Elevate Your Teaching with our New Canvas Course Principles

Posted on: 25 February 2025 by David Watson in General

Many of you may be aware that in response to Strategy 2031, the Staff and Student Engagement and Training Working Group of the Digital Education Advisory Group (DEAG) have been working on a collection of Canvas Course Principles to enrich our online teaching and learning environments.

As outlined in the strategy, digital curriculum development and blended and hybrid environments are possible when we embrace the digital opportunities that the pedagogies and tools afford us. In turn, this provides students with flexibility in how they learn, a more accessibly experience, and prepares them to be adept to different modes and environments.

Focussing on Canvas, we have developed a thematic collection of course principles which can guide and support academic staff in their online course development. Intended as recommendations, the principles are grouped under the themes of belonging and inclusion, structure and navigation, course content, assessment and feedback, accessibility and multimedia, and communication.

Although many of you will already be proficient in applying most of these principles, it is hoped that these recommendations can contribute to more consistent and engaging Canvas experiences for students. Specifically, we envisage that they can:

• Provide strategies to foster a welcoming and inclusive environment for students.
• Offer tips for creating intuitive and user-friendly course structures.
• Outline best practice for delivering engaging course content.
• Highlight methods for providing constructive and usable student feedback.
• Ways to ensure course content is accessible to all students.
• Techniques to achieve and maintain effective and clear communication with students.

You will find within the Canvas Course Principles that you are sign-posted to the relevant support services and existing resources that enable you to achieve the principles, and where appropriate, reference is made to relevant institutional policies such as the Code of Practice on Assessment (CoPA).

In summary, we are delighted to be able to share this work with you, and hope that we can collectively enhance our digital and educational practices to make a significant impact on student success.  As always, the Centre for Innovation in Education (CIE) is here to support you with anything support that you may need in relation to Canvas and beyond, so please do get in touch with us.