Region 4 and Canvas
In 2019, Region 4 adopted Canvas as its LMS, shifting from the use of Storyline/Rise 360. SMEs still have access to these tools but there has been an organizational push for Canvas to become the platform in which professional development is created for our school districts and charters.
Enter me as ID!
Prior to Region 4, I was a K-12 Digital Learning Coach in a rapidly growing school district in Southwest Houston. My 3 years there were focused on supporting teachers and campus leaders in instructional technology integration, with the largest part being the delivery of Canvas training. Shout out to our amazing Canvas LMS Specialist, Monica Nahas, who led monthly Train-the-Trainer style sessions before we, as Digital Learning Coaches, would go out and redeliver to the campuses.
When I saw the ID position at Region 4, specifically call for someone with Canvas experience, I jumped at the opportunity.
ID and SMEs
I hit the ground running at Region 4 as a member of the Digital Learning department. I support our specialists in creating courses from scratch or taking their traditional face-to-face trainings and convert them to on-demand content available in Canvas. The ADDIE (Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, and Evaluate) model is my go-to workflow for working with specialists. I usually get an email asking for help, I provide them the link to my calendar via Calendly. In the initial needs analysis meeting, I’ll listen to their goals, find out who the intended audience is, review their “raw” content and make some suggestions for how the content could be made interactive in Canvas. Another important question to ask is how hands-on do they want to be in the course. It will determine the settings for quizzes and discussion boards as well as module prerequisites. Do you want to have to grade items and give credit so that they can move through the modules or is contribution or submitting an item enough to give them credit? I also show them previous courses I’ve designed to get a feel for their style as well as any color scheme, or types of imagery I should include. I don’t do the heavy lifting alone; however, I love to coach the specialists on creating their own micro learning modules with Canvas Studio. I don’t usually get started right away at this point. Any documents, presentations, handouts, are submitted to the editors in our Publishing department. After their review for grammar, spelling, clarity, plain language, copyright, etc. They give the “clean” documents back to me. In the gap while those documents are being reviewed, I will begin to design graphics and banners for the homepage, discussion boards, internal pages, as well as find images and appropriate icons. Canva is my #1 tool for building all those assets. Check out their template for course banners and course buttons. When I am finished with the course, I create a module called Notes from your Instructional Designer, that remains unpublished. Here is where I share all the links to assets I used to create the course. You know never know when team members will change and I have been on the wrong end of trying to hunt down the graphics that were used in a course and had to rebuild from scratch and try to match their style.
When the editors are finished with the text, I can add it to the course and let the specialists know its ready for a first review. This part of the process is my favorite. Specialists get to see the power of Canvas to exponentially multiply their impact when their content is now available on demand. With a service area as large as ours (remember that there are over 1,500 campuses in Region 4), its impossible to provide face-to-face trainings to so many.
As we go through the cycle of development, I like to add the specialists as Teachers in my course so they can edit along with me and test the student view. I’m not a fan of a big grand reveal when I done building the course, I view them as collaborative projects that the specialist should have rights to from the very beginning.
When a specialist is satisfied that the course is ready to launch, I will copy the course and keep a Master’s for myself and share one for the specialist to give to participants. It never gets old launching a course and seeing it become filled with participants and them engage in the activities that you’ve created. It’s like a parent watching their baby learn to walk and become independent. As an instructional designer, I stand to the side with a big smile on my face and my arms open wide, ready to catch and assist if anything is needed.
From National Board Certification prep to Book Studies for Charter School Superintendents, Canvas has been there to support it all!
