September 2024 Newsletter

Please Join Us on Tuesday, October 29th!

Don’t miss our semi-annual virtual customer gathering! We’ve got some exciting product updates that we think you’ll really – ahem – fall for, and as always, there will be plenty of practical information, opportunities to provide feedback, and of course, fun!

Check out the agenda and register so we can send you access information and keep you posted.

Product Updates

DesignPLUS Course Upgrade Tool: Now Available in Beta!

We recently announced an important new feature in the DesignPLUS Sidebar that will make the transition from the legacy Sidebar much easier. As you may know, all Canvas course content built with the legacy Sidebar must be upgraded to ensure compatibility with the new Sidebar. Our new Course Upgrade Tool provides a highly efficient way to upgrade all of the content across a course from one convenient place!

This new tool can be accessed in the Course Sidebar if you have enabled beta features in your DesignPLUS User Settings. To learn more about how the Course Upgrade Tool works, you can watch the brief demonstration that Kenneth provided in a recent webinar, and review this new information in the DesignPLUS User Guide. As always, if you have questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to Cidi Labs Support.

DMD Screenshots (8.5 x 11 in) (8)

Recent Releases

Over the past month, we released updates to the following products that include minor enhancements and bug fixes, which you can read all about in the respective Release Notes: To receive product release notifications, join our Customer Slack Community!

New Resources

Can Course Design Create a Sense of Belonging for Learners?

Our recent webinar explored this important question by exploring what the research says and providing practical tips to increase students’ feelings of belonging in your Canvas courses. In case you missed it, you can watch the recording here:

Boston College’s Story:
Capturing & Scaling Quality Canvas Course Design

In this webinar, Tim Lindgren and John FitzGibbon from Boston College’s Center for Digital Innovation in Learning (CDIL) shared their best practices for scaling effective course design practices beyond online programs to on-campus courses. Kenneth joined them to show how DesignPLUS has offered Boston College a flexible and affordable framework for developing a library of custom themes and content blocks for the BC community.

Featured New Knowledge Base Articles

Events

Scaling Course Design Best Practices
October 22nd at 12pm MT

Do you daydream about what design feats you could accomplish if there were only more of you or your team? Then we’ve got a webinar for you! Enter the vortex of possibility to learn how to achieve course design feats in terms of speed and course quality that you didn’t know were possible. Scaffold an entire course in minutes? ZIP! Embed instructions for using templates or meeting quality course standards exactly where needed? BAM! Easily monitor course quality and readiness? POW! Join Cidi Labs instructional designers to see game-changing tools in action that can give you super-stretching reach to scale best practices from right inside Canvas.

Upcoming In-Person Events

The next few months will be very busy with conferences – we hope to see you at one of the events below!

October 2024
Texas Conference on Student Success: 2-4 in College Station, Texas
CUE: 5-6 in Sacramento, California
CanvasCon: 8th in Barcelona, Spain
ITEC: 21-22 in Des Moines, Iowa
MOREnet: 21-23 in Branson, Missouri

November 2024
QM Connect: 3-6 in Rosemont, Illinois
Accessing Higher Ground: 11-15 in Denver, Colorado
CITE: 18-20 in San Diego, California
OLC Accelerate: 17-22 in Orlando, Florida

December 2024
DET/CHE: 6-8 in Monterrey, California

Stay Connected

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Happy Fall Y’all,

The Cidi Labs Team

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