At the end of Fall 2023, we asked students to share the names of any instructors they thought had used Canvas particularly well. We were thrilled to see dozens of instructors recommended, and are pleased to share with you a selection of these student-approved Canvas course sites. We hope this series provides inspiration for instructors who are either just starting out with Canvas or are reimagining how they organize their course sites.
When designing your course site in Canvas, there are a few design principles that LILE advocates following:
- Provide a clearly organized homepage with key information.
- Reduce the number of tools visible to students in the course menu to the fewest possible.
- Use the Modules tool to present information and links to all needed content and tools.
Course coordinator Zoë Isabella not only adhered to these guidelines when setting up the Canvas course site for BIO202: Genetics and Evolutionary Biology, but also made good use of Canvas features such as New Quizzes, discussions, announcements and the calendar to scaffold students’ learning experience.
In this post, we will explore these features of Bio 202 in detail, but for a short demo of the course site, watch the video below:
Using Modules consistently
As a member of the “early adopters” group – a limited number of instructors who were given access to teach with Canvas in Fall 2023 – Isabella participated in a series of in-depth workshops that emphasized the importance of using Modules when designing course sites in Canvas.
“I was just trying to focus on the functionality that I learned was the strength of Canvas, which is definitely how you can organize things in Modules,” Isabella said. “I thought, let’s just make the modules as clear as possible and kind of like a one stop place for them to go. So that was definitely intentional.”
Modules can be organized by any logic that makes sense for your course, be it by week, topic, unit, etc. The strength of Modules lies in their ability to link to any tool or piece of content in Canvas to guide students to the materials and activities they should do. You do not need to have tools visible in the course navigation for students to access them, as long as there is a relevant link in a Module. Learn more about using Modules in Canvas.
Helping students stay focused with New Quizzes
In addition to lectures, students in Bio 202 spend class time working collaboratively to complete problem sets. Isabella used to administer problem sets in Sakai, but there was not an obvious one-to-one alternative in Canvas. After conferring with LILE consultants, however, she determined that the stimulus function in Canvas’ New Quizzes would enable her to continue offering problem sets.
“If you’re using Canvas and you build an assignment in New Quizzes, there’s an option to add a stimulus – you can put anything in the stimulus. For our problem sets, we’ll usually put some information, like a scenario or maybe a figure like a graph or something from a paper, for them to interpret. So on one side of the screen is the stimulus, and then, on the other side, you can attach however many questions to that stimulus, which is a useful format for our course. So instead of just having a linear list of questions to scroll through, it kind of chunks it in a way that I think is easier for students to navigate,” Isabella said.
Creating community around current events
In addition to a discussion forum where students can ask questions about course material, students are tasked with sharing current events that relate to what they are learning in Bio 202. They are grouped with their peers in their lab sections so even though the course has approximately 200 students, they are regularly interacting with a smaller cohort in more informal discussions that prompt them to think about the real world applications of course topics.
“It’s about anything they see in the news related to genetics and evolution, and so if they see something in the news, they post it, and write what it was talking about and kind of interact with it in terms of, what do they think, given what they’re learning about? Do they have any questions? Part of their assignment in that discussion is to do that at least twice throughout the semester, but then also to interact with their peers’ posts,” Isabella said. “It’s a big course. But I have it set up where they’re just interacting with their lab section for that, so I think that helps continue building that community in lab.”
Keeping students on track with announcements
Many of the students who recommended Bio 202’s Canvas site expressed appreciation for the regular announcements.
“I’m glad it wasn’t annoying, because I do frequently use them,” Isabella said. “One function that I really like on canvas is that you can save an announcement for when it needs to be announced. Basically, I use announcements to essentially just remind them of things happening in the course and the way that I do that is, I like to set those announcements ahead of time so they can kind of count on announcements. We do try to have everything clear in multiple places, like through the modules and on the syllabus, but I think the announcements are an opportunity to just reinforce that.”
Making sure everything appears in the calendar
The calendar functionality within Canvas is a go-to tool for students to stay on top of their work, and Isabella has observed students using the calendar as their primary source of information in Canvas.
“They’re just going to their own calendar, so if you can have things connected to the calendar, then that is just another place that makes it super clear what’s happening. I think the calendar is a great feature,” Isabella said. “We have our office hours there. We put all the lectures there. Assignments automatically go on the calendar, but anything you can put on the calendar, I think it’s a good step for just catching students where they’re at.”
LILE consultants are available to help with your course site
Whether you are just starting out with Canvas or are re-thinking how you might set up your course sites for the next term, our teaching consultants are available to help. We invite you to drop into one of our twice-weekly office hours or email us at learninginnovation@duke.edu with your course design questions.