Quarterly Newsletter - August 2023

Greetings, from Cidi Labs
Hello from the team at Cidi Labs! We hope this edition of the newsletter finds you catching your breath after what has surely been a busy start to the school year. We’ve been busy as well, working on valuable new product features and planning some great events – read all about it below…

Upcoming Events

Don’t Miss Cidi Labs Customer Day on Oct 4th!

Join us next week for a day packed with valuable information about your Cidi Labs products, as well as opportunities to provide feedback and ask questions. The detailed agenda and link to register are available here. All customers are welcome to join for the sessions that are of interest to you and work with your schedule.

APAC Customer Meeting: October 18th

For our Asia-Pacific customers, registration is now open for Cidi Labs Day, which will be held at Thomas Hassall Anglican College on Wednesday, October 18th from 9:00am – 3:30pm AEDT. Register here.

Webinar: Design Matters
October 18th at 11am MT / 1pm ET

Cidi Labs is bringing together research and action to empower more educators and course designers who make a difference in the lives of learners everywhere. We’ll share the why behind design decisions made when building a Canvas course. Using Universal Design for Learning, research on cognitive load, student engagement, student retention, and student persistence, we’ll share what design decisions can make a positive impact on your students’ success. Through the narratives of our customers who have put this work into practice, you’ll hear about the unexpected benefits for students and educators. Using Cidi Labs tools, we’ll demonstrate how to implement these research-based practices into your Canvas courses. See why design matters with Cidi Labs.

OLC Accelerate Conference
October 24th – 26th in National Harbor, MD

Are you attending the OLC Conference next month? Here are some ways to engage with us there:

Designing an Exemplary Learning Experience: OLC Webinar
November 28th at 12pm MT / 2pm ET

Did you know that the Online Learning Consortium (OLC) uses DesignPLUS and UDOIT to design the exemplary courses that are part of their Center for Professional Learning? Join this webinar to learn more about OLC’s process for designing these exemplary online learning experiences and catch a glimpse of the course template they have designed to maximize engagement in their workshops.

Other Opportunities to Connect with Cidi Labs

Come by and see us at one of the upcoming events that we’ll be participating in!

October 2023

November 2023

December 2023

  • ASCILITE: 3-6 at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand
  • DET/CHE: 6-8 in Anaheim, California

Product Updates

🚨 Reminder: Planned Outage September 30th 🚨

All Cidi Labs products will be down for a planned service outage on Saturday, September 30th, from 1:00 – 5:00 pm MT, while the database servers are upgraded. This outage will affect all products, including the DesignPLUS legacy and new sidebars. However, Canvas content created with DesignPLUS will not be affected by this downtime. The outage may not take the full 4-hour maintenance window.

September Product Releases

Earlier this month, we rolled out maintenance releases for each of our products. for more details, check out the Release Notes:

DesignPLUS Release Notes (🌟Pro tip: you can also view the release notes within the new Sidebar in the Help / Tutorials area!)

Cidiscape Release Notes

UDOIT Release Notes

TidyUP Release Notes

ReadyGO Release Notes

Helpful Resources

Knowledge Base Articles

Our Knowledge Base is always expanding to address the questions and topics that are on your mind. Here are two recent articles that you may want to check out:

How do the DesignPLUS accessibility checkers compare with the native Canvas page checker? While there is some overlap between the two, Canvas and DesignPLUS also have unique aspects to their accessibility checkers.

What are the options for installing Cidiscape? Instructions for installing Cidiscape on your own or requesting an installation session with Cidi Labs.

Connect With Us Online

Don’t forget to connect with Cidi Labs through one of our many social channels to stay up to date with events, news, and our community.

Wishing you the kind of success that can be achieved with accordions and tabs,

– The Team at Cidi Labs

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