Creating Learning Content

This topic contains about 25 mins worth of reading and videos

Your school/team Canvas Admin will usually provide you with blank Canvas Courses as well as enrol students in the course after the courses are ready.

What is this topic about?

This module will guide you through the following topics:

How to use Rich Content Editor (RCE) to create learning content in your course
Importance of Modules in Canvas and how you can use them to design the flow (sequence of activities) of your course.
How to create educational resources such as textual content, embed video and links using Pages in your course.
How to post meaningful instructions and important information to target audiences using Announcements.

Let's get the ball rolling!

Below is the tabbed compilation of key information in the form of dot points and videos for each of the items listed above which will empower you to kick start your content creation journey on Canvas.

1. Rich Content Editor (RCE)

Canvas has a simple, yet powerful, content editor that is used for creating new content.

107 - New RCE Links to an external site.from Instructure Canvas Community (Links to an external site.) on Vimeo (Links to an external site.).

The Rich Content Editor is used in features such as: Announcements, Assignments, Discussions, Pages, Quizzes, Syllabus and for text entry Student submissions too.

Although clean and streamlined, the Rich Content Editor is sophisticated enough to support embedding video content, math formulas, and other rich media.

You can also learn about DesignPLUS tools which is a suite of tools available within CSPD Canvas instance that expands your course design, formatting, and management options, in the last topic of this course.

2. Modules (Important!)

Modules is where you can set the flow of your course.

309 - Modules Overview (Links to an external site.) from Instructure Canvas Community (Links to an external site.) on Vimeo (Links to an external site.).

Check out these Modules attributes:

Flexible structure: Create Modules (think folders) in the way you regularly structure your course; these can be Weeks, Units, Chapters etc.
Flexible content: Add Assignments, Quizzes, Pages, Discussions, external URLs, External Tools (such as Google) and much more to each Module
Easy to customize: Reorder your Modules and the individual items within the Modules with easy drag and drop interface
Create course flow: Students see a "Next" and "Previous" button to guide them through your Modules

You can do many more things with Modules such as adding prerequisites and requirements, using text headers and indentation; and locking modules to open up automatically on a set date

3. Pages

Pages store content and educational resources that are part of a course or group but don’t necessarily belong in an assignment.

Some ideas for how you can use Pages are:

Design with the Rich Content Editor (RCE): Add images, files, record or upload multimedia content, and embed external tools like YouTube, Khan Academy and other LTI tools
Content Selector for more: Using the content selector from the right-side you can add direct links to other Pages, Assignments, Quizzes, Announcements, Discussions, Modules or other course navigation areas
Make sure it's accessible: It has an awesome accessibility checker

Some of the other things you can do with Pages is to easily duplicate it, Assign a due date to it and also make it a Home Page of your course.

Syllabus Page is a kind of Page followed by a dated Summary of all graded activities in the course.
Course Home Page can be a Pages Front Page, the Course Modules, the Assignment List, the Syllabus or the Recent Activity Dashboard.

4. Announcements

Announcements allow instructors to communicate with students about course activities and post interesting course-related topics.

306 - Announcements Overview (Links to an external site.) from Instructure Canvas Community (Links to an external site.) on Vimeo (Links to an external site.).

Check out how you can use the Announcements space:

Broadcast information: Send to all members of a course or to all members of sections within a course
Maintain a running record of communication: Course announcements are retained
Allow students to interact: Students can respond to and like Announcements
Delay posting: Time-sensitive Announcements can be built and sent at your discretion

Here are some more ideas for how you can use the Announcements space:

Enable a RSS feed to auto-post Announcements from a news source
Enable a podcast feed for audio Announcements

You can try out all that you learn here in your Sandbox

Okay, now I'm curious.

Need more information? Check out the below Canvas Guides!