In this age of technology, it is easy to allow fancy tools and functions to interfere with our primary purpose: educating our students.

This section is intended to give you ideas on how to best design your Canvas course to most effectively reach every student where they are. These are not requirements. No one idea is perfect 100% of the time. Simply, we want to give your students the best chance to succeed in your course.

Use Multiple Delivery Modes

Canvas is a powerful delivery vehicle for all manner of digital content: images, video, audio, file sharing, online quizzes, online discussions, peer review, practice quizzes, extra credit, and more.

However well you perform in front of a class, there are always different approaches that can supplement your efforts, to give the students additional ways to interact with the information. Find the best combination that meets your style and works best for your students.

Applying Good Accessibility Principles

It is UW-Madison campus policy (and federal law) that all of our Canvas courses must be web accessible. We often associate this with students who have a visual, hearing or learning challenges. It is worth noting: when content is "accessible", it allows all students to access your instructional content in multiple formats. (See the above suggestion.) While creating accessible content may seem daunting, DoIT has curated some valuable resources to help you get your course where it needs to be.

Managing Your Course Visibility and Availability

There are multiple considerations concerning when your students can access your Canvas course, and what they can do once they access it. This page provides information on the effects of publishing your course, managing the Start Date for your course, and controlling how and when your students can interact with the contents of your course.

Welcome Page

Imagine your students as they first encounter you and the content of your course. Some students may not know who you are, or what you look like, or what kind of instructor you are going to be. Some students may be so overwhelmed with this college experience, they are unclear on just what kind of material you intend to cover in the course.

For these reasons, a comfortable and informative "welcome page" for your course can go a long way to giving them necessary confidence on the first day of class.

Consider creating a Canvas welcome page, setting it up as your Home page. Include a photo of yourself, a brief explanation of your course (and how it will fit into your student's broader educational experience), and what (if any) expectations you have of them prior to the first day of actual meeting.

Help Your Students Learn the Technology

We take for granted that students will just "pick it up", when it comes to learning technologies. To cover all the bases, it may be worth devoting some time helping guide your students in what you are expecting of them, regarding Canvas, TopHat, Kaltura, Piazza, eTexts, or any other technology tool. You don't need to be the expert. But, you could point them to the appropriate KB articles, or internal DoIT service pages.

Email or Canvas Inbox

All students will have a university-provided email address. All students will also have a Canvas Inbox. Although they are quite similar, they are in fact quite different. Learn that difference, and be prepared to talk students through those differences. Which do you intend to use? Which do you want the student to use?

Use Canvas Discussions

Many instructors find that a Canvas discussion is an effective tool for getting students to know each other, before class even starts. Consider creating a discussion, prompting your students to provide a little personal biography, or explanation of why they are taking this class.

Throughout the semester, discussions can also be a handy way to create community (in our new digital age). Maybe, a weekly discussion could give students a chance to internalize last week's learning objectives. Maybe, a discussion provides a venue for sharing thoughts and observances of a video you have shared. Discussions in Canvas can be set up as graded assessments.

Technical Support & Consultation Requests
DoIT Help Desk • helpdesk.wisc.edu • help@doit.wisc.edu • (608) 264-4357

Additional Resources Online
Learn@UW Website with Guides & More Information • at.doit.wisc.edu/learn-uw
Learn@UW KnowledgeBase • kb.wisc.edu/luwmad