December 2024 Newsletter

Happy Holidays! in a quote bubble with Santa hat

As 2024 draws to a close, all of us at Cidi Labs are wishing you a very peaceful holiday break. May you look back at the year and feel proud of what you accomplished (with help from our tools 😊) and look forward to the year ahead with excitement about what is possible. We’re giving you a few things to look forward to in 2025 in this edition of the newsletter…

Very Jolly Product News

The Cidi Labs elves have been hard at work all year getting ready to deliver some exciting goodies for you in 2025!

The DesignPLUS QuickStart Wizard


Coming as a Beta feature in early January, the NEW DesignPLUS QuickStart Wizard is a tool that lets you rapidly design new content by selecting from your existing DesignPLUS Templates and Content Blocks–without opening the Sidebar!

Animation of the QuickStart Wizard showing the selection and insertion of a template in a Canvas page

The QuickStart Wizard makes it easy for all your users to build engaging, accessible Canvas courses with a few simple selections, regardless of their familiarity with the Sidebar or course design skills.

Want to learn all about this exciting new feature? Join our webinar, Conjuring Quick Creativity with DesignPLUS Magic on January 16th to see it in action!

ReadyGO Beta Availability

We’re thrilled to announce that the long-awaited new version of ReadyGO – a Canvas course lifecycle management system – will be available for all existing ReadyGO customers to install as a beta version as of January 6th. If you don’t currently license ReadyGO but want to learn more, please schedule a one-on-one demo with us. In the meantime, here’s a sneak preview!

More Support for Your Accessibility Journey

The trek to providing accessible Canvas courses can feel like navigating a rugged path, especially when time and resources are limited. That’s why we’ve been hard at work on developing new features in UDOIT, our Canvas accessibility assistant. Coming in late January, a new Accessibility Scorecard – which can be configured to meet each institution’s preferences – will guide users to focus on fixing the issues that will make the biggest impact on the accessibility of their course, and will be accompanied by new reports that help you easily demonstrate progress over time. To see these new features in action, watch the recording from our recent webinar, and stay tuned for more information coming next month!

Releases this Month

With all the new things coming in January, this month was light on releases. You can find details about the December releases in the following Release Notes: To receive product release notifications, join our Customer Slack Community.

The Most Wonderful Resources

Recent Releases

Reflecting back on 2024, we’ve rounded up the top 10 resources (in no particular order, because #10 is really our favorite 🙂 that were created to support you!

  1. The DesignPLUS Library – hundreds of resources in one!
  2. Design Matters Blog – 11 thought-provoking articles bringing together research and action for better course design.
  3. One-Stop Shop for DesignPLUS Sidebar Resources – because who wants to make multiple stops?
  4. DesignPLUS Summer School – it may not be summertime, but this training series will definitely brighten your day!
  5. Extreme Makeover: Canvas Course Edition – our most entertaining webinar of the year!
  6. Best Practices for Transitioning to the New DesignPLUS Sidebar – a crowd-sourced collection of wisdom.
  7. Conquer Canvas Course Clutter – our MOST watched webinar recording, and perfect for new year’s resolutions!
  8. Webinar Archive – this link enables you to access all of the fun, informative, and inspiring webinars we hosted this year.
  9. ObservEd – a 2-minute overview of the newest tool in our collection, which we’re excited to continue developing in 2025.
  10. Cidi Labs Sweet & Savory Treats Collection – packed with team-submitted holiday recipes as creative as your course designs, it’s our way of saying thanks for letting us be part of all that you served up this year!

Cheerful Gatherings

Conjuring Quick Creativity with DesignPLUS Magic (cosmic background)

January 16th at 10am MT

Do you wish you could wave a magic wand and have spellbinding designs added across your Canvas course? Join our live webinar as we unveil the DesignPLUS QuickStart Wizard, your new magical companion for crafting captivating and polished designs for your Canvas courses. We’ll also reveal some additional tricks up our sleeves, including new design elements that make it easy to create content that has your students in awe. With tools that give all users the power to save time and make course design magic, this webinar will highlight just how effortless and fun transforming your courses can be!

In case you haven’t heard, the Design Matters Digest and live webinar series will continue in 2025 with fresh new topics! Here’s what we’ve lined up so far – be sure to subscribe to receive the monthly digest via email and register for the webinars that are of interest to you!

January: Increasing Instructor Presence & Interaction
February: Consistent Design, Big Impact!
March: Removing Obstacles to Optimize Learning
April: Interactive Course Design Made Simple!

Upcoming In-Person Events

Our 2025 tradeshow schedule is still evolving, but here are the events that we know we’ll be attending in the first part of 2025 – we hope to see you on the road!

January 2025

  • FETC: 14-17 in Orlando, Florida

February 2025

  • TCEA: 1-5 in Austin, Texas
  • DLAC: 24-26 in Atlanta, Georgia
  • UCET: 25-26 in Salt Lake City, Utah

March 2025

  • ITC: 2-5 in Charleston, South Carolina
  • Spring CUE: 20-22 in Palm Springs, California
  • TxDLA: 30-2nd of April in Denton, Texas

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With all our best wishes for a fabulous holiday season,

The Cidi Labs Team

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