Designing for Consistency: A Canvas Course Co-Design Project for Enhanced Student Experience

You can get the hint of the title to be shouted outside the door. This is designing online courses for continuing education learners, in case you missed that part. My name is Joe Yankis. I'm one of the instructional liners at Moncler State University. Prior to working at Moncler, I spent a few years at Rutgers University with the division of continuing studies, doing a lot of instructional sign work there. And prior to that, I was at Seaton Hall, so I'm just sort of touring all of the universities in New Jersey, I guess, at this point.

It's off to a good start, I guess. Three down a lot more to go. To give you a little sense of scope about Moncler, who we are, again, we're located in Moncler, New Jersey, which is in Northern New Jersey, just fifteen miles outside of New York City, twenty one thousand seven hundred and eighty four students according to our website last I checked, and about three hundred major minors concentrations and certificate which offers a lot of potential beyond just traditional face to face learning. And I'll get some more of that soon. About the group that I work for.

I'm part of a group called ITDS, the instructional technology and design services group. All in all, we're about twenty or so employees of instructional designers, instructional technologists, trainers, and more, multimedia specialists. The whole group is here. Few of them are right here in the grow. They maybe take a picture with them right before we started this.

So it was like a like a family photo right beforehand, but we support the university at large, through the development of online program courses, but not just that any faculty who need support as well, whether it's just using canvas, whether it's pedagogical questions, course design support, whatever it may be, where the group people come to for that support at the university. We run a lot of different workshops, consultations, and, again, just we walk faculty through the entire course design process. So what I wanna talk to you about today is some of the continuing education initiatives at Montclair State. I arrived at Montclair about two and a half years ago, and it wasn't quite on the radar yet. Least not my understanding of it.

And it started to really pick up over the past year or so, and I'll explain why in just a moment, but I wanna share with you a little bit about the vision of continuing education at Moncler State and the platform we're using for that, spoiler alert, Canvas catalog, and I'll get to that. Our courses assigned process and the steps that we take to facilitate successful partnerships with the faculty that we work with at the university. And then building those Canvas courses non traditional learners, specific things that we, take into account when designing for those types of learners, some similarity, some difference to designing for our traditional online program courses for undergraduates and graduate students. And then a little bit about what's next. So, again, the vision and the platform, why am I here? Why are we here? And at Moncler State, what is this initiative for continuing education.

I mentioned that it's relatively new. At least my take on it is that it's relatively new. Again, I've been at the university for about two and a half years. And in twenty twenty one, a new president came on board, Jonathan Capell. Prior to that, the former president was very interested building the campus.

So if you, I was chatting with someone who was a student of Moncler in the eighties, the campus looks a lot different than it used to. Again, the former president was very interested in building that campus community in a physical way. Our new leader, came in again in twenty twenty one and share this idea of Moncler unbound. What is Moncler unbound? It's this idea of meeting students where they want to learn. I mentioned that we're about fifteen miles outside of New York City.

And with that comes a lot of opportunity, right? So you have students coming to the campus traditional students who might just take some courses, go to the city on the weekends, whatever it may be. But how do we engage those students in a meaningful way with our proximity to New York, how do we attract non traditional learners to come to our campus or not? But also find a way to engage with that New York City community. It's this idea of an adaptive landscape, right, meeting learners where they wanna learn, and this really, I think, evolved out of the pandemic mick, and this idea of not just taking an online course, not just taking face to face courses, finding ways to blend the two models. Whenever our president refers to this concept, Montclair unbound because right now it's still just a concept. So just a preface to everything I'm about to share is still relatively new and unfolding, but he always mentions low residency programs and things of that nature are things that will drive students to the campus for certain very specific, very thought out periods of time where they're coming for reason, and not just, you know, just to sit in the classroom and listen to a lecture.

So vision, us practice with this concept of Moncler Unbound, creating online self paced courses to offer certificates for now. Eventually, micro credential granting courses. I've attended some really awesome sessions on the idea of of micro credentialing and building those programs, and it's something that we inspire for at there. We'll get there one day. But for right now, we're focused on recruiting different, different groups around campus who are interested in this model of developing self paced courses that are online, and just kind of break that mold of taking traditional to face courses.

But in practice, what does that look like? Any instructional designers in the room? I assume at least a few. Okay. I've attracted my known. And so we wanted to take what we were doing and what we were already doing for our online degree programs and just through role faculty support. And we wanted to adapt that into practice for this idea of Moncler Unbound.

So what still applies? What were we doing well already we can bring into this new process for continuing education courses, and what could we change? What could we rethink? What could we remodel? What could we redo? And who was our audience? Right? So I've already mentioned students, those traditional undergraduate graduate students who may come to campus and may find a course that they're interested in. But really the crux of this are the other groups that you see here, community organizations, business owners, educators, entrepreneurs outside of Right? So we wanna build the Moncler State community with new constituents who may have never found us otherwise, perhaps, an adult learner who was interested in taking a course on one specific thing and finds it at Moncler. We're starting to use, we're starting to do some internal work Canvas catalog as well, and I'll get to that a little bit too. So it's really coming together for a lot of different groups internally, only, but the main idea being that we're attracting different types of adult learners, people who might not want to go back to school for years or get their degree for the first time and who are just interested in obtaining these micro credentials. So just to give you a sense, of some of the programs that we've worked with so far within Canvas catalog, and I'll talk more about the platform in just a minute.

The first one you see here is our most successful group so far, the Ignite Entrepreneurs program. I shouldn't be surprised at the Center entrepreneurship was the most successful in adapting this model of entrepreneurship and, you know, raising alternate forms of revenue that the university is still, I think, getting used to idea of, but we've been very successful working with this group and have run multiple, multiple, cohorts this program where students, outside community members, business owners, any entrepreneur, anyone with that entrepreneurial spirit will take some, will come to campus for certain things, and then engage with different types of content online. So again, really adopting this idea. Of Moncler unbound, where you're engaging with certain things online in a meaningful way. We're using canvas in a very meaningful way, and not just doing it for the sake of hurling files up there, which any instructions finder in the room might shake a little at the idea of, but we're using Canvas in meaningful way, and we're using students' timeline campus in a meaningful way, which I think is really the most important part, bringing people here for a specific reason, for a specific purpose, and not just to sit in a classroom and listen.

Some of these other programs here, I won't get into details on all of them, but have been successful in, again, just bringing in different types of learners into the Moncler ecosystem. And just a few others here. The one I wanna point out on this slide is that last one there. That's actually of our faculty development program. So, the ITDS team has developed a series of four courses for our faculty, and we're actually starting to offer those in Canvas log now.

My hope one day is that we can recruit, other people outside of Montclair State to take some of these courses as well for professional development or faculty development. But again, right now, we're just using it to, train Moncler State faculty, on all things teaching online. And then there's some other good examples here working with some different in the college of education and elsewhere at the university to, again, just find those stakeholders who are interested in bringing this sort of content into Canvas it into Canvas catalog and meet, again, meet students where they want to learn. Anyone use Canvas catalog actively in the room. Anyone interested in learning about Canvas catalog for the first time.

Anyone never heard of it, of no clue what it is. That's okay. All good. So what is Canvas catalog? Canvas catalog is a public facing catalog of courses. Think of it as a marketplace that sits on top of Canvas that allows users to come in, whether I'm part of Moncler State or not, browse a list of courses that are available, whether those free, whether those are for a fee, and enroll and register in those courses, and then be automatically enrolled into a Canvas course save.

So I mentioned our faculty development program before. We had a qualtrics survey. People would fill it out. We'd have to manually enroll them into the course and whatnot. Canvas catalog removes all that and just allows users to enroll, pay if applicable, and then be enrolled right into the course site.

So again, this idea of a public catalog Of course listings has a really nice user interface. We've been really impressed with it so far. Those listings can be either public or private. So there have been some groups we've worked with where they have their own recruitment or interview process for the courses that we're hosting in catalog, so not the best fit for a public facing is not just, open enrollment course, but we do have the ability to hide listings and then say someone goes through this interview process to get accepted into this course, then the the people running the course can send that URL out. So, again, public or private listings available.

One of the limitations we ran to was that all these catalog entries do need to be attached to a canvas course. So if we were running an events or running some sort face to face thing that wasn't necessarily tied to a canvas course. That's one thing I think we're still grappling with on how to deal with, is this idea that when you create a catalog entry, you do need to attach it to a canvas course. And I won't go through all of these bullets, but just to give you an idea of the ideas that you come in, you browse, you pay, and you enroll it does integrate with our point of sale system. Dan in the front's gonna yell at me if I don't get them all right.

I think it's touch net, banner, and workday. That we use. Okay. So, we, we have those integrations set up where we can work with our finance folks to have money routed that comes in through Canvas catalog to the respective departments that that money is supposed to go to. So that's really nice.

Payments accepted by credit card only. They're a coupon and discount code functionality, which we've used a number of times for various situations where I've had to generate coupon codes for different use cases, and that's proven to be to be really useful for certain programs. And again, whether you have an idea at Moncler State or not, or you're just an external user, you can come in and register for these courses, pay and enroll. At Moncler, we did elect to host this in a separate canvas instance, so we've been navigating that a little bit. But all of our continuing education course or any courses that are utilizing Canvas catalog are housed in a separate instance away from our primary instance of Canvas that we use for all traditional undergraduate and whatnot courses.

And one big difference from a student perspective in accessing Canvas catalog courses is that there is a separate student dashboard that students will use to access those courses, and I'll show screenshots of that in a few minutes. So here's what Canvas catalog looks like. This is a very limited view, but just to give you a sense that, again, each course has its own tile within Canvas catalog, that you can click on that, and I'll show you what that looks like in a moment. But it's this idea of this marketplace that you can just anyone can be blowing your phones right now, moncler catalog dot instructure dot com. And you can see our instance of Canvas catalog and all of the courses that we're offering on there.

Again, still very early in very limited in what we're offering right now on there, but this idea of this marketplace, they can come in, register for a course, pay, and enroll out radically. So here's what it looks like. If you click on any of those entries within Canvas catalog, if the course is open for enrollment, you'll see a button at the top that enroll now. And at the bottom, you can read a course description of what that is so that gives us full control to, you know, work with the various groups that we're working with on these us to decide how this course is advertised, what exactly we're sharing about that course, searchable metadata, things like that. We can customize Canvas catalog as well.

And then again, you could just press pay and enroll and go through all the steps of entering new information, credit card information, all that, to enroll into the course. Once you go through that process and you enroll in the course, I mentioned that that different dashboard, and we're used to seeing in traditional canvas, this is what the student dashboard looks like within Canvas catalog. You see there's a focus on completion, which is kinda different than what we're used to working in traditional undergraduate graduate courses, where you filter by completion, whether you're in progress, whether you've completed the course or whether you have not completed the course, you can filter to see that within the list there. And then that go to course button is a gateway to canvas. So that's going to take you right into the canvas course itself.

You're able to to access that directly from the Canvas catalog interface. Again, just think of catalog as an overlay on top of Canvas that handles registration and payment. Once you get into Canvas, it's the same canvas that you know and love. And then you can also download a PDF transcript as well and export your progress as a learner as well. So this slide pains me because I wish we were at a point where we were issuing micro credentials and badging and where conversations with, Canvas credentials for that.

But for now, you can also just issue certificates of completion through Canvas catalog as well. Can be automatically generated, or you can just issue them. And again, hopefully one day we'll get to a point where we're able to issue micro credentials. So before I get to the rest of this talk, which is more so focused on the course design process itself, I do wanna pause any questions specifically about Canvas catalog that I can answer? Functionality wise or yes. The first one is if it's just the need, there's the authorization based, so it doesn't matter where that person is anywhere in the country.

Right. So at programs we've worked with, usually do kind of like a market assessment to see what similar programs are charging for similar types of courses. The conversation never revolves around location, locale, state, or out of state tuition. It's more so just a a set fee for that particular course based on the what what we determine to be the market value of Alright. And the second thing is when they register for the Canvas catalog course, and they are basically put through to what their state.

Are they officially monitor state's students? And is there a registration process No. So I don't know what the proper terminology would be for that, but I would consider that more so as visitors to the university in They're they're not provided with a net ID, they're not provided with any of those typical things that Moncler students are provided with upon enrollment. So kind of like visiting student sort of a thing is the category I would place them in. Yes. So since it's in a separate Canvas instance, so that's something we've had to navigate that ignite program I spoke about because a lot of those it's a mix of community members and Moncler State students.

So we just have to sort of train them on the idea that this is a separate campus instance that they will access the course through. They're not gonna see all their other courses here. We do have a color distinction in the global navbar to try to help with that. A little bit, but people do still. Yeah.

Yeah. So it's probably, yeah, we do have a, you know, students such as the idea sort of massaging this idea of accessing the the, a course in a different space than they're used to. So there are two separate two separate instances. Yeah. Yes.

You mentioned all catalogs and treat must be a touch of canvas course. Does it also go the other way where all canvas courses in the instance are automatically on the catalog or can you exclude No. So you can just, as an admin, in that Canvas instance, I can go in and create a course. For example, for those faculty development courses I was talking I I've created just like template sandbox sites for our other instructional designers to start accessing it through. That's not creating a catalog in before that.

So it goes one way, but not the other. Any other catalog specific question? Yep. It's hard to say because we, you know, I haven't had a use case like that that, maybe. I mean, I guess it really depends on what mode of access. You know, we're trying to, I guess, get them used to this idea of accessing the courses through catalog through that dashboard, but that's not to stop them from bookmarking the, the catalog instance of Canvas, and then just signing in through there to access the content.

So it's really about, I guess, how we're painting that certain narrative of what we want the process to be. So we've had to produce some documentation related, you know, for the student perspective of how to access your course and whatnot. So in that, we drive them to catalog to get to the course. No. You still can.

I mean, if you if you bookmark the the specific if you bookmark the Canvas instance itself, And then you just when you get there, you get to a login screen, then you could just sign in and and still get to the traditional Canvas dashboard just in that separate canvas instance, instance, if that makes sense. Talk to me after multiple. Yes. I was gonna say my institution has it where the panel as part of the main institutions still and all of it. They just it's flying walking in my home.

Yeah. Yeah. Just a different URL, but the same sign in process that they would sign into the primary instance with. It's just a matter of, again, how we how we produce the documentation training them how to get into it, you know, do we direct them to the catalog itself to get to the dashboard, or do we direct them directly to Canvas? So, again, still things we're we're working out. I think our I mean, that I can only speak for the courses we've done so far, but but who's to say? Yes.

What was the reasoning behind Good question. Dan Strathaus in the front row. Can I pass that to you? It was the idea was if and when the the initiative were to move administrative units. So that bubble catalog could be presented to a of continuing education that doesn't exist yet. So keeping academic traditional matriculated students separate from and those courses, those integrations, and opto, zoom, all that stuff separate from this part.

Mhmm. And again, I mentioned some of our HR training is starting to take place there as well. So and development. We have a really great, learning and development manager who just came on about six months ago, maybe a year ago, and she's been putting some content in there as well. So it's not necessarily Justin only for this external facing audience, which that which is a big piece of it, but we're also gonna be using it for for some internal stuff as well.

Yes. Paint points. Looked looked, three seats to your right. He's, he's, closely involved in that. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Smooth sailing. It has been smooth sailing, actually. I I will say over.

I mean, at least from my perspective as instruction designer in in that part of the process. It's been smooth sailing, at least from my perspective. So any other catalog specific questions I can answer at the end, but I just wanted to, move on to part two, our course design process. So what do we have to do as instructional designers to facilitate a partnership, these constituents that we're working with on these courses. For the IDs in the room who raised their hand a few minutes ago, nothing on this slide will probably look very familiar.

Look very surprising to you. The idea of subject matter experts collaborating with an instructional designer to wind up with a completed course, design. And the only difference I'll say working with, continuing education courses, and I noticed this door my time at Rutgers is collaborating with industry experts instead of faculty often. So for continuing ed courses, you're often working with industry leaders and professionals and less so, sometimes faculty, but less so faculty. And it's sometimes a different relationship.

Right? Different than working with faculty who we all know and love, right, always. But so there there are differences in the process. Right? So I'll say that's the the biggest difference I noticed on working on continuing education courses over just your traditional credit bearing courses was the collaboration between industry professionals versus just traditional university faculty. But the idea here is that subject matter experts whether they're faculty, whether they are industry leaders or whatever they may be, they're bringing in their expertise and their tent. Right? And their job is to bring in what they're observing in the industry, in the field.

Their job is to provide curriculum insight. Their job is to, again, provide that on the ground experience of the success and challenges in your industry. The things that I don't know, right? I'm not, in marketing. I'm not in, in business. So that's what subject matter experts and faculty are bringing to the process.

I, we, as the instructional designers, are bringing those best practices, right, come with the course design process. So some buzzwords, UDL, quality matters, right, things that we've probably heard multiple times throughout the past two days. But these are real things and real important things that we bring to the course design process to make these learning experiences meaningful. And I mentioned with the Moncler Unbound initiative, the idea of in person time being meaningful and online time being very meaningful. And I think for the online time to be specifically meaningful, that collaborate with the ID is is really imperative.

And we have a lot of good conversations with faculty or with industry leaders as we're developing and designing these courses. But also, to offer different insight into instructional technologies that are available, right, tools that, again, someone working in the industry might have never heard Right? This is our job as as IDs to bring, that expertise when it comes to you have this idea of how you wanna execute this assignment. What can we bring logically to make that happen in the smoothest way possible. And and again, that's really what I think we bring to the process. And then again, at the end, that successful collaboration results in, a completed course design, which is leveraging Canvas, which is leveraging different tools, if applicable, and hopefully enhanced instructor presence in online courses through multimedia content, which is a different, beast in and of itself, which I could probably do a whole other presentation on.

So other steps, steps for a successful partnership. Keeping the design process transparent, keeping the design process simple. What you're looking at here is now an older version of, our course design toolkit. We've actually been having conversations recently to revise this process and this document and I've been thinking of ways that that will start to apply to continuing ed courses as well. But the idea being that we collaborate with those faculty or subject matter experts outside of the learning management system at the start of the process.

So we're all here because we love Canvas, right, but time and place Right? If we start throwing canvas at them on day one, then I I think there's a little bit lost in the process in terms of really focusing on the content itself. If we start getting lost in the tools and the technology and the design and the layout and external tools and whatnot. So stepping back and really looking at the process and looking at the content and keeping the process overall as transparent as and simple as we can. Backwards design. Again, not necessarily a term that might be new to anyone here, but just focusing on the end goal via backward course design, getting back to the idea of this document, making sure that we are keeping the end goal in mind at the start of the process, and we're designing with that end goal in mind.

So we're starting at the end. We're working our way down to. Okay. This is my outcome. How am I going to assess outcome, how am I going to design activities that help students perform well in that assessment, that help them achieve that outcome.

So that's the the idea of of backward course design. Dream big, but stay grounded. This comes from a colleague of mine that I work with the records very closely, and we used to collaborate on course design projects together. And her role in the process, I'll say, was to always she always had the best is, right? Dream Big. She was always the dreamer.

What if we did this? What if we did that? What if we had them do this or film here or or come up with assignment there, whatever it might be. But then also stay grounded, right? Being mindful of deadlines, when's that deliverable due? When's that course supposed to launch? So keeping that in mind and having these great ideas, I think, is great, but also remembering that this is an iterative process. So you might have that grand idea, how do you implement it in a a chunked out sort of a way We could take a piece of that for the first run of the course, then we can, expand upon that for the next run of the course. So dream big, stay grounded, but just be mindful of deadlines and and whatnot throughout the process. Include accessibility in the conversation from the beginning.

We are users of Ally, formerly Blackboard Ally, but now anthology Ally. And, it's so important to include this from the start. How many of the IDs in the room have your faculty ever side at you if you came to them last minute and said, oh, those videos, we need to edit those captions, or those images don't have alt text, or we need to reformat this document and whatnot. So building that into the process from the beginning, they send an image. Hey, do you have a description that you can provide for that image? So I can when I get that into the course, I have that all text at the ready.

I don't have to ask them for it at the end of the process because getting in touch with them once the course done. Good luck. I don't know about your faculty, but, but again, just weaving that in from the start, include accessibility a conversation from the beginning, educate your faculty on what that means in terms of what you're going to be asking of them, or your institution, maybe as the ID, you're responsible for some of that. I think varies from school to school, whether that's the faculty, to to endure that process or for the ID or both, but just make sure you include it at the start of the conversation. This is my favorite one.

I always say this, fit the activity to the tool, not the tool to the activity. I think often we get so excited about all the different stuff, all the different integrations, all the different tools. I mean, there's a whole hall that we've been browsing for two days of showing you all different types of possibilities of what can happen inside of canvas, but fit the activity to the tool not the tool to the activity. And again, what I mean by that is making sure that you're using the tool in a meaningful way. You're not just saying, oh, flip video discussions.

That sounds really cool. I'm gonna have everyone do that, you know, but think of why he wants students to use that tool. And think about the learning curve that comes with that tool. You're putting students through this process of learning how to use flip for the first time or or hypothesis, and they're coming across this new technology they haven't used. Is that worth their time? Are you using it once and then abandoning it for the rest of the course? Did you just do it? Cause it looked cool fun, or are you doing it because I want students to present on x y z.

I think that would be more meaningful over flipped than having them do it in a Canvas discussion board. Or I have to have students read this article. I think there's some valuable insight they could offer through social annotation with hypothesis, which is a great tool. So again, thinking about what you wanna do, how you want your students to do it, and then identifying what tools would best execute that particular assignment. So building canvas courses for non traditional learners, what different? What can we do to be mindful of our adult learners? Right? What can we do to make sure that that person who's coming back to school for the first time in twenty five years and has never looked at a learning management system before.

What can we do to make sure that the courses as streamlined as efficiently designed as possible. So in building these modules, and again, this is this is the process that a Moncler rethinking. So I mentioned, how we can adopt our existing processes into this, but also rethink them at the same time. This is something that was used for the design of our online program courses for a long time. It's called the Ocea model, refers to orientation, content, interact and assessment.

The idea being that you're providing a framework and a structure to standardize module design in canvas, what we found in using the going through this process with faculty for a long time is that sometimes it can come off as a little rigid. Right? So I think start of this slide said flexible and navigable, but then I present to you a very rigid standardized process. I sound like a hypocrite. But so we're rethinking this a little bit. Right? So how can we still achieve some sense of standardization and a sense of making sure that we're checking off all the right boxes that we're doing things the right way, but we're also allowing for flexibility in the process, especially as we start to look at these continuing education courses that are different than your traditional hours.

So if I had to venture a guess and where we'll wind up with this process, and again, where we've been talking about this for a few months now, orientation always needs to be some sort of framework to kick off a learning module. Right? Something that sets the stage for what's to come for that week. Content, one of the converse we've been having recently is making sure that the content selected and the content produced is really meaningful. It's done for a specific reason. It's not just I need to record five lecture videos, one, two, three, four, five, or I have to produce, a module introduction video.

Okay. Make sure I do that. Of making sure that the selection and use of content, especially when you're asking faculty to produce it is done in a meaningful way for a specific reason. This concept's really hard for students. I really need to record a video to walk them through it.

One of the the most, fun facts that that we learned recently from looking at our Panopto analytics was that some of the most highly viewed videos in Panopto are assignment instruction videos, videos that are supplementing a particular Right? So they're not just, oh, I'm gonna watch lecture video number seven b for the tenth time. Probably not. Students are going in. I have to complete this assignment. This video gonna walk me through it.

That video was produced for a specific reason because that instructor said students struggle with this one. I'm gonna make sure I produce a video that walks them through how to do certain steps So our takeaway from that was making sure that the multimedia content that we produce is done for a reason. So I think that's going to factor into that content piece of our process. Interaction recently we've been been throwing around the idea of, expanding that to inclusion, just this idea that in each learning module, Students have some opportunity to feel involved in a learning process. Some faculty used to interpret this as, oh, I have to have a discussion in every single module and every single week.

And that's where that took us to step back and say, is this too rigid? Do we have to rethink the that we approach this process. And then assessment, how are we assessing students in that particular week? Is there an activity, assessment, or activity are we asking them to do to demonstrate mastery of whatever concept. But this Ocea model has been a large part of our course design process for a long time. And I think it's good that we're rethinking this, especially as we start to get to this idea of inviting continuing education adult learners into, taking courses with us. And this is just a visual of of what that looks like in its former form.

Again, I think we'll probably untie the belt a little bit on this and make this a little more flexible of a of a process. But again, maybe for someone who's never taught on before they might find this model useful as just a a a launch pad, a starting point to to get them started in instead of just staring at a blank page in Canvas saying, okay, Okay. I need an orientation of some sort, what concept. So it is a good way to kick off, I think, the design process regardless, but the way in which it's I don't wanna force, but the way in which we use it, I think, could be a little more flexible. Any design plus users in the room? I love it.

I'm gonna collect a commission for anyone who stops by the booth after this talk. Just kidding. But we all of the IDs at Moncler, we all love, city labs design plus, some of the screenshots I'm gonna show you in a minute. We're all produced using using city labs. So they really do make a lot of the design elements in our courses possible.

All. So what you're looking at here is, the homepage for one of the courses that we launched Canvas catalog. You might notice one or two things about this. Mainly that the navigation is grossly simplified. That was intentional.

Canvas has a nice job of offering many different ways to get to different places in Canvas. But for, again, for the adult learner who's coming to take it on course for the first time. Do you wanna see a course navigation bar that's that long? I would be a little overwhelmed by that personally. So we were thinking of ways to simplify it as much as possible and you notice that modules is missing from that, and I'll show you why in in just a second. But we also wanna make sure that visible support avenues are offered as well.

So again, I land I go in Canvas catalog. I register. I enroll. I pay for the course. I log in for the first time.

What do I do? Where do I go? What what what support is available to me? We just wanna make sure that those support avenues are are visible and highlight it within the course homepage itself so that if someone does need support, whether it's program support for the course they're taking, whether technical support that we have those support avenues available to them. I mentioned that modules was missing from the course navigation. This is why. So through the help of one of the other instructional designers in our group, where we were actually able to embed the learning within the course homepage. So this has been really interesting because, again, it just creates one streamlined avenue to access everything.

I don't need I don't need to know what a module is to get to the course content. I could just pay, get into the course, scroll down a little bit. And then I have access to my learning materials and my content right there on the course home page. This was really big, in my perspective, of, again, for those adult learners who might be doing this for the first time and are trying to find your way around canvas. Now there's no need.

Again, to even know what a module is. You can find all of your content right here. Time completion estimates, adults. We're all very busy. Right? So we when you, again, this idea for the, continuing ed courses is providing some sort of time completion estimate where possible.

We'll usually work with the faculty the the person we're designing with on this. And in this particular case, we actually had student support. So we had, someone go in actually take the course and log the time to help us develop some sort of rough estimate of how long it would take them to get that particular module. But the justice idea of maybe I'm sitting down after a long day of work and Okay. I've got two and a half hours or okay.

No, I'm gonna wait total to do that. So being transparent in our design as well. And then streamline progression, again, where applicable. It worked well in this case where we wanted to make sure students did x y and z before moving on to the second module, and that's utilizing the pre req sits and requirements feature within the Canvas modules. This is the top of a content page within one the modules in that course.

The only thing I wanna point out here is just the use of that navigation bar. Again, possible by a made possible by city labs and the design elements within it. You'll also notice that, there's those little circles next to each of the items. That's referring to the the requirements. It's for that particular modules items.

So if I were to finish that, it would, it would give me a check mark. Again, just making sure that as an adult learner, I know what I'm doing, I know how far long I am in the process. We're being as transparent as we can in the design of our courses. And then simple, but the idea of just getting, our learners back to the homepage as necessary. And also, I mentioned completion tracking, which ties back into that, that navbar within the course, to help our learners stay on track and know what exactly they're doing and how far along they are in that process.

So what's next? Looking ahead. Within the next hopefully the short term I hope it's a short term goal, but in higher ed, we never know. Right? We wanna expand the footprint of Canvas catalog. We're trying to bring in different groups of people who might have been in it, you know, we we see a lot of campus email blasts about different courses, different projects, different things. And sometimes I'll see those and say, oh, that might be an interesting, candidate for Canvas catalog.

And just this idea of trying to bring in more people. This is all, again, very new for us. We don't have a ton of people on the platform yet, but we wanna there. We want to find different groups, find the right people to talk to, to get the word out and start getting people, to use Canvas catalog and and to start recruiting different types of learners into the university. We want to acquire a badging solution, which again, I very envious of some of the presentations I attended today where some are so far along in having a platform and starting to define those standards and whatnot for issuing micro credentials I hope Moncler can get there soon and that we're able to not just issue certificates but start issue issuing micro credentials as well.

And also thinking about different ways to present the material, right, instead of just your traditional content page, text, readings, videos, multi whatever it may be, thinking about, integrating scorm content, like articulate story line and tools like that, to produce content to deliver different types of modules in a different way. Again, depending on the course and depending on what the use case is for it, our group's actually going through a story line training next month. So we're gonna start that process of getting us all up to speed. It's been a few years for me. So I I need a pressure too, on, on building, and what we can do as IDs to then start offering that as part of the process maybe.

Right? So we're meeting with faculty and we say, oh, that might be a good candidate to have, a little storyline module or whatever it may be. So that's something we're hoping to do in the near future. So we've got about four minutes left. So my email is up there yankus j at moncler dot edu. We do have a resource document that we created on how to embed those modules on the, on the course homepage.

So if that's some thing you're interested in, feel free to shoot me an email. I should have had some sort of QR code linked to it, but I don't. So flood my inbox, send me an email. If you're interested in that. And, I can I can provide that document to you if that's something you're interested in learning how to do? It's really just an HTML embed on the on the page that makes that possible.

But any other questions you may have, also, just feel free to reach out and connect. I'm always open to to conversate But with the time we have left, three minutes or so, I do wanna ask if there are any questions. Anything I can answer? Yes. Mhmm. So you mentioned, yes, certificates now and wanting first model micro credentials.

What does that mean to you in your institution? Like, what is or financial needs separate from a certificate? So just the idea of being able to offer, a badge that a learner can put on LinkedIn. And actually, it not not just a piece of paper I can hang in my cubicle. Right? Like, something that I could actually put on my LinkedIn that can drill down to metadata where a recruiter say, oh, not just Joe took this course on designing online courses, but he took this course and, oh, here are the skills he obtained in that. Here were the outcome of that particular course. Here are, different, you know, whatever it may be.

The metadata piece, I think, is so important, and it makes these credentials so much more meaningful where the the outcome is stronger. Right? If you're taking a course to get a job or to make yourself appear more marketable for a specific skill, having that metadata available through a micro credential and through a badge that you're putting in a portfolio or on your LinkedIn or wherever I think is is super important. Yes. How much? So you're basically giving them a shell and saying, do you populate this with your with your content and by Shell, do you mean that that course design worksheet? I was looking at or you mean canvas itself. I guess they do the worksheet, and then you input all of your information on your ID, sir, you have a tech team.

I would say it depends. Fully online degree programs, the ID works very closely with the faculty and tends to do the bulk of the the building in Canvas. So they'll use that document to to populate the content. And then the the ID will take that and make it into something in canvas. But for different scenarios, if someone contacts us for help.

We might provide that document, and they might just use it as a resource to then go build something themselves. So not one answer. I'd say to that question depends on Yeah. So I see a lot of your our self paced, but then I'm seeing a discussion. So are you aware of things that are willing to contact also facilitate like, how long do you are you, using some white professional in the field or your S and me? I guess, my my main concern would be they they've seen supergunned home in the beginning.

I mean, like, yes, I wanna offer this real estate class, and then because they just kind of peter out what is the time for them and are they? Yeah. So most of the courses so far have really been facilitated courses. I think we have a great example. You have, like, a truly fully self paced course where I just come in, I pay. I have no instructor interaction.

I do something, and then I leave. Most of them have that facilitation component where someone's monitoring those discussion boards, someone, maybe not to the same degree of a, regular credit bearing course, all the ones I've worked in so worked with so far, they do have someone checking those and making sure that students are just posting and it's going off into the abyss because then then it's not meaningful. They're just, they're just contributing and that's it. I guess I'll hand some yes. So that was I don't know if it was a I don't have the right word as city labs hack, but my one of my colleagues at other instructional signer was able it was, I think, a mix of using city labs, but also just an HTML embed.

So to set it up, you just kinda plop some HTML into a HTML editor, and it will embed the module there. So it's not something that's cleanly and nicely in city labs to just go, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, it's something you gotta kinda, like, play it with HTML a pasted in. There Yes. I'll start on the left and work my way on. So our faculty requires to work with the instructional designer? No.

No. It it's more for for our fully online degree programs. It's it's very baked into the process. So there's a there's a whole kind of roadmap of courses that are gonna launch who the SME is gonna be for those courses, the idea assigned to those courses. So if we're fully online, degree programs that our group works closely with.

Yes. But otherwise, it's it could be the wild, wild west for all we know. You know, there's there there's no requirement necessarily for if you're teaching online, you have to work with us. It's just if you're working within a fully online degree program that works closely with our department, then you're assigned an ID and you work with us. A good idea to sign an, to sign an ID that probably helps.

Yeah. Definitely help relationship building and whatnot. For sure. Yep. Yes.

County much of this, but I know that on some of our, self paced courses that that are poppers for free, like, the municipal years were also, there's some issues with the the force abandonment. You know, people started, they they're all going home and they get into it. What this is, you know, work. You know, it's actually because of the reports. Yeah.

And, the the abandoned, you have some mechanism in place to you know, try to keep track of any of that and try and actively reengage this. No. To you because I certainly don't. Yeah. No.

I think it's a very real issue. And we face it in our faculty development program too, where, you know, we'll get fifteen who sign up for a cohort, but then only, you know, five complete it maybe. And within the first couple weeks of it, we'll try to to reach out and maybe touch base and say, hey, the course started can, you know, but I I would say it's a case by case basis. There's no, like, one answer in our case because we're IDs, we're very aware and invested. We try to outreach in our cases, but for another course, maybe not.

But it's certainly something we try to promote this idea of if you notice someone's had zero activity reaching out in some way. Yep. Other are we at time? Oh, we're two minutes over. I'm so sorry.