Educators can work with an instructional designer or a Canvas admin to develop online courses in Scarlet Canvas. Some online course development steps for Canvas courses are:
Course planning and development:
- Fill out the course development planning worksheet to better define your course audience, content, and objectives. There are Qualtrics and MS Word versions of the course planning worksheet available.
- Use the backwards design methodology thinking of learner outcomes first. Outline learning objectives for the course. Learning objectives are typically listed in the introductory pages of the first module.
Course building in Canvas:
- Setup course modules and pages. Embed video content from MediaSite checking that closed captions are working. A good practice is to include a ‘meet your instructors’ page in the first module with educator bios.
- Quizzing – Decide on a quizzing / learning checks strategy. Many courses include a short quiz at the end of every module that unlocks the next module on a passing score. Some courses have longer pre and post course assessments in the first and last modules. Questions can be stored in question banks and imported into various module quizzes. Studies have shown that taking quizzes helps participants better retain what they learned.
- Decide if including learning objects from H5P would enhance learning in the course. Participants have different learning styles. Some types of learning objects might help them retain more knowledge.
- Course evaluation – Setup course evaluation surveys in Qualtrics and add links in the Canvas course. Typically a link to a course evaluation is added in the last module, the course completion module.
- Decide on how to issue course completion certificates to participants. If using automated certificates from Canvas catalog, turn them on in the course listing settings and paste in the certificate HTML template. Tweak the HTML template to fit the specific course.
Reviewing course pages for accessibility, branding compliance, and educational experience quality assurance.
- Review course page accessibility using resources like the WAVE tool, the internal Canvas accessibility checker, and/or Lighthouse tool in Chrome.
- Review course for branding compliance and educational experience quality assurance.
- Add instructors to the course and give them the Teacher role in Canvas.
- Share the course shell with a small cohort of educators and do a peer review.
- Analyze feedback from the peer review and decide what changes to make. Keep technical changes in a changelog.txt text file in the course files.
- Test changes made with a test student account. Check that course registration and payment are working as expected. Setup any special promo codes and test that they work.
Course launch, marketing, and post-launch monitoring:
- Make final changes, open the course for enrollment, and promote the course in social media and other outlets.
- Monitor how the course is working out for participants. Review feedback from participants and instructors for ideas to improve the course. Note small technical improvements and fixes in the changelog.txt text file.