One of the first and most important elements of online course design for face-to-face, blended, or fully online courses is choosing and designing how students will navigate the course. But before you do that, you need to consider HOW you intend your end-users, students, to use the course, and how much support they'll have access to. Making these decisions early on will help you to create consistency in your course design so that navigation is not a barrier to student success.
Canvas offers a variety of homepage configurations from the announcements feed, to the modules list, to the syllabus page with automatically updating links to assignments and events. You can also design a home page with images, links, and other embedded HTML content. It's important to remember that the keys to instructional design are to make the navigation simple and predictable.
For the purposes of course design, let's assume that you're building a Canvas course for daily use in the classroom. In this case, students in a 1:1 environment would login everyday to access agendas, assignments, quizzes, resources, etc. The following sections will give you some ideas about how to begin to organize your course and make decisions about design,
Practice Predictability
It is really easy to get lost in the digital world, especially using an LMS like Canvas where instructors have the ability to make individual design and layout decisions. Students make be confused about the best way to find assignments and due dates or course resources. So, once you make a decision about how they will access these things and navigate from assignment to assignment or module to module, keep using that same established pattern.
For example, you may want to set up your Canvas page so that students use the course syllabus to access daily assignments. This works really well in Canvas since the course syllabus automatically populates based on assignment due dates and includes a "Jump to Today" feature. Students, whether present or absent, will know where to go to check what was due. You may also add items to the course Calendar such as a daily agenda, which will also auto-populate on the syllabus page, further helping students keep track of daily activities. You may even edit the top of the page to include links to unit or general resources including tutorials, review videos, or class notes.
Perhaps you're using Canvas to house self-paced modules for student practice during the class period or for homework. In this case, students need access to more than just assignments and agendas. You may want to create a home page that includes images as links to unit module pages. Even though Canvas includes previous and next buttons at the bottom of each module page, students may need to go other places within the course or the module. It would be good practice, if you create a series of pages within a module, to give students a way to quickly return to the first page, home page, required readings, helpful resources, or series of assignments. Once you've established a flow, use this in every module.
Establish Clear Expectations
When student complete classwork in class in a face-to-face setting, they tend to have to turn work in at the end of class or the beginning of class the next day. However, when students have the ability to turn in work online, they don't need to actually see you the teacher to do this, so what will your policy be? Will student work be due at midnight? Since you won't actually be up at midnight grading what they turn in (hopefully), will they be able to turn it in up until class begins? Does it really matter when they turn it in as long as it's before you grade it? Discussion boards also require expectations. Students may be required to post a certain number of times, but what's the quality of those posts? do they need to spread their posts out over a time period?
The questions above are examples of expectations that need to be established in an online learning environment. The more students know upfront about expectations makes conversations with students about grades and participation easier down the road. If students begin to slack off, like in any scenario in class, they may need a reminder of these expectations. You may be flexible and change your expectations after conversations with your students or in response to their needs.
The online environment also gives student the sense that you're available all the hours your course is available, but will you really be up answering their emails at 11:00pm for their assignment that's due at midnight? If students understand that you're done checking emails at 8:00pm and they're on their own after that, then this helps to limit all of your frustrations.
You may also want to establish expectations for yourself. How much will you participate in the online portion of the course? Alternately, since this is a blended environment, you may choose to show students you're participating by responding to their online work in class when you're face-to-face. Either way, students will respond well to your active participation in discussions and feedback on their assignments. They'll feel that you really are reading what they've spent time posting and creating.
Consider Visual Appeal
Though we are teachers and not graphic designers, understanding some basic elements of design is important to designing the online environment. As mentioned above, Canvas is highly customizable, and can be intimidating to those who are not familiar with HTML or webpage creation. However, simply using tables and images and hyperlinks can transform a blank Canvas page into a visually appealing, easily navigable online course.
Check out these resources to help you get started thinking about your course design:
Practice Predictability
It is really easy to get lost in the digital world, especially using an LMS like Canvas where instructors have the ability to make individual design and layout decisions. Students make be confused about the best way to find assignments and due dates or course resources. So, once you make a decision about how they will access these things and navigate from assignment to assignment or module to module, keep using that same established pattern.
For example, you may want to set up your Canvas page so that students use the course syllabus to access daily assignments. This works really well in Canvas since the course syllabus automatically populates based on assignment due dates and includes a "Jump to Today" feature. Students, whether present or absent, will know where to go to check what was due. You may also add items to the course Calendar such as a daily agenda, which will also auto-populate on the syllabus page, further helping students keep track of daily activities. You may even edit the top of the page to include links to unit or general resources including tutorials, review videos, or class notes.
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| Sample Navigation Buttons on a Canvas Page |
Establish Clear Expectations
When student complete classwork in class in a face-to-face setting, they tend to have to turn work in at the end of class or the beginning of class the next day. However, when students have the ability to turn in work online, they don't need to actually see you the teacher to do this, so what will your policy be? Will student work be due at midnight? Since you won't actually be up at midnight grading what they turn in (hopefully), will they be able to turn it in up until class begins? Does it really matter when they turn it in as long as it's before you grade it? Discussion boards also require expectations. Students may be required to post a certain number of times, but what's the quality of those posts? do they need to spread their posts out over a time period?
The questions above are examples of expectations that need to be established in an online learning environment. The more students know upfront about expectations makes conversations with students about grades and participation easier down the road. If students begin to slack off, like in any scenario in class, they may need a reminder of these expectations. You may be flexible and change your expectations after conversations with your students or in response to their needs.
The online environment also gives student the sense that you're available all the hours your course is available, but will you really be up answering their emails at 11:00pm for their assignment that's due at midnight? If students understand that you're done checking emails at 8:00pm and they're on their own after that, then this helps to limit all of your frustrations.
You may also want to establish expectations for yourself. How much will you participate in the online portion of the course? Alternately, since this is a blended environment, you may choose to show students you're participating by responding to their online work in class when you're face-to-face. Either way, students will respond well to your active participation in discussions and feedback on their assignments. They'll feel that you really are reading what they've spent time posting and creating.
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| Sample Course Home Page with Simple Design |
Though we are teachers and not graphic designers, understanding some basic elements of design is important to designing the online environment. As mentioned above, Canvas is highly customizable, and can be intimidating to those who are not familiar with HTML or webpage creation. However, simply using tables and images and hyperlinks can transform a blank Canvas page into a visually appealing, easily navigable online course.
Check out these resources to help you get started thinking about your course design:
- Elements of Web Design Infographic
- Choosing a Layout in Canvas (video)
- Pixabay (for free images!)
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