Game On: Leveling Up The LMS

My children have been playing old-school N64 recently. Our upstairs office has a small TV my son uses to play video games while doing his CF lung treatments. The only purpose of this TV (which also has an attached VHS player) is to play Mario Kart, Super Smash Brothers, or the occasional multiplayer round of Golden Eye. He looks forward to his treatments and tries to recruit the whole family to join in on the "fun" of treatment time. Playing games with my children brings great nostalgia and joy to what could be a dreaded and mundane task. 

As I've relearned these games' controller functions and tricks, I've also started thinking about their design. I have been impressed with the intuitive nature of these games and the storytelling embedded with levels. The linear nature of these games is in stark contrast to more modern video games, with open worlds and quests to complete before entering the boss level (not unlike Zelda: Ocarina of Time - truly, a game ahead of its time). What amazes me about the design of these now-classic video games is how well my children receive them. Their graphics are outdated, and perhaps some of the skills needed to succeed in these realms are less complex than today's games. Mario Kart isn't terribly difficult to play, but the variables infused into the races keep my children on their toes. 

As I shoot my red shells at Wario, I find myself thinking about how we might provide our students with more intuitive learning management systems that genuinely world-build our curriculum for our students in an engaging manner. When designing our courses for students, it is essential to consider how we might draw our students into our content through the design of our LMS. As we set out to world-build our course, what do we need to consider:

Our LMS pages should be intuitive. 

What'd we do on Friday? This common question plagues our Mondays. When students return to school, they often claim to forget the previous day, and when students are absent, they might as well be Nintendo cartridges needing to be blown on and restarted. 

I use a weekly model in which students can find the date and access the agenda for the week. I break down the learning in my classroom into smaller chunks, which keeps students focused and allows them to look ahead (but not too far ahead that they feel overwhelmed). I began using this organization system during the pandemic and have stayed with it because it creates habits in students. The consistency is easy to follow and gives a rhythm to the course. All work for each week is due on Saturday at 11:59 PM (besides speeches and work that is presented in class). The consistent dates help students to plan ahead, self-pace to an extent, and understand what to access and when. 

Our LMSs should be aesthetically pleasing. 

When I started with Canvas, I was certainly overwhelmed by the possibilities. I needed structure. I needed to create a pathway for my students that allowed them to progress from week to week. Then I realized that my students wanted to click. The act of clicking on a website leads them to learning experiences. If I wanted them to click on important information, it had to be easy to find and access. 

I then fell in love with Canva. This platform made designing buttons and banners easy. Small touches to enhance my homepage, assignments, and resources have gone a long way to making my Canvas course lively and inviting. These buttons are an extension of my personality and teaching style, subtly communicating a message to my students and drawing them in even further. 

We need to tell a story with our LMSs. 

Whether our courses use technology a little or nearly every day, we must ensure that our course designs tell a story. What we craft should communicate clear messages about what is important, what needs to be done, and, most importantly, how students might continue to grow as learners. Our LMSs communicate what we are doing and where we are going and should also showcase what we value. Through careful design and using videos, audio, mindmaps, and other visuals, we can help our students access learning material. We can also challenge them to see the value and recognize how the information they are learning today can level up their experiences tomorrow. 

An LMS is an opportunity to draw our students into our world. These platforms can help students to navigate course content and also learn to tell their own stories. Through the careful design of an LMS, they can better understand who they are as students, what they know, and what they still need to learn. We must help them develop those metacognitive skills, and our course design can do just that. 

I have loved watching my own children take on the world of N64. Watching them and observing my students interacting with screens and platforms, I realize that strong design motivates them to beat the computer-automated Bowser across train tracks and also take on the learning experience. Let's all level up so our students can see just how fun it is to cross the finish line of learning. 

Becoming Canvas Certified

My district planned to slowly roll out our new learning management system before the pandemic. Six months later, when the pandemic forced us all to move to online learning, they decided to break the dam, let the waters loose, and dive right into the deep end of the Canvas pool. While the subsequent year was overwhelming and left many teachers feeling like they were barely keeping their heads above water, it was the right decision. 

As the school’s instructional coach, I worked non-stop as I often supported extremely panicked teachers trying to get instruction to remote students during one of the most challenging years of our lives. Ultimately, this experience led to empowered teachers who know Canvas better than they ever could have imagined, progressed our district’s mission, and allowed students to have more access to education from anywhere and at any time. 

To hone my skills even further, the instructional coaches in my district decided to take the Core 1: Foundational Frameworks Course in 2021. While I was familiar with Canvas, taking a course from the student perspective broadened my understanding of the user experience. One of us decided to continue and complete the six-course series to become a Canvas Certified Educator. I paused, overwhelmed with pandemic teaching, but returned to the experience after she finished and won a free course package. 

Being a student and seeking new experiences can always help us grow. Would I recommend this certification for teacher-leaders using Canvas? Yes. Even if you’re familiar with Canvas, the experience can come with unexpected lessons. It took about five months to complete all of the courses, as I took one course at a time, but I found the workload manageable and appropriately paced. 

A person taking these courses may gain valuable insight into our students’ experiences by being a student in the process.

Student view is a helpful feature in Canvas, but it can be limited. Being an actual student allowed me to practice submitting assignments, viewing feedback, and working through a module. I noticed what I liked and would have liked from a course, noted the design features, and observed how the timing of discussions/feedback impacted my learning. During the experience, I also noticed embedded features, including audio and video. I appreciated how these resources affected my learning and started adjusting my courses to improve the student experience. Being a student challenges us to reflect, and I truly appreciated this aspect of taking these courses. 

Exploring and navigating a Canvas course can help us to build more aesthetic and intuitively designed courses. 

Aesthetics impact how much time people spend on a page. The tl;dr of it all can turn students off from using resources. Also, students might shut down or become frustrated if something is hard to find or if there are too many ways to access an assignment. Creating a consistent look and flow to the course homepage, modules, and assignments improves accessibility. Using tools like Canva to beautify or enhance the aesthetics can make pages seem more professional and polished. The better the layout, the more engagement will occur. 

Speaking of engagement, using resources embedded in Canvas pages can spark new ideas about how we might create richer resources for our students. 

I love embedding a Padlet or a Google Slide into Canvas. Creating rich embedded resources that students can explore, reference, and read makes the learning experience more accessible. While taking these courses, I found new ways to share resources with students. Genially is a tool that I had not used before these courses. I appreciated how cleanly it was embedded in the page. I also learned how to create tabs in Canvas, which will take my course design to a new level. I am still working on this feature and exploring how I might use it to share my daily agenda slides, and this feature would only have been on my radar if I had taken these courses. 

While I learned a lot about Canvas from these courses, I was also able to explore instructional design theories beyond a single tech tool. 

In addition to learning more about the LMS, I gained perspective on various instructional strategies. Participating in a self-paced course may encourage Canvas-certified educators to explore blended learning strategies and instructional practices that may not have been used before. I had a choice and voice in what I learned and what I produced to demonstrate mastery. I was able to explore mastery pathways and work at my own pace, and I was able to connect with others asynchronously through Canvas discussions. 

If you’re looking to hone your Canvas skills and are in a teacher-leader position, this certification may be the right fit for you. While, at times, I felt a little isolated working at my own pace, I truly enjoyed the self-reflection process. I also appreciated the aesthetics and course design, which helped me create two Canvas courses for workshops that I led last summer. We can learn from every experience; if you’re seeking to become better acquainted with what might be with Canvas, check out the Canvas Certified Educator courses.