Aligning Inclusive Course Design Principles with Your Canvas Site
Summary:
Use this resource to learn more about inclusive course design principles—transparency, belonging, and accessibility—and how you can integrate these principles into your Canvas course structure and communication.
Principles of inclusive course design
Let’s focus on three main principles of course design that support all students’ learning:
- Transparency helps students understand how and why they are learning course content in particular ways (tilthighered.com). Transparency can also be characterized by "the act of reciprocal communication, in the interactions among instructors and students who are sharing their understanding, plans and expectations with each other" (Winkelmes, M., 2023)
- Sense of belonging is a feeling of connectedness and an experience of being valued by others (Strayhorn, 2018) . Belonging can also be defined specifically within the classroom as “students’ sense of being accepted, valued, included, and encouraged by others (teachers and peers) in the academic classroom setting and of feeling oneself to be an important part of the life and activity of the class” (Goodenow 1993, p. 80)
- Accessibility is an asset-based course design approach to account for individual learner variability (Artze-Vega et al., 2023) and supports all students as they interact within the learning environment by reducing barriers and increasing student agency (The UDL Guidelines).
Integrating these principles into your course design
The suggestions listed below can help you make incremental improvements to your course.
Transparency
General course design suggestions
- Provide clear communication about course expectations.
- Include a purpose, task, criteria for major assignments.
Learn more: Check out this Teaching Hub collection on How can you make assignments transparent?
Canvas suggestions
- Help make course navigation easy and clear from your Canvas home page.
- Use consistent formatting and flow across weeks (e.g., put assignments and readings in the same place each week).
- Teach students how to navigate your Canvas course.
Sense of Belonging
General course design suggestions
- Spend time being explicit with students that they belong throughout the semester.
- Demonstrate your care of students.
Learn more: Check out this Teaching Hub collection on Practical approaches to support student belonging in the classroom.
Canvas suggestions
- Create a welcoming Canvas course site using images and ‘beautiful questions’ relevant to your course content.
- Articulate ways students can engage with their peers and instructor, and provide this in multiple locations.
Accessibility
General course design suggestions
- Integrate various types of learning materials (videos, text, audio).
- Ensure videos are captioned, audio materials are transcribed, text materials include headings and readable fonts.
- Design multiple means for students to demonstrate their learning.
Learn more: Check out the 7 Pillars of Digital Accessibility.
Canvas suggestions
- Use alt text for images, graphs, and figures, headings in pages and in documents, and descriptive text for links.
- Review your course accessibility through the Canvas accessibility checker.
- Commit to making small accessibility improvements over the semester.
Want to make more substantial changes to your course design in Canvas? The Center for Teaching Excellence at UVA has a set of templated courses that can help get you started in creating a transparent, welcoming, and accessible Canvas course. Check out the next resource in this collection to learn more about these templates!
Why is it important to spend time on your Canvas course design?
A backward, integrated course design process grounded in motivation theory and high impact practices can set instructors up for creating a well-aligned and engaging course where deep learning can occur. Recent research on teaching and learning in higher education has identified additional important aspects of course design and digital learning spaces instructors should consider when (re)designing a course:
- Classroom environment matters! Students have more positive perceptions, are more engaged, and learn more when they feel supported, welcomed and included in a course (Levinsson et al., 2024; Woo et al., 2022).
- How you communicate about your course matters! Research on course syllabi ( e.g., Tamayo et al., 2022; Wheeler et al., 2019) and courses in learning management systems (e.g., Khoo Mei Sui et al.l, 2024; Stoesz & Niknam, 2022) indicate that the structure, tone, and content of these materials can influence students’ perceptions of the course, instructor, and motivation for learning before students enter the classroom.
References
- Artze-Vega, I., Darby, F., Dewsbury, B., & Imad, M. (2023). The Norton guide to equity-minded teaching. WW Norton.
- Goodenow, C. (1993). The psychological sense of school membership among adolescents: Scale development and educational correlates. Psychology in the Schools, 30(1), 79-90.
- Khoo Mei Sui, L., Abdullah, N. L., Balakrishnan, S., & Meor Osman, W. S. (2024). Students' Perceptions of Its Usefulness and Ease of Use on Learning Management System. International Journal of Advanced Computer Science & Applications, 15(7).
- Levinsson, H., Nilsson, A., MÃĨrtensson, K., & Persson, S. D. (2024). Course Design as a Stronger Predictor of Student Evaluation of Quality and Student Engagement than Teacher Ratings. Higher Education: The International Journal of Higher Education Research, 88(5), 1997-2013.
- Merchán Tamayo, J. P., Rocchi, M., Lennox Terrion, J., & Beaudry, S. (2022). First impressions matter! An experiment comparing autonomous and controlling language in course syllabi. International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 16(2), 7.
- Stoesz, B. M., & Niknam, M. (2022). Student perceptions of the visual design of learning management systems. Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology, 48(3), 1-22.
- Strayhorn, T. L. (2018). College students' sense of belonging: A key to educational success for all students. Routledge.
- Transparency in Learning & Teaching (TiLT): https://Tilthighered.com
- Universal Design for Learning (UDL): https://udlguidelines.cast.org
- Wheeler, L. B., Palmer, M., & Aneece, I. (2019). Students’ perceptions of course syllabi: The role of syllabi in motivating students. International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 13(3), 7.
- Winkelmes, M. (2023). Introduction to Transparency in Learning and Teaching. Perspectives In Learning, 20 (1). Retrieved from https://csuepress.columbusstate.edu/pil/vol20/iss1/2
- Woo, C. W., Whitfield, T. S., Britt, L. L., & Ball, T. C. (2022). Students' Perception of the Classroom Environment: A Comparison between Innovative and Traditional Classrooms. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 22(1), 31-17.