Online Learning Consortium: Transforming Professional Development with Canvas

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The Online Learning Consortium (OLC) has partnered with Instructure to use Canvas as its platform for offerings and programs within the Institute for Professional Development. OLC’s Institute for Professional Development offers over 70 different 3-day, 7-day, synchronous, and self-paced workshops and multiple certificate programs that cover a wide variety of topic areas and are geared toward faculty, instructors, instructional support staff, instructional designers, and institutional leaders in higher education. 

The move to Canvas has provided an opportunity for OLC’s Institute for Professional Development to consider the transformative potential of the professional development offerings we provide for our community. Instructure has been a highly-supportive partner in this process, imparting advice, training, and resources that have significantly informed the design and delivery of our offerings.

In our 20-minute session at InstructureCon, we will showcase one of our workshops and discuss how we leveraged the features of Canvas to enhance the visual design of our offerings and to create new ways of engaging with our participants. In addition, we will briefly discuss our process and roadmap for the transition. For example, we brought together a panel of experts in the field of online, blended, and digital learning to form a Canvas Advisory Group. This group has guided the work of the project by developing a vision, a mission, and a set of value statements. In this session, we will highlight the recommendations of this group that are aligned with both community needs and the most effective practices afforded by Canvas. 

Those who attend this session will gain an understanding of how to effectively leverage Canvas for the purpose of professional development at their institutions, focusing primarily on strategies of a pedagogical nature. Instructional designers and instructional support staff will see an effective model for engaging their instructors, and faculty will learn about how to use Canvas to engage their own students. 

If you are interested in registering for one of the many offerings provided by OLC’s Institute for Professional Development, please visit our full list of 70+ workshops, which include (but are not limited to) the following topics: 

  • Applying Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Principles to Online Courses
  • Creating an Interactive Syllabus
  • Designing Courses with a Multimodal Approach
  • Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) in Online Courses
  • Exploring Interactive Video Tools
  • Getting Started with Hybrid-Flexible (HyFlex) Course Design
  • Introduction to LX Design Methods
  • Neuro, Cognitive, and Learning Sciences (Parts 1 and 2)
  • Regular and Substantive Interaction: From Policy to Practice
  • Strategies to Improve Retention

In addition to workshops, OLC’s Institute for Professional Development offers formal programs that end in certification, including:

To learn more, attend our InstructureCon session "Using Canvas to Transform Professional Development" at 10:00 am (MT) or register for a workshop.

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Professional Development

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