Course Design Recommendations

Introduction

When you are just starting out with a new learning management system (LMS), or when you're exploring new ideas for using specific tools and features, it's often helpful to have a short list of recommendations to guide you. This page includes a few general recommendations along with more specific guidelines from Penn State's LMS Interface Task Force.

On This Page:

  1. Recommendations for course design in Canvas
  2. LMS Interface Task Force guidelines

 

Recommendations for course design in Canvas

Canvas courses designed according to best practices are easy for students to navigate and for instructors to use and maintain. The following are four simple recommendations for anyone creating a course in Canvas:

  1. Make a great first impression
    • Make the course home page a place that welcomes students.
    • Use the home page to make it clear to students where to go and what to do first.
  1. Make it easy for students to find everything
    • Keep your course navigation simple to help your students easily get to where they want to go within the course.
    • Create modules that are organized by unit or week, and make sure a given module contains everything a student will need in order to complete it.
    • Avoid duplication by publishing content in the course one time and linking to it as needed in other parts of the course.
    • For clarity, write brief but descriptive names for pages, files, assignments, and modules.
  1. Let students know what to expect
    • Include a complete and descriptive syllabus page in your course. From the first day of class, students want to know what they will be learning and how they will be graded, so it is important to include those elements in your syllabus page.
    • Use the built-in due-date settings for all course assignments, quizzes, and discussions to ensure that the dates appear consistently in all parts of the course. This will ensure that dates appear correctly on the course calendar and will allow students to take advantage of Canvas's notification options to keep them on track and on task throughout the semester.
    • Use rubrics for each assignment to let students know how their work will be evaluated.
  1. Keep students informed and engaged
    • Use the automatic Canvas notifications to stay up to date on student activity in your courses, and help students optimize their notification settings to be sure they receive important communications from you.
    • Send announcements for special events, updates, and news items.
    • Create graded or ungraded discussions to facilitate communication and collaborative learning around key course topics.

NOTE: These best practices have been adapted from a number of sources, most notably Samuel Merritt University Links to an external site..

 

LMS Interface Task Force guidelines

The Penn State LMS Interface Task Force is a committee that created a list of recommendations regarding the Canvas interface for faculty and other course builders. View the task force's recommendations below or download the document as a PDF Download download the document as a PDF.

In case you missed it, check out our course design checklist for all of the steps you'll need to create a course in Canvas.