 Syllabus

12.1 Example Syllabi 52

 Resources for Designers

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The Designer Role

The Canvas Designer Guide is a growing collection of best practices in Canvas course design. Do you have any
ideas or courses you would like to share? If so, please send your public course URL to training@instructure.com.

Role Permissions

The Designer Role is a course-level role, akin to the

Student, Instructor, and TA roles in Canvas. By default,
the Designer does not edit grades, add/remove other
users, or have access to the faculty journal. They can
edit course content, however, even after the course has
started.

Generally speaking, the Designer Role is best suited for

the instructional designers or curriculum writers who
write and manage course content, while the Instructor
Role is for teachers and faculty charged with facilitating
meaningful learning interactions with their students.

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Staff Picks

Here are a few examples of publicly available courses in Canvas. Note: Some of these courses are "in progress" or
Canvas Network courses.

Public Canvas Courses

1. Thriving in our Digital World by the University of Texas at Austin and Project Engage
2. MOOC MOOC January 2013 (Canvas Network Course, Hybrid Pedagogy)
3. Art Appreciation (Canvas Network Course, Open Course Library)
4. History of Ancient Civilization (Canvas Network Course, Saylor.org)
5. Game Design Concepts (Canvas Network Course)
6. Introduction to Openness in Education (Canvas Network Course, Lumen Learning)
7. International Health Systems (Canvas Network Course, University of Central Florida)
8. English Composition I (Canvas Network Course, Lumen Learning)
9. Algebra+ (Canvas Network Course, Peninsula College)
10. U.S. History 2 (Canvas Network Course, Seattle Central Community College)
11. Intro to Oceanography - Stein
12. Introduction to Psychology by Keene State College
13. AUSV 1320 OPEN Automotive Electronics by John Kelley (Weber State University)
14. Writing through Media, by Zach Whalen (University of Mary Washington)
15. Physics of Animation, by Alejandro Garcia (FFT, teaches for San Jose State University)
16. The Symmetries of Things, by Sean Raleigh (Westminster)
17. Anatomy & Physiology II, by Bill Hanna (Massasoit CC)
18. Human Genetics, by Bill Hanna (Massasoit CC)
19. International Accounting Issues, Brian Teeter (FFT, teaches for University of Pittsburgh)
20. Accounting Information Systems, Brian Teeter (FFT, teaches for University of Pittsburgh)
21. Principles of Management, Gary Shelman (Alamo Colleges)
22. Technology Strategy, by Karl Ulrich (Wharton Business School)
23. The Internet and Society, by Robert Greenberg (FFT, teaches for Bard High School)

Note: FFT stands for Free-For-Teachers. To get a free account, click here. To view courses about Canvas, click
here.

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Public Courses about Canvas

Do you have a Canvas training course that you would like to share? If so, please email training@instructure.com
and we'll add yours to the list.

Canvas Training for Students

1. Wright Career College New Student Orientation

2. Howard Community College Canvas Training for Students
3. Bucks County Community College Canvas Basics for Students
4. Edison State College Student Orientation

Canvas Training for Instructors

1. Brown University Intro to Canvas

2. Utah State University Canvas for Bb Vista Users
3. Weber State University Faculty Orientation to Canvas
4. Howard Community College Canvas Training for Faculty
5. Massasoit Community College Faculty Resource Site
6. Snow College Online Canvas Orientation
7. Samuel Merritt University Faculty Online Training Course

Other Canvas Resources

1. Calvin Theological Seminary Canvas Central

2. New Mexico State University Instructor Resources
3. Bucks County Community College Canvas Logbook
4. Edison State College LMS Selection Process
5. Edison State College Canvas Resources & Rubric Examples
6. University of South Florida How to Teach Online (in Canvas)

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Improving the Accessibility of Your Course

Various state and federal laws have requirements aimed at making education accessible to as many people as
possible. For instance, making sure that classrooms are wheel chair accessible would be an effort to comply with
these laws and policies. Online classes need to be accessible as well. Here are some best practices to use in
Canvas. If you have additional suggestions, please contact training@instructure.com.

Design

• Keep the design simple, clean, and uncluttered.

• Use alternate text tags for images. For example, you can add alternate text when you embed an image
from the web or from Flickr creative commons. If you have an image in your course file you want to use,
you can add an alt tag by switching to HTML view. Doing this will mean that people who use a screen
reader to read aloud the contents of a web page will hear an auditory description of the image.
• Rather than pasting in raw URLs, link to words that describe the link destination. Again, this will help
people using a screen reader understand where the link will take them.
• Use other formatting besides color (bold words, different size font) to distinguish between important items
in your course. Changing the font size rather than using different colors will benefit those people who
cannot differentiate colors.
• Learn to use CTRL+ and CTRL- or CMD+ and CMD- to resize the text in the course for the visually
impaired.

Video
• Caption YouTube Videos.
• Use the link icon in the Rich Content Editor to embed a YouTube video. It will auto-embed the video and
link to the title of the video. Visit How do I link to a YouTube Video? in the Canvas Guides for more
information.

Screen Reader Programs

• Macintosh: VoiceOver
• PC: JAWS

For other information, you can view the Canvas Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT).

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 Assignments

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Organizing Assignments

John Goodman of Bridgerland ATC has organized

assignments in his Digital Media course into six groups:
Readings, Video Viewings, Quizzes, Tests, Projects, and
Video Critiques. Students can see this same view if they
click on the 'Group Assignments by Type' button in the
right-hand Sidebar. Click here to explore this public
Canvas course.

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 Calendar

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Using the Calendar to remind students about readings and Assignments

One of the easiest ways to begin using Canvas is to add assignments and lecture notes to the Calendar. Just
adding the titles along with their respective due dates does a great service for students, as they see those
reminders on their Dashboard and in their own Calendar. They will also receive automatic notifications via their
preferred communication channels, such as text messaging, Facebook, Twitter, or personal email addresses.

MATH 214 Elementary Differential Equations

Bong-Sik Kim uses a simple formula to help his students

stay on track in his face-to-face courses. First he adds
Assignment names to his Calendar. You can see from
the drop down that he typically creates two kinds of
assignment groups: groups for his tests and final exam
and another group for homework. He doesn't grade his
homework in Canvas; he just uses Canvas as a course
communication tool for students in his face-to-face
classroom.

After adding assignment shells, he adds calendar events

for each of his lectures.

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 He chooses to edit the Full Details of his Calendar
events. This takes him to the Rich Content Editor, where
he can add a PDF of his lecture slides as well as details
about the homework assignment that will follow that
lecture.

The end result is a calendar that looks like this. Notice

that there are calendar events for lectures [1] and
calendar assignments for homework and tests [2, 3].

The student sees the Syllabus as the Course Home

Page, which contains a short description of the course at
the topc of the page and a chronological course
schedule on the home page, which Bong-Sik Kim has
set to the Syllabus page. The students can also quickly
access course announcements and course files from the
navigation on the left hand side. Finally, Bong-Sik Kim
uses Pages to share helpful links with his students and
to link out to detailed story problems that the students
must solve. The end result for the student is a very
simple but effective Canvas course that complements
what he is doing in the classroom and helps the
students stay on track.

Click here to explore this public Canvas course.

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 Course Home Page

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Building the Course Home Page

Intro to Skateboarding

Jared Stein of UVU has developed a simple course

home page using the table layout feature in the Rich
Content Editor. Each of the five weeks in this course
addresses a different skateboarding technique. Each
week, students are required to submit demo videos of
their skating skillz. Click here to explore this public
Canvas course.

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 Math 7

Laurie Baker of Sweetwater Union High School District

has created a colorful Course Home Page in a two
column layout with yellow- and blue-highlighted
headings. This simple page effectively leads students to
key resources, projects, and how-to videos for Canvas.

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 Anatomy & Physiology II

Bill Hanna of Massassoit Community College designed

his Course Home Page to link out to other content
pages that will help orient his students to how the
course works, policies, outside resources, and help.

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 Leadership for School Problem Solving

John Nash, from the Department of Educational

Leadership Studies, in the College of Education at the
University of Kentucky, has linked to a public Google
chat gadget on his Course Home Page so that his
students can reach him at any time. He has also
embedded a short video explaining how the
Conversations feature works in Canvas. Click here to
explore this public Canvas course.

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 Digital Media

John Goodman of Bridgerland ATC uses HTML and images to create a

clean-looking and informational Course Home Page. He clearly lays out the
objectives of the course as well as the Assignmnent pass-off sheet. This is
a very effective way of sharing with students what they will be asked to
perform in the class. Click here to explore this public Canvas course.

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 Discussions

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Posting and responding to Discussion topics

Pre-Class Reading & Response

Gideon Burton of Brigham Young University posts

discussion topics to guide students through pre-class
readings. Notice that he has linked directly to readings
and assignments. Click here to explore this public
Canvas course.

Burton reinforces good student participation in the class

discussions by pointing out when and how they have
fulfilled course outcomes.

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 English 102

In this unit-by-unit course, Sam McCool of Nevada State

College posts two-part discussion topics. Students are
required to answer five questions in their post and then
rate the post of a group mate out of five points with a
detailed response justifying their response. Click here to
explore this public Canvas course (Discussion topics not
visible at this time).

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 English A1 (12th Grade)

Denise Crlenjak provides several good examples of interesting discussion prompts for her 12th grade
English class. She uses colored text and embedded videos to make the posts more interesting. She
also asks students to submit essays via the Discussion forum, so that the entire class can read,
evaluate, and discuss.

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 Files

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Sharing files with students

Sharing and hiding files from students

Dr. Ulrich of Wharton University uses Canvas to

supplement an engaging, hands-on class about
becoming better innovators, problem solvers, and
designers. He shares multiple files with his students to
assist them as they complete projects and assignments
but he chooses to keep his lecture slides in a private
folder that he can access during classes. Click here to
explore this public Canvas course.

Sharing PowerPoint slides

Sally Coleman teaches a course on Northern

Renaissance Art and uses Files to share all of her
PowerPoint slides and images with students. Clicking
the "Fullscreen" option in Files makes it possible to
preview presentations without opening Microsoft
PowerPoint on a computer. Click here to explore this
public Canvas course.

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 Modules

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Organizing course content in the Modules page

There are several different ways to organize a module so that it is easy for students to navigate. The following
lesson contains several examples.

Engage, Explore, Apply, Review

Calvin Theological Seminary has chosen to organize

their module with four text headers: Engage, Explore,
Apply, and Review. Each of these sections contain
readings, assignments, and quizzes that give student the
opportunity to review and reflect on different materials.
This particular site features a snippet of javascript in the
branding file that autolinks to scripture passages on
http://bible.org.

Click here to explore this public Canvas course.

Lab & Lecture Notes

Bill Hanna of Massasoit Community College uses

Canvas to post his lab and lecture notes. He posts
materials as the semester progresses. Click here to
explore this public Canvas course.

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 Topic by topic

This AP Human Geography course contains modules

organized by topic. Each topic is divided into introductory
notes, vocabulary, case studies, a focused response
question, resources, and a quiz. Click here to explore
this public Canvas course.

Modules for Blended Oceanography Course

Jared Stein of UVU has put together a blended learning

experience. Students read and watch introductory
material and take a quiz before the class. Videos are
posted for in-class use, followed by assignments,
discussions, or lab materials. Click here to explore this
public Canvas course.

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 Prerequisites in Modules

This Introduction to Pastoring course is laid out

sequentially, so that students have to finish one module
before completing another. Click here to explore this
public Canvas course.

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 Unit by unit

In this General Psychology course, Dr. Burns has

organized her modules by unit. Each module ends with
a Quiz.

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 Assessment-based Modules

John Goodman of Bridgerland ATC uses the Modules

page to organize assessments (readings, video critiques,
quizzes, and tests). This is an effective strategy that puts
the emphasis on students doing work as much as they
are consuming new information. Click here to explore
this public Canvas course.

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 Modules for self-study courses

Pages, Discussios, Videos, and Self-check Quizzes work

together to keep this Italian Cuisine course fun and
engaging. Most of the module items in this course are
set in strict sequential order, so that learners absorb and
digest the information step by step. Click here to explore
this public Canvas course.

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 Outcomes

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Writing course-level learning outcomes

English 291 Learning Outcomes

Gideon Burton of Brigham Young University created four

Outcomes for his Early British Literary History course,
along with detailed bullet points further defining what
types of behaviors he is looking for. Click here to explore
this public Canvas course.

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 Pages

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Using Pages

Academic writing wiki

Mr. Nathan Kelber of University of Maryland uses the

Pages feature in Canvas to create a course wiki that
follows the outline of the two required texts for his
Rhetoric and Composition course. The wiki is a shell
where students can share their notes and reflections as
they complete their required readings. Click here to
explore this public Canvas course.

A resource page that students can edit

For his 12th grade Economics class at the International of

School of Panama, Mr. McGlothlin created a simple wiki
page editable by students. Students contributed links to
YouTube videos and web pages that helped them to
study course material. Click here to explore this public
Canvas course.

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Previewing documents in a page

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 English 1010

For her English 1010 course, Sarah Orme of Utah State University uploaded the
Assignment handouts she normally prints out and gives to her students. Now
her students can go to one page and read or print any of the assignment
descriptions. Click here to explore this public Canvas course.

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 Quizzes

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Different ways of using Quizzes and Polls

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 Medical Mission Service Training

The Christian Health Service Corps has designed a simple Multiple Choice and
True/False quiz for students to take at the end of each module. Click here to explore
this public Canvas course.

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 Quiz on Course Policies

Dr. Ulrich of Wharton Business School created a quiz

around course policies that reminds students of their
obligations during the course. Click here to explore this
public Canvas course.

Find-out Polls

In this course, Public Health and the Educated Citizen,

the designer has included short polls that students can
answer during or before class.

5 Minute "Entrance" or "Exit" Quiz

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 5 Minute Quiz with Access Code

In this course on Public Health and Education, Mike Caulfield of Keene State
College created a 5-minute quiz with an access code. This quiz could be
administered at the beginning or end of a class based on an assigned reading.

Students

1) answered it individually first, then

2) talked to one another about their answers, then
3) answered it a second time.

This allowed the instructor to:

a) see immediately which students did not get it

b) see how many students improved with instruction
c) call on students who selected the right answer to explain their thinking to
the class
d) respond to common misunderstandings

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 Example of Voluntary Poll

Another example of a voluntary poll.

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 English A1 (12th Grade)

Denise Crlenjak creates a fill-in-the-blank quiz to test her

student's understanding of literary terms.

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 Quiz to "Rate My Answer"

For his 12th grade Economics class at the International of

School of Panama, Mr. McGlothlin created a quiz where
students had to evaluate his answers based on a
grading scheme he provided. The five quiz questions
(listed below) require students to assign points and justify
their answers.

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 Another Example

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 Rubrics

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Using rubrics to evaluate student submissions

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 Sam McCool of Nevada State University uses letter-grade rating
levels for each of the writing assignments required for his English
102 course. His evaluation is divided equally between Content,
Organization, Mechanics, and Grammar. Click here to explore this
public Canvas course.

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 Syllabus

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Example Syllabi

Introduction to Research Using Off-Campus Library Services

Julie LaDell-Thomas has chosen to edit her Syllabus

description with a short bio, course description, course
goals, technical requirements, textbook info,
expectations, and a short description of communication
methods. She also summarizes course contents with a
week-by-week outline and schedule. Finally, she pastes
in the course grading policy and grading scale. Click
here to explore this public Canvas course.

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 Leadership for School Problem Solving

John Nash of the University of Kentucky has chosen to build an extensive Syllabus description for
his Education leadership course, which includes:

• contact info,
• course description,
• textbook info,
• course policies,
• accommodation info,
• grading scale,
• bibliography, and
• course calendar outlining each week's activities.

Click here to explore this public Canvas course.

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 English 1010

Sarah Orme of Utah State University has built a Canvas

course that will supplement face-to-face instruction in
her English 1010 course. One of the fastest ways to get
started in Canvas is to upload your syllabus file and link
to it on the Syllabus page. Students can then use the
Scribd preview to see the Syllabus in 'Fullscreen' mode
or to 'Print' it. Click here to explore this public Canvas
course.

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 Intro to Psychology (11th Grade)

Ms. Urroz from the International School of Panama uses the Syllabus page to lay out the
topics for each of her class sessions as well as homework. CW (Class Work), HW
(Homework), Quizzes, Tests, Projects, and Presentations are all clearly listed in
chronological order. All of these items were added as Assignments in Canvas, though
several of them are empty and require no student submission. Click here to explore this
public Canvas course.

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