Week 13, Fall 2019

The Impact of Design and Aesthetics on Usability,Credibility, and Learning in an Online Environment

Canvas Hack: Missing Submissions

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed that Canvas awarded 10% to all my students who didn’t turn in  an assignment. Now, that’s generous but not helpful! Students with missing papers still showed up in the “Message Students Who” feature, so I contacted them as usual.

The glitch seems to be in the Late Policies feature in the New Gradebook.

Presenters at the Can-innovate conference reported that students and instructors see different grades when the Late Policies feature is activated. They recommended simply filling in 0’s manually.

Missing entries will show up in SpeedGrader as blank pages, and in the gradebook as dashes instead of essay icons, so they’re easy to spot. 

At the District Summit, we also discussed a certain lack of precision in how the Late Policies feature calculates deductions for late work and requested changes in future iterations from the Canvas rep.

Guest Blogger
Laura Pecenco, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Sociology

Aesthetics and Online Teaching

I only started teaching online recently, in Spring of 2019. A big part of my reason for being a holdout for so long was that I was convinced that I wouldn’t be able to inject personality into an online class, that there was some material that just couldn’t be communicated or learned through an online platform. I thought that online courses would be “flat” and that student engagement would never be able to match what I saw in a face-to-face class. But when I finally began teaching online, I was amazed at how connected I felt to the students, how much control I felt I had over the “feel” of the course, and how engaged the students seemed. A big part of this seemed to be about the visual design of the course.

Aesthetics in Teaching

Aesthetics are often underestimated in teaching; we assume that content or substance is much more important than style. In fact, sometimes people even think that a focus on aesthetics are trying to make up for a lack of substance (David and Glore 2010)! However, aesthetics can facilitate learning by increasing student’s perceived value of the material and ease of use of the platform, fostering their motivation, and avoiding any negative experiences in class (Malamed 2015). We know that companies spend lots of money on user experience (think about how important it is to understand the icons on a website, for example!) – we should use this same approach when designing our classes (if only we had their budgets 😝).

My Experience

At the beginning of each course, I began asking students about what they’ve noticed about their own learning habits and what is most helpful for them; many of our students identify as visual learners, and this is something that I’ve definitely seen to be true in my own teaching experience. I started realizing the power of images when I would do exam review in class; I’d ask students to give me an example for a term and they would say “like that comic we looked at in class,” or “remember that video we watched where someone…,” etc. This led to me using “intro images” for my courses – to kick off each class meeting, I select an image that we, as a class, dissect in order to introduce important concepts for the chapter. This also led to me asking students to create their own artistic representations of course concepts (see Laura Gonzalez’s awesome blog post on using arts-based teaching in her classes for more on ways to do that!!).

Some Ideas

Students’ first impressions of an online class are very important. Having a welcome page that provides an overview of who the instructor is, what the course is about, and what the expectations are is very important. But part of that welcoming feeling is also in the layout and design of the page. After seeing one of our online mentor Denise Maduli-Williams’ beautiful welcome pages when I was doing my first online course, I was inspired to use Lumyer to make my picture have some extra pizazz ;) I made a simple welcome video, demonstrating to students how to use our particular Canvas course, available in my first module. I used Canva to create original welcome signs and course title banners, both for the course image that is seen on the Canvas dashboard and for the title of title of the course on my welcome page. I also created banners for items like my weekly table of contents; that image I keep consistent each week so that students understand the basic format immediately (it is important to consider when repetition is useful and when it becomes redundant and stale). I use color and fonts to organize ideas.

Images are so useful. I use images on every single page, including discussion boards and assignments. Images and videos provide additional content; they’re not just window-dressing! And often those images are what sticks in students’ heads (see the sections above on aesthetics in teaching and what I’ve noticed about the importance of visual design!). And I make sure that my images are inclusive; I try to always be conscientious of who is depicted in my images and ensure that I’m representing people of many races and ethnic backgrounds, gender identities, abilities, ages, relationships, etc. This is a great way to connecting with students and making them feel represented and encouraged to participate.

I also create videos to explain the images I’ve selected – using Clips, I can add icons, underline areas, add text, etc. to further make my point. Turning regular text into a comic strip can be very effective as well!

I break up any large blocks of text with headers and images. I always display the inline image of any PDF that I’m adding, so that it can be viewed without students having to download it (and so that students don’t have to navigate away from the page); in a similar fashion, I embed any Padlet or other outside tool if possible, rather than having students have to link out to it. Not only does that add color to the page, but everyone’s ideas are then visible to all! I embed videos, rather than using the small automatic preview that pops up when you use YouTube videos, so that they are large enough for easy viewing.

I am sure that there are many more wonderful ways to create beautiful visual design in our online courses – please share what you’ve found! I’d love to keep exploring this – I know that I’ve just hit the tip of the iceberg since I’m still building my online class experience. I’ve also only ever done basic HTML and would like to integrate even more apps into my courses. Please comment here with your suggestions!

Additional Resources

I love that many of the Byte-Sized Canvas videos focus on aesthetics:

• Callout Boxes
• Tables
• Home Page Design
• Adding Videos 
• Announcements
• Visual Design in Canvas: Course offered by Northwestern University

References

David, Alicia and Peyton Glore. 2010. “The Impact of Design and Aesthetics on Usability, Credibility, and 
      Learning in an Online Environment.” Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration XIII (IV),      Winter <https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/d81f/52eb61bfa1c583ea9e49f5490704b0ebcd4d.pdf>

Malamed, Connie. 2015. “Why Aesthetics Matter to Learning.” Association for Talent

Development April 28 <https://www.td.org/insights/why-aesthetics-matter-to-learning>

Supporting DSPS Students in Online Classes
David Clark, Assistant Professor/Counselor
Kandice Brandt, M.S., Professor/Counselor, DSPS Coordinator

Download slides here: Supporting DSPS Students Online

How to provide extended time on tests and exams for your DSPS students:

Please remember that many of your DSPS students will have the approved accommodation of extended time on tests and exams.  

You will need to make this adjustment ahead of time in CANVAS. 

For step by step instructions on how to provide extended time for your tests, quizzes and exams, click here: https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-13053-4152276279