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Welcome to the 13th edition of Design Matters Digest, a monthly newsletter that explores various elements of online course design and the research that can help you improve your Canvas courses. This month, we’re exploring the impact of consistent course design and sharing tips for leveraging consistency in and across courses.
““…Online courses need consistent design, organization, and structure across the various units in a single course and the various courses in a curriculum. That way, students can concentrate on learning and demonstrating mastery of content, rather than continually adapting to changing course designs or variations in courseware functionality or operability.” (Dykman & Davis, 2008).
Research shows that consistency in and across courses not only contributes to student success outcomes (McMullan et al., 2022; Scutelnicu et al., 2019), it also decreases instructor workload (Borgemenke et al., 2013; Scutelnicu et al., 2019). Cheers to a win-win course design strategy!
But no instructor or designer wants their Canvas course to feel “cookie cutter” or to sacrifice learner engagement for repetitiveness. Don’t worry–consistency and uniformity are not the same thing! Research supports a focus on a baseline level of consistency in key elements, such as those that improve learner navigation and streamline content organization. In fact, relatively simple course design strategies consistently applied can have big impacts on learner outcomes, including increasing engagement!
Let’s explore a few tips for how and where to leverage consistent course design and some tools that make those designs consistently beautiful, engaging, and accessible.
Segment content with consistent headings. Clear headings that segment course content on a page or assignment reduce the cognitive effort needed to locate and organize important concepts in learners’ minds. What’s more is that using consistent headings across a content type allows learners to quickly grow familiar with how to digest the content. For example, if an instructor places grading details under a “Grading & Feedback” heading on each assignment, students know exactly where to find that important information! Pair these headings with consistent icons that serve as visual cues to further reduce cognitive load.
Employ a consistent module pattern. An organized, consistent course structure allows learners to develop a mental model for navigating the course. That model, once moved to long-term memory, continues to serve as their reference at each interaction, reducing cognitive load (Ifenthaler et al., 2011; Sweller et al., 2019). Thus, organizing content and assignments into patterned modules with consistent naming conventions helps learners employ that mental model with ease, shifting students’ cognitive resources away from navigating the course to actively engaging with the learning content. Plus, instructors employing consistent structure report receiving fewer navigation questions from learners and more efficient course building (Huun & Hughes, 2014)–saving them time for content creation and feedback!
Standardize high-impact elements across courses. Consistency across courses has been shown to give learners an advantage when entering new courses and promote a variety of positive course outcomes (Scutelnicu et al., 2019), but this doesn’t mean all courses at an institution need to look and feel exactly the same! Having clear navigation, a welcoming Home Page with a way for learners to get started, and visible support resources or guidance streamlines the learner experience for some of the most common obstacles to success. Institutions can support baseline consistency by designing templates that include these high-impact elements. Templates even save instructors time while ensuring learners benefit from across-course consistency!
““The DesignPLUS Multi-tool eliminates hours of tedium by allowing the user to design templates for pages, quizzes, and assignments and then rapidly deploy them to create consistently structured modules. I did a faculty training on the Multi-Tool recently and a couple of instructors said they felt like crying from relief (yeah, me too!).”
Joy Adams, Teaching & Learning Consultant, University of Colorado Boulder
Learn More:
To see this Digest come to life, join us for our Design Matters Live! webinar “Consistent Design, Big Impact!”. We’ll dive deeper into the research behind this digest edition and showcase amazing examples of how our tools can help you unlock the power of consistency in and across your Canvas courses to create a seamless and effective experience for your learners.
Looking for a way to manage and support consistent course design across your institution? ReadyGO, our NEW course lifecycle management system, provides the data and tools you need to scale best practices and streamline the work required to effectively develop, deliver, and continuously improve Canvas courses.
Employing consistent design across courses just got a whole lot easier with the DesignPLUS QuickStart Wizard. To learn more, check out our recent webinar “Conjuring Quick Creativity with DesignPLUS Magic” where we showed just how effortless and fun transforming your courses can be!
Spread the Word: Do you know someone who would like to receive our Design Matters Digest? Tell them they can subscribe here. Interested in more Design Matters content? Check out our webinar series and read past editions of the Digest.
Citations:
Borgemenke AJ, Holt WC, Fish WW (2013) Universal course shell template design and implementation to enhance student outcomes in online coursework. Quarterly Review of Distance Education 14(1): 17–23.
Dykman, C. A., & Davis, C. K. (2008). Online education forum: Part two-teaching online versus teaching conventionally. Journal of Information Systems Education, 19(2), 157.
Huun, Kathleen & Hughes, Lisa. (2014). Autonomy Among Thieves: Template Course Design for Student and Faculty Success. Journal of Educators Online. 11. 10.9743/JEO.2014.2.4.
Ifenthaler, D., Masduki, I. & Seel, N.M. The mystery of cognitive structure and how we can detect it: tracking the development of cognitive structures over time. Instr Sci 39, 41–61 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11251-009-9097-6
McMullan, T., Williams, D., Ortiz, Y. L., & Lollar, J. (2022). Is Consistency Possible? Course Design and Delivery to Meet Faculty and Student Needs. Current Issues in Education, 23(3).
Scutelnicu, G., Tekula, R., Gordon, B., & Knepper, H. J. (2019). Consistency is key in online learning: Evaluating student and instructor perceptions of a collaborative online-course template. Teaching Public Administration, 37(3), 274-292.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0144739419852759
Sweller, J., van Merriënboer, J.J.G. & Paas, F. Cognitive Architecture and Instructional Design: 20 Years Later. Educ Psychol Rev 31, 261–292 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-019-09465-5
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