Course Design for Sticky Learning

Okay. So welcome everybody. This is our first webinar out of a series of three we're doing. And today we're going to be looking at the course design for sticky learning. That'll be presented mainly by Graeme, and myself, but Greg will be doing most of the talking as he is very much the brains behind this. So my name is Joe Stafford.

I'm the senior account executive for all of FE in the UK and Ireland. And we're really intrigued, interested in doing this webinar. See if there's more to dive into, you know, what questions are out there from people currently using cameras, what people looking to possibly make the move but really also sort of show what camps can do, go in-depth in some things. This is a lot of the learnings we've had dealing with lots of different customers and prospects. Graeme will be leading this session today.

He's the Indian manager of all solutions engineers. Interesting factors I just learned is that he's what's a pipe bolt form from a member from Take That. Now, I can't say that, but that shows what kind of a what kind of experience Graham is usually in a public but he very much knows everything about Canvas, all the ins and outs. So if you have any questions, please put them in the Q and A. We will get to them.

Any easy questions I'll try and answer during the session, all of the harder questions are lethal Graeme at the end of it. But don't be shy today, throw all your questions into the chat, please. And we've no no further ado I'll pass over to Graham for free to give yourself a bit more robust introduction than that. Not over to Graham. I don't need any more instruction on that.

It's just, you know, it's great to meet everybody, e meet, zoom meet. I can't actually see anybody, but I'm assuming you're out there, and that's a good thing. It's, this is gonna be a, of, as much of an interactive session in platform as I can possibly make it. But as of all these things, it requires some kind of presentation at beginning and some slides that I wanna go through. It's important because it sets the com it sets the context of what we're gonna look at.

Also, I I'm obviously unaware of people's ability levels in canvas, but I'm also conscious of that. So as we go through the various things we're gonna go through today, I will make a point of just sort of having some little mini stop off points, and also, we'll keep the session as informal as we can. Just move my microphone actually out with my line of sight because it's right in my eye. And so we're gonna keep it as serving as informal as you can, but also and I will explain anything that requires a kind of a a a bit more of an in-depth explanation because we're going into some of the real fun parts of Canvas campuses, an amazing platform. There's a whole bunch of things we're gonna look at today.

There may be things in there you've never thought of, never seen, never wanted to look at even. But the idea of this entire session is to sort of start to think about the way we can structure things in a slightly different way. So without further ado I'll just go through some of these slides now. So the core theme of this session is to evaluate how we think about our course designs or our user experience and how we construct learning, and a learning journey in the platform. The aim of this session is gonna be show you how, show you some course design ideas or some some a course design idea, some simple applicable tricks.

I use the term simple, but just applicable tricks. That's, you know, they're not necessarily simple, but nothing here is gonna be something that's time consuming for you to set up. Or at least it could be set up and replicated fairly quickly. So the idea is to give you all of those tools, and these tools are really designed to help make the, courses sticky. Now the idea is stick has been around a while.

You might have come across it in sort of web design terms or marketing or project design. It's it's been around there for a while, and it's pretty self explanatory in some ways but there is a caveat just to to how we're gonna look at it and how we're gonna think about it today. In marketing parlance, stickiness determines the likeliness of a customer sticking to your brand, by making a purchase, more than once. Okay? The the stickier your marketing strategies and efforts are, the more attention they will attract okay, kind of the concept of stickiness there. In the realm of course design, however, it's kind of more aligned with how video game design works and video games work And that means that the stickier you make your course content and course design, the more time your students will engage with the materials and the things in it, and the more likely the learning that comes from those things is likely to stick too.

So I guess that makes it kind of double sticky, double sided sticky. I don't know. Anyway, so we're gonna start this all off. Because I want to start to think about sort of cost structures and things not necessarily differently. But we're gonna start to just align them into a certain process.

So let's begin by looking at course structures. Online in person or hybrid or blended or distance or whatever you know, there's many shapes and sizes of courses, and that's all very good. No problem with that. Her but for the purpose of this particular webinar, I wanna focus on a very simple, a very simple narrative structure borrowed from literature, film, TV, and video games, the three act structure. I call popular models of this kind of thing.

It has many variations, multiple applications, and that all fine and dandy. I wanna use this because it's simple, and it forms a great foundation for the building blocks we're going to, use to get our courses super sticky. At worst, It's probably an oversimplicate oversimplification, which is strangely a very difficult, non simple word to say, it seems. At best, it's an approachable tenant that allows more learning journey organization. So do not make the mistake of thinking.

This is the beginning middle and end type notion that does indeed have three components. We all agree on that. And there is, I suppose, an approximation to a three act structure, but, that's kind of at an l the elementary level earned. We're not really we've got a bit more advanced than And that's not gonna really help us help us achieve what we're sitting at to do. Three acts implies there are three stages, as you can see in our chart there, there are nuances, there are measures, it's it's it's not a three chapter book that we're talking about.

So remember, this is the journey that we construct, and that we and this will serve as our guide, and we serve as a journey that there's students guide on that on that particular course, the students need to invest in it for its work and then take the journey. So there has to be this more of a can of a and a structure that we're looking at here. So what does it all mean? So generally speaking, second. And classic is sort of in the classic notation, of the three act structure. It's comprised of the setup, the confrontation, the resolution under each of these.

There are usually three subcomponents or story beats. So many stories films and and everything else use this notion, millions of them, in fact, you can apply, you know, hundreds of thousands of stories to this particular example, no problem. If you wanna go and do that, take that offline, not right now, stay with us. But after this, you know, if you wanna play the, you know, three act structure, what films match what, I'll start you off. Think about jaws.

Think about the matrix. There's loads of them. But we're not gonna do that. We're we know, we're get that's a game you can play. Importantly, not every film and story uses this, and there are other structures available to be sure.

But remember, we want something that we can apply to a learning journey. So let's think about that. So we're gonna look at, act one as our course set up. That's where we're gonna place our rationale, some immediate activity, get the leverage buy in of the students. Then we're gonna move that through process to the learning.

That's where these complex activities, the map applications of skills, some challenges, and strategies are broad brush statements for what we're gonna look at. Then the completion, the complex assignments, the demonstrations of skill, final showcase, examinations, assignments. The idea here is that this at least gives us three buckets in which we can place the different kinds of activity and the purpose that they exist. And this allows the students to digest those things in that context. Remember that pretty much from the from birth.

Most of the people are gonna have been exposed to this kind of story narrative three act structure through stories and everything else. So it's The idea of having a flow like that isn't unusual, which is all very good now. So we're gonna look at the sort of free extraction. That's how we're gonna have the fundamental basis. We also need to think about what we can learn from video games.

So, it's important here that that, obviously, video games are the epitome of user engagement from the way they draw players in to rewarding their progression, there's a treasure trove and strategy we can employ in our course designs after all. If if games can keep players engaged for hours on talking about video games, of course, although, you know, there's video games there, but is there any games, anything where you apply game logic. If we can apply, if games can keep players engaged for hours like that, why can't our courses be the same. What are they doing that we can, you know, other things we can borrow? So we can think about narrow our narrative engagement. That's how we immerse users in our courses.

Feedback after action. That's how we can have immediate responses and enhance learning by having immediate feedback on something that they've done. So it's an immediate thing. Remember in in games, the feedback mechanism that feeds the endorphins and releases the serotonin in the brain. Is that immediate reconciliation with something? I do something I'm rewarded for instantly.

Video games play on that server effectively, they've become the dominant force of the in the entertainment industry across the world. That's how it works. So we can tap into that. We need to reward progressive investment So the more they buy in, we can recognize their value and dedication. We can do that with micro rewards, which we're gonna look at.

We've got a sense of progression. That's our we get learners to feel committed so that they feel like they it's all for a purpose. It's going somewhere. That's a journey that we're gonna put them on. We can trigger and engage response, that means we can push notifications, urgency, clarity, and motivation towards them.

So if the system canvas will talk to them and engage them and motivate them to do things, and we can tap into that. And of course then, we're talking about, the fascination and the immersion there, drawing students into the course material, lead leading them in. That's the tonality in the language. And then, of course, we've got fairness. That's about making sure that the challenges across this are balanced, or at least you have a strategy for balancing them.

If we do that, we can start to think about Excuse me. We can start to think, about the kind of, implying that these digital credentials or macro achievements along that thing. Now obviously, Canvas has an amazing micro achievements system called credentials, which is now aligned to us. So we can we're gonna look a little bit about that and how we can use those those sort of credentials or micro achievements as those motivational boosters. Remember, no two learners are the same.

So why should their pass through a course be? We can tailor learning pathways ensuring each learner finds relevance, pacing the flexibility that suits their young eats, and we can combine those into amazing pathways and configurated journeys and configuration directed is not a word, configurable journey. Also, we need to think about how we experience design versus how we design experience. There's a bit of a dance, isn't there between crafting a learning journey and understanding how they perceive our course. So while we design experiences to guide them, we must also be attuned to the lived experience of our designs. What does that mean? Well, we need to just plan how we need to design the journey properly and design a route through it.

I know time is a big factor, so it's not, you know, we might think, well, I'm time to sit there and build these courses that do all that. But you know what? The more complicated, the more complicated the subject actually, you know, you've got a lot of content there already. You don't this is what we're gonna do isn't doesn't require us to build lots of complexity. Campus actually has all of this built in. We're just leveraging the power of Canvas to make sure that these things can happen.

So, we're gonna have to be getting a lot of this. So For example, you might think about drawing a big course map. This is just a very simple, simple map using a very basic sort of, sort of top down structure, but you can see I can start to plan my journey for the learning pathways. I can start to sort of look and see what's going to be delivered and when even at this post elementary level. It allows me to start to factor in and look at my journey of my course so that my students can come here.

They might choose to go down this killer route or this one or this one. I might combine those, and that's exactly what we're gonna look at. And by the way, when we get into canvas in a minute, the course that I've built, it will be downloadable via you guys. You can take that away. It's gonna be a a common cartridge package, which you can download, and you can import that into your own canvas, and then you can start to sort of, you'd utilize some or all of the things that are of what we're gonna look at so that will be available to you.

We're also gonna be looking at a little bit about, how we can link those journeys and those learning paths into what we call credential pathways. Again, it links to our credentialing system, and that may or may not be part of the the bigger plan for your institution or the journey, but it certainly part of the canvases, outlook, and so that's why I wanted to make sure that we look at that for those nonlinear linear paths and how we can personalize those experiences and really leverage that. Comes to sort of doing that. And of course, this all builds up to that stickiness factor that I spoke about at the beginning. Ever if you've ever wondered what makes some content unforgettable, it's that it is that stickiness factor, whether it's engaging emotions, presenting relatable scenarios, rewarding learners at the right moments, that's the things that are gonna make your content and the learning stick.

So we're talking about emotional engagement, harnessing the power of that connection between the two things, making things relatable, so we can relate things to real world experiences where we can. We have those in in interactive elements that incorporate that kind of nice notion of feedback and the the feedback loop that we can get into. Then we can consistently award achievements. Well, and from there, we can start to sort of really tailor those things and get those first impressions really rocking. And then, of course, that leads really to the good content versus great content debate.

Now no one person like me can dictate what makes your courses great and what makes your content great. That's not up to me to decide that. But based on, you know, and the notion of the millions of users we have in Canvas, we know that, you know, good content can become in many forms, documents, images, videos, learning outcomes, written assignments, powerpoints, The list is kind of, you know, non non ending. There's loads of loads of things that you'd be putting in there. But great content.

That's video quizzes and video discussions, that's using stimulus questions, branched course pathways, focused discussions, annotated submissions, macro achievements, learning outcomes, video and audio assignments, webinars, and screencasts, student related and student created content. There's a whole bunch of great content options that we've got. And again, these are out the box canvas with the exception of some of the some of the linking to macro credentials, but even that with there's a free version of that, which we can incorporate as well. The idea that, of course, is that we want, then that repetition, that retention in our courses, and in order to do that, we can it's kind of the holy grail of learning, really, by incorporating principles like the repetition and real world application of fostering both collaborative and competition, we can ensure our courses don't just teach, but they truly embed the knowledge in that deep, meaningful way. And so again, I'll make sure these slides are available to you.

They're more of the launch point for conversations for conversations with how you might be thinking about your courses internally or if you're having a reflection on what you've got. And remember that in Canvas, you create templates or blueprints, and you can have these things in and roll them out across multiple multiple, associated courses as well. So it's not like you have to kind of reinvent this wheel all the time. But the idea is then to create retention in courses. They're not just retention of learners coming back into the building, but people wanting to come back and and continue progressing with the things putting on your cost because if you keep doing that and they have a great experience, they'll keep coming back.

It's as simple as that. And of course, This then means that we've got, you know, we make sure that our content is not relevant. It's the anchor really that ensures learners see value in what they're studying. So it's tailored content to their needs, adapting to those changing trends, and always offering practicum practical actionable insights throughout the course. Now this is all great in theory.

But what does it look like inside of a course? Well, I've taken the liberty of creating a little course, and we're gonna go through some of the parameters of that and what that looks like and how and what the setup of that is. So Right now, you're inside of my, sandbox. One second because I'm gonna cough. Excuse me. And, we're looking at, say, canvas dashboard, which is obviously my Canvas dashboard, just as a quick one zero one for any non canvas people or people who have limited exposure to the way Canvas operates, main navigation is on the left, main content stuff happens in the middle, And then on the right, you've got your to dos, your reminders, you know, this bits where Canvas is getting smart and sort of telling to me, hey, you've got loads of things you need to do as you can see.

And potentially the tiniest, teacher in the world, and because I have thousands of things that I need to do. But that said, that's because this is my sandbox, and it's, you know, it's got loads and loads of things going Now I've created a specific course for what we're gonna look at, and this course is special. So we're gonna look at the course from the structure of it and how that's put together. Now again, I'm gonna make this course. There's a downloadable for you guys, so you can download this and have a go and look and look into this and and explore the content in in of itself.

So first thing we're gonna look at is, obviously, I've applied some you know, some styling to this. So there's some styling inside of our rich content editor too. It has an HTML editor built in. You can add inline styles and all that, but you're gonna as is. So you can, you know, you can utilize this and repurpose this however you see fit.

What I want to talk about a little bit here is is the difference with how this cost is gonna operate for learners. So in reality what this is, and the fact what I'm gonna do is we're actually gonna dive out this homepage and I'm gonna go to the module structure, and then we're gonna come back to this. So what I want this course to be able to do, here's my three act set up. So I've got in fact, let's claps those views. So here's my three exits up.

I've got act one, act two, and then I've got act three down the bottom leg. Now in order to complete Act three in order to get the final assessments, they've gotta complete the various component parts that are inside these items. Everybody gets access to the setup. Now inside of the setup, I've created a series of pages, and this can be in in in any context. This could be assignments pages, but there's some key things in there I want I want you to think about.

So firstly, when I've got my landing pages, okay, you'll notice that I've got, I've just added these headers, by the way. These are for you guys. So, you would obviously use more creative titles if you had this in a learning environment. I've just done this so you've got a sort of a an idea of what's going on in there. There's a number of things going on here.

Firstly, I'm utilizing for this course, I'm gonna be utilizing canvas mastery paths so I can create paths and branched based narrative structures through my course. If you don't know what that is, we're gonna explain. I'm also using module requirements and module prerequisites so that certain content will only unlock based on the principles of what's been completed in a prime module. I'm also then using, specific kinds of quiz to stimulus quizzes and quizzes that will then set branch pass and certain content will only appear when the students choose a particular pathway. And then even then, this credential are linked to those specific items on that pathway.

So the idea of this is it's almost like a choose your own adventure course. If you'll notice when I go to this homepage, for example, I've got here, look, that it's a choose your own path, and this is exactly how it works. So this is my two minute how to. So you can check you can start with the course information that, again, this is just generic course information that I've just put in as sort of placeholder. You'll notice that I've got, inline link to every bit of content in the platform.

So where where there's a need for a link, you can link directly to it because Canvas last which is that. One of the key things about making your course is sticky, is leveraging some of the power of thinking about how students minds work with content. We've all gone on YouTube and we've all spent, you know, some somehow come out of our YouTube for sort of, haze, maybe two hours later. Because we've taken a deep dive into the YouTube rabbit hole, and we, you know, we started off looking for something interesting. And at the end of it, we, you know, we've just found out that, you know, there's a new film star is gonna be in in the latest Deadpool movie.

And somehow we've gone from that journey in a to b. And now that journey is kind of self guiding, and there's ways you can construct that This is based around algorithms and YouTube, you know, it's suggesting things that it knows you're probably into, because it's me measuring. I'll leave you search history. Now we're not doing that here. What we're able to do is just create those links.

I've put all of the content into this so I know what interlinks with what. So I'm creating those things that need to be interlinked with each other. So I know that the students, if I if they do decide to click, they can keep on clicking go two or three layers deep. So first, content rule number one, is try and make your content more than one layer deep. So have surface content have a next layer of content and have a third layer of content that's that that's deep.

Now if you want your students to be able to just access everything like a giant Netflix bot netflix, a binge, you know, with a binge a box set, that's one method of creating a course, and that might fine. We're not looking at that here though. We could have done something like that. What I've created here is kind of strands and pathways. And so I've got here three pathways for this students can choose which pathway they go on because the content will unlock depending on what they've chosen, and that's me using cleverly using mastery paths and quizzes to be able to enable that.

So students can choose path a, which is what I've called the direct path. That's a very simple straightforward path, but it has the least rewards. And now the rewards I'm linking to achievements and digital badges. Remember you can set up did your badges limited range? Did your badges free with Canvas, and of course then you can get the big brother, credit, not big brother, but the big, you know, the big brother version, which credentials. But this path contains two secret pathways and two secret pathway achievements.

So I'm already enticing students instead. Actually, you know what? If you want, go for this direct path. It's slightly easier, or you could choose path b, which is indirect. You've got you kind of choose your own through that. This is more directive.

This is more indirect so students can choose the kind of content that they're gonna have in there, and there's slightly more achievements and pathways in there. And when I say secret things, These are assignments, and these are, other items that will unlock as the students progress through there when they've completed certain tasks. So they're not natively available. Have to actually have done something for them to unlock some of that. This appeals to that kind of core collector inside of those get inside of most students or at least students that engage with this, that they can check-in their credentials and see where they're at in the leaderboard.

Again, that can be anonymized if they don't have to have their name or anything in that. But what it means is that they're able to sort of track their progress in terms of collecting some of those hard to reach achievements and badges. And then also I've got a challenging path here. So my path, my direct path is the least amount of resistance, but the least reward. My middle path has more reward and is more add marginally more difficult, My final path is very challenging.

There's more, but there's more, pathways and achievements that are available to that, and a c student can then go and choose their path. So if they click on this, choose your path, That's gonna take them to this particular page. Obviously, I'm seeing it from the, from the teacher point of view, so we'll look at it from a student point view. But then they can choose which path they go, they answer one of those questions, which path do you want to go, and then Canvas will unlock the content for them based on what they've chosen. It won't unlock here, for example, so They'll go into this.

They'll all see. They'll all choose which, learning pathway they want. And what I've done here is created a mastery path. Master you pass are attributable to almost all assignment structures in canvas, whether it's a new quiz, classic quiz, discussion, assignment, whichever. And you'll see the MasteryPath tab.

And what I've done here is say, actually, I created a a very rudimentary three question, multi choice question. Are you gonna go for a, b, or c? And then I've just attributed a score to each one of those because in that particular strand of canvas quizzes, I can have separated I can have different scores for different responses. So I've set it up black way, so that means if they score between naught and eight, then they get to path they're gonna choose pathway, and they're gonna get the content for pathway. If they decide on path b, they're gonna get the path b content. And if they choose path c, path c, now I've I've built out more of the a because obviously you guys can sort of experiment with building out more of b and c.

Now I just put some concerts in there for placeholders, but the idea is that I can actually add, and they can even sort of add Bullian logic into these. I could see you could do that all that or build that and that, but not this and things like that. But the idea is that this is where the cont the distribution of content happens. When a student goes in here, they they take that quiz. They go through this content, so they're gonna look through this.

Well, again, we'll look through that in a minute, and I'll show you sort of some of the ideas that I've got in here as well around some more advanced things, but they're gonna go through this idea, they choose there, path, whether it's a, b, c. Now how much empowerment am I giving to those students right now? So I've already got their buy in. Because they're choosing how they engage with the material. I've I I can put all the material I want. I could have just dumped this in a giant pot and said, Hey, there you go, or I can have it as the kind of topic a topic b and do the kind of that do it that way.

But because I'm engaging the learners and dolphins and utilizing a little bit of that game logic, this is instantly begin we're gonna have them coming back because it's got the more sticky qualities. Now when Pathay is released, so you'll notice in here, this is organizational. So you can see, for example, the students aren't gonna see this. They'll see it when it's unlocked, but they won't see this pathway content. That's purely for my benefit, hence the reason it's not published.

But they can choose here to sort of click on those and it'll give them an indication of what to expect. So they can always say see that. So if I, for example, if I just drop in the student view here, so this is the student in that exact course, You can see they've got home. They've got limited, menu here. They don't need all of the other menu options at the moment because remember the courses, those are provided to them as they go.

I want them to sort of get it as as they're sort of progressing through. But you can see, for example, I can choose to go I can choose the information for the path a, path b, If I go to see the modules here as the student, well, it's gonna say that actually I can't access them. I can see those everything that everyone can see, and I can go to the main discussion area. Perhaps I need to sort of take a note and add some commentary in the discussion area. This is an area that I've added so that everybody can talk to each other.

And this is where we don't compose news, images, pictures. Hey, I've just achieved the badge. This is my social media channel for my course. Now I've said I don't want social media channels out there in the world, but I want my students to feel that they can in operate across this course posting achievement success, fun things that they've discovered where they're gonna post it and because they can do that from their app or whatever, and it's in the safe space of my course. So secondly, you'll notice that they can choose and see the pathway says so I can choose which learner, but if I need to get a bit of extra information, so what does this look like? And it says there view credentials, pathway and achievements.

So let's click on there. Wanna know what I might be able to earn from this. This is linking into our credential system. Now what I've done in the background is create some digital badges and each one of those biases is attributed to its particular part of this course so that if I'm as a student, I'm looking at this and going, okay, if I get pathway, which is here, In order for me to achieve path a, I need to complete all of these requirements to get these digital badges that I've attributed there, and that will mean that I've completed path a. Now I've just put them as simple Path page one, Path page two.

Those could be attributable skills that you've had for them to demonstrate. So for example, this could be record yourself doing a screen cast are utilizing Adobe Photoshop to create a logo. This could be record a video presentation where you've given me a thirty second sales pitch. This could be, recorded meeting, a team meeting, where you all discuss a central bit. The the list of what this is actually limited only by your imagination and by what Canvas can provide, but you can link all of these required badges really easily to the specifics on the course itself and then tie them into these pathways, and this pathway then becomes that visible, check-inable journey, for me to check-in and go, actually, I can see really easily where I'm at with that.

And I can sort of say, right, this this is that might be the path for me. Now I, you could create another path for, b and c as well in the same way. You can have multiple path linked to a course. You can even link those together to form larger coherent holes, but the idea here, of course, is that, I can instantly see the rewards and gratifications. Now remember that the language you place in these is akin to their sticking If you want students to perceive these as collectible achievement type things like they do in video games, then just don't create them tonally that way.

Make them have that. Obviously, attribute them to something they've had to do because that means that the skill outcome is linked directly to the, badge that they're earning, very important. But you can create the tonality of collectability about these. You want your students to think, actually, if I do this, I can get that. But what if I go to path path b.

What if I do that? Cause I might get more. The and the the linked pathway to that would be slightly more. There'd be more rewards. They can snap to see actually. Well, maybe I'll go path eight.

And of course, the requirement that I've specified if we go back to that homepage again, the actual requirement for this is here, they must complete all three paths They can choose which path they do it and they can choose which order they do that in. But for this course to be complete for them to be able to take that final assessment, they've gotta complete all three paths and gather all those achievements pathways for that now. That's important because I need to know that by the time they do that final qualification or the final test or whatever that may be, the final formative, summative formative tests at the end, that they've they've got all of the basic skills and things required all the way through those pathways if I've attributed those to those badges, and the students have had to demonstrate the things they need to do as four to get those badges, then I know that by the time they reach my final assessment, our final assignment that I want you to do that they will have collected. If they've gone through Path a b and c, they've collected the right skills along the way, so I know that they've got a confident approach. And you'll notice that there's part of that final module structure even though they can't actually access it at the moment.

You'll notice down here as well. There's actually a final assessment practice. So once they've achieved enough parts of the pathway here, once they've achieved the a b and c, it will unlock the final assessment and the practice and when they do the practice session, they could that will then, you know, based upon the gather either you could intervene and have feedback at this point. And this, by the way, this entire system isn't designed for the the the staff to sort of launch and then sit back and wait for the, you know, the fun to begin. These moments, obviously, I've set this up as much as I can to be as, I guess interactive and hands off for this demo purposes, but know, you would leverage more assignments every assignment that you assign here could be one that you have to grade physically or whatever.

And then, of course, I come in and lock this, and then I've got the final discussion piece. That could be where it wants it's unlocked and they're finished. They can then start to talk to other students who have finished about how they found the course. You could put in their some forms and things to fill in. And some details and get to them feedback about how you then re engineer the course.

So students then are able to go in, choose their pathway from a, b, and c, and that's gonna unlock the content and they can sort of see what to expect when they go in there and and all the rest of it. So, of course, at this point, I've got information. I can just see a, b, and c, go to my homepage. This these, by the way, these videos, I could play these. I've just put in some videos from some random videos that we have.

But these videos could easily be videos that pertain to Path a, b, and c. This could be personally introduced by me, or it could be somebody else, it could be another member of your team, but either way, or you could even be students that have completed this before. And the student this comes on and says, you know, I chose, you know, choose path path a path a is the one for me. I find it really good. You're you're almost getting your students to sell a pro progression of their own course to themselves.

Again, it's all very exciting it's, oh, I'm not using any technologies here that aren't in canvas natively. Everything used to hear with the exception of, obviously, some of the styling, everything here is just text images and video. But it's about how we utilize that and how we embed that inside of this program and how exciting we make that journey. Okay. So let's just talk a little bit about the structure of these few items at the top, I'll then sort of launch into sort of, how we're going to go through that, how that's going to sort of track that progression, what that looks like from the perspective perspective.

So I've actually created, few content strands here and a few things I wanted to show you because these are often things that get overlooked. And they can form really, really cool parts of this kind of pro this kind of approach. Now, of course, Canvas can have documents assignments, assessments, discussions, quizzes, it can have all of those things. It would be crazy in LMS if it didn't do all of the crazy cool things that you can do. So you can do all of those things.

A lot of the time I see a lot of interactive content where people have sort of re become reliant on third party content creation tools like storyline, articulate things like that. There are amazing things that what they do, don't get me wrong. But if you're just creating interactive quizzes, and content and things like that, and you're leveraging a a tool like that, which limits you to kind of the scorm idea and canvas code, of course, utilize scorm objects perfectly well. No problem. If you're actually wanting to sort of get a little bit more power and a little more more feedback about what goes on in there, then of course you would want to utilize the incumbent parts the Canvas platform.

So that's exactly what we've got here today. If you've got a quiz and a scone package, then why why wouldn't you wanna use the quiz engine in in Canvas, which is more powerful? And can actually then create a much better sort of data stranding if you wanna get into the metrics of that later. So remember we had that indication here. So we're in here, I've got some, key things I want to draw your attention to. Firstly, snapping instant headers at the top with some just an instant I know where my headroom is.

Students will always need to know whether it sounds crazy this, but students always like to know where the top of the documents are and with the bottom master start to finish those needs to know what so it's like a sandwich, a mental it's mental sandwich, really, if you wanna have one. And I know it sounds like I'm saying teaching everyone to suck eggs. That's not the case at all. In terms of the way online content is absorbed, very important as part of this three act structure that we sort of focus on, all of the strands kind of focus it that way. Now while everyone's got, the amount of time.

I've said this is gonna take five to eight minutes. Always put indicative times on everything you put in your course so that your students know how much time they're going to invest it's arbitrary really, but it does give some in some basic indication. So if soon can look at that, go, well, I've actually got five minutes to spare. I'll read through that now. I would like it.

This is probably worth more than five, ten minutes, but that means it's this this is a nearly benchmark. Always put summaries at the top, where you can, because you might need to that. And if it's at the very least students gonna come in and attend a session or do something that's physical, they will at least have had chance to catch the summary maybe at the very least. So if they haven't had chance to redial thing, then they can do the summary. Also where you'll notice here, I've got some I've got a video down the side.

Remember what it said about videos being more than just videos This is a video where I can I want the students to discuss things, and I'm drawing their attention to things? This is utilizing Canvas Studio. So Canvas Studio is our amazing video, which video product which sits inside of the Canvas platform, sorry, the instructor platform, and that means that the students can start to participate and have discussions and sort of interact. Remember that students are always on the three or four screens at once even mentally. So it's oftentimes. I mean, I'm I I I don't I can't do it myself.

I'm I'm I'm I pretty much struggle with two screens that they're in any moment. Certainly, if they're not con combined to a similar subject, but my I've got a young teenage lad. He's on YouTube on one, I on his iPad he's operating on something else on his phone, and he's playing a PS four game at the same time. And I'm not sure how he's whether he's an patchy pilot in the making or something, but I don't know how he does it. He has no problem engaging that.

And he's, you know, he's he's it's Joe Average teenager. So he's not, and, you know, he's not he's not some kind of crazy savant. He's just, you know, that's what they do. So, I think com I can confidently put more than just text in image on the page feeling that students are capable of interacting with more than that. And if you've got video on there, I could tell you now there's a reason why TikTok is one of the biggest platforms in the world because people just like videos, short videos.

Key to that, by the way, notice that video is a minute long, let's not put a three hour Openheimer video at the top there. Let's make sure that our video should all be better to have multiple videos of less than two minutes than five, ten minute videos. Five oh, sorry, one ten minute video. I can tell you that for a fact. Plus we can utilize studios tracker whose season what, and that's another conversation.

But again, I've just broken this text up, and so it's got a nice flow. That's an audio podcast link, or an audio link inside a studio studio can break video and audio as well, and that can have audio commentary on it if you wanted to. I've also linked podcasts in there. Really brilliant podcast. I strongly recommend that.

But there's, also, you can put podcast feeds down aside here as well. And there's, you know, there's nothing to stop you embedding a special content inside a canvas. It's kind of what it's for. You'll notice I've got hashtags down here as well. I can also put extra links inside of here if I want to to put that other content.

Remember what I said about multiple layers didn't, and then I've got the long form I say. This is something that is off often overlooked when we po when we approach that is that sometimes, people have the text in here and they just wanna maybe cut and paste that into something else quickly make notes, or just have it available. Well, they can very just quickly grab that cut, paste straight into something else if that's what they want to do. You're just making your course immersive by making it available and the content available. So just some techniques that you can do on a page that really can bring value to that.

Then I wanna talk quickly about the stimulus question. This is a particular type of question that exists inside of, our new quizzes engine. New quizzes is a part of Canvas. There's obviously classic quizzes, new quizzes. One of the questions we always get asked is what, you know, why would you use one or the other? My answer that is always it gives you twice the amount of power for quizzing.

So why wouldn't that be a good thing? You've got twice as much stuff you can do. The new A feature that a lot of people are missing about quiz the quizzes is that it now features the rich content editor ubiquitously through it. So that means I can when I create stimulus questions, I can embedded documentation or pdfs or documents or videos or whatever I want inside of here, and then I can add questions that run alongside that. And remember that I can then use mastery paths to dictate where this ghost is looking to stop me launching another quiz with more paths in it and having nested pathways inside of here, so I'll quickly answer that and submit that. That's gonna auto grade, give you some feedback and everything else.

Remember that it's important that you have feedback. It's attributed to all of your quiz questions and things like that. So you're gonna get that. So obviously, I've got here some basic feedback there. Look, yeah, I didn't do too well.

Oh, yeah. Got it. Got it. Got the right one right. That's not bad.

So good old, fifty percent. And then I can go back. So let's go back. So again, stimulus questions are likely to be to put content on the left and then ask the questions on the right. It's a really powerful way because even if I just have one or two questions on there, brings that particular thing to life, and I think that's very important.

We're gonna quickly nip into let me just go back in here, nip into, annotated assignments, something again that's overlooked. If you're if you've got a document and you want your students to be able to write upon that, either with their iPad phone or in this case with, with taking their, you know, paintbrush and just writing, you know, physically writing or making notes on it like this, So I'm gonna scroll up and say yes and doing they can highlight certain areas and do what take notes and put them on there particularly and do all that kind of thing. They can do all of that. And then once they've completed and gone through that, whether that's a form, whether it's a PDF of whatever you might want it to be, they can then submit an assignment, and that's gonna get submitted to me with their annotations on it so that I can look at that. Now I can check their understanding, I can check what they're making notes on.

This is more than just assignment submission. This is enabling me to sort of check that they're actually taking things on board, that they're note taking, which is really, really important as they progress through their academic careers. Again, and that's an assignment type purely based out of Canvas. So if you wanted to create that, again, we'll add apply some we'll give you some instructions and guidance on the back of this so you can sort of go in there. And have a look at that.

Now we've gone through our sort of content and how we have that. We've got the week stimulus question here. I've got a landing page in here. I've put some content. I can I can I can wait and put some additional links? Now that's kind of more like a live feed.

The idea is as the teacher is that I can sort of build upon and add more links to that as it goes on. So there's not at the minute, but as this course starts to to get into its foray, can start to build more in there. You'll notice I've got a nice interactive object in here as well. So I'm able to sort of embed interactive objects and sort of create that kind of space. What does the door mean? Well, This allows me to have that set up.

Let's go and choose a pathway. So I think maybe we'll choose path a. So I'm gonna choose Let's resume because I've already had a look at that, sneak it up. That's going to choose path a. Okay.

So now I've gone that's gonna auto grade. Tell me that, you know, you chose path a. Well done. That's good path to choose, which it probably is. Give that a minute the background then, that's gonna unlock a load of content.

So here we go, pathway. Yeah. I've chosen pathway, the direct path. Let's return back. Get some of my modules now.

And hey presto, all of my path a content has now appeared. You'll notice that the path a and b still remains unlocked to me. Now what that sum unleashed is a load more assignments and things I could do. I've got my own discussion that's linked just to that path, because that might be a discussion or something that I want them to do. There's even videos specifically for Cafe.

And here again, I've got that nice three three video layout, which I've got there, and I can sort of show them. So instead of having one video with lots of things, I can have three videos, remember they can operate across multiple screens. What all this means is that instead of me creating and thinking about my course in terms of straightforward, loading the content, sort of shuffle it into different sort of stages or topics or headers like that, I'm starting to think about the journey I want those students to be on. I'm start starting to link badges and things like that. So if I just actually get the student away, I'm starting to link the those badge all importantly, all importantly to the particular items within that course so that I don't know why it's doing that.

So that I can sort of link and link to these pathways and start to issue badges when those students achieve now. The final thing I'll leave you with is this. Remember, you do get a copy of this course because, you know, you guys are awesome. When I have started to attribute badges to the various items. There's nothing to stop me from creating.

Like I said, I've inside of this course, there's hidden badges. So these badges that and there's achievements that get unlocked when they do certain things when they achieve certain score thresholds. And when they do that, it only unlocks a particular assignment like a side question again. They don't have to do them. But if they do them, they get the extra badges that they can earn.

Now because I've set that up in that way, it also means that if I want to, I can create an announcement in here I want there to be just a time limited badge, let's say I'm I've decided that if everyone does this particular assignment within seven days, they get this you did the assignment in seven day badge and you get a free Vatch for a cup of coffee. I create a course announcement with that in. I'll link the badge to the assignment. They want that to be, and I embed that assignments inside of my course and then link it to one of those micro paths so it's hidden somewhere in either where it is as a teacher, but the students will then go hunting through their content, revisiting and looking through things trying to find it. Creating that engagement and bringing them back is a very, very powerful thing to do.

Now I hope, this has given you some plenty of food for thought and also giving you some sort of insight into how courses can be more immersive. They can be more sticky. You don't need lots and lots of complexity. You just need a plan, and then you use Canvas to really leverage the power that it has to create that journey. When you do that, magic happens, I can promise you that.

And that's me signing out because I think we're out of time. Joe, over to you. A few times. We've actually got one minute left. There's a question coming in straight away, which I love, because I was just gonna say, any questions, we're more than happy to run it maybe a few minutes over if people have time.

As Graham said, just very quick before we dive into the questions, this course will be shared with you. Anybody who has any more, maybe after this, any questions or wants to dive into this, for free to reach out to your CSMs or you can also send me a direct email. I'll put my email in a chat in a second, and we can schedule some time to go through anything. First question that came in, from Stephanie Skolk. I hope I pronounced that correctly.

Is it possible to define example, only two of the three pathways need to be completed to finish the course, always are always necessary to complete all pathways that are in one course. Graham on a US art wall, even I think I know. Yep. That's a great question. And, yeah, absolutely, you don't I I just said it said that it was, a a bit of an all or nothing process.

Because it made the the course that I designed just a little bit more friendly for when you sort of take it apart. But, yeah, absolutely. You'd you don't have to have that could just be complete when you finished a or a and b or b and c or whatever. I've just specified it all. So, absolutely, you can do that.

No problem whatsoever. Yep. Perfect. So we've answered that question. I've just put my email in the chat for anybody who either wants to have a conversation about some of the things you've seen today or how to further and roll that.

And then one question we actually have, to all of the attendees is, who's gonna be, joining our next webinar on the fourth of October, that is much more about the outcome based, assessments in further education. Today, we really had a look at how to make your course sticky and make, you know, students engage and everything. The next session will be much more about the the outcomes. And the assessment types, for next week. And that'll be on the fourth of October.

You'll be able to find the exact same where you found found this link. We have no more questions coming in. So far I can see that everybody, bar one is coming to the next session, which is nice to see. We're warming it over. There's no more questions coming in.

We just like to say thank you to everybody who came today. We hope to see you at the next session as well. I can see more and more people clicking on that. Yes. Which makes us very happy.

This is something we are interested in doing more often, a bit more of a deeper dive into Canvas, the ifs house, what's if anybody has any ideas or just wants to have a quick chat, feel free to reach out to us. You can send ideas directly to me or we can just schedule a quick chat to go through any of it. Thank you all for joining. And we hope to see you guys next time.