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Welcome to the 11th 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 template design and sharing research-backed tips for both building and implementing templates for a variety of users and use cases.
“Online-course templates…provide standardization for students in online course navigation and foster early student engagement, comfort and success in online learning”
(Scutelnicu et al., 2019).
Instructors’ plates are often full with content curation, grading, feedback, and learner support. And while quality course design has been shown to increase student motivation, learning, and retention (Joosten & Cusatis, 2019; Muljana & Luo, 2019), building well-designed online courses takes time and skills!
Templates can make it easier for all course designers to build student-friendly, content-focused, supportive courses in Canvas. While there’s no one-size-fits-all formula for a perfect template, research on template creation, structure, and deployment can guide your template designing efforts, helping you maximize both template use and instructional quality.
Let’s explore simple tips for designing user-friendly, quality templates and some tools that make designing and distributing those templates a breeze!
Aim for consistency with flexibility. Research shows that baseline 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). Yet, when that consistency comes from an inflexible template, instructors are more reluctant to use the template (Huun & Hughes, 2014). Strike that Goldilocks balance by designing templates with best-practice elements that allow for easy customization. For example, structured headings can be easily edited in Canvas and their consistent use supports learner navigation, helps reduce cognitive overload, and provides accessible learning experiences! Or, consider developing templates of varying sizes and types, from a full-course template to a collection of pre-styled content chunks, allowing for à la carte customization!
Help designers work smarter, not harder. Wherever possible, create template content with evergreen information, such as “Discussion replies are due on Friday” instead of “due on Friday, 11/15” for a weekly discussion protocol. This way, you won’t have to change as many specific details the next time you use the template or course content! If designing templates for other users, leverage the principle of least effort (Thaler et al., 2014) and lead with default text suggestions–it’s easier for instructors to edit or delete suggested text than to generate content from scratch.
Build in Best Practices. Hoping to scale best practices at your institution? Research shows templates can be an effective vehicle for keeping course design up-to-date with accessibility considerations and other evidence-based practices (Goomas & Czupryn 2019; Huun & Hughes, 2014). For example, building a place for an instructor video introduction on a Home Page template contributes to a welcoming course and supports learner belonging (Kizilcec et al., 2020). Aligning templates with course design best practices acts as professional development for users and helps deliver the learning benefits associated with those best practices to students: win-win!
“We manage 6 instances of Canvas globally and don’t have a full-time instructional design team. Utilizing the templating tools and getting DesignPLUS in the hands of teaching staff has been a game-changer. Not only do we get better alignment with our institution’s style guide (because we’ve made it easy) we are also able to drive better pedagogy through course templates.”
– Thomas Frizelle, Global Chief Information & Digital Learning Officer, OneSchool Global
Learn more: To see this Digest come to life, join us for our Design Matters Live! webinar: Templates to the Rescue! We’ll dive deeper into the research behind this digest edition and showcase amazing examples of how our tools can take your template designs to the next level–all while supporting instructor use and streamlining nearly-endless customization!
Already have templates that could use a functional and aesthetic glow-up? Check out the template transformation in the short video below!
Wondering how other institutions use templates to meet the diverse design needs of their institution? Watch how Boston College uses DesignPLUS to develop and support templates across different programs and course modalities, all while maintaining a distinctive brand!
Are you an existing DesignPLUS customer, interested in learning more about how to use Templates in the Sidebar? Check out this under 5-minute training video. Plus, you can kickstart your template building process with the DesignPLUS Library’s collection of template pages, designed by institutions just like yours!
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.
David Goomas & Kurt Czupryn (2019): Using a Learning Management System Common Template in Teaching Adult Basic Education: Opportunities and Challenges, Community College Journal of Research and Practice, DOI: 10.1080/10668926.2019.1669229
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.
Joosten, T., & Cusatis, R. (2019). A cross-institutional study of instructional characteristics and student outcomes: Are quality indicators of online courses able to predict student success? Online Learning, 23(4), 354-378.
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).
Muljana, P. S. & Luo, T. (2019). Factors contributing to student retention in online learning and recommended strategies for improvement: A systematic literature review. Journal of Information Technology Education: Research, 18, 19-57.
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
Thaler, R. H., Sunstein, C. R., & Balz, J. P. (2014). Choice architecture. The behavioral foundations of public policy.
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