Overview

Pages is a great tool to use to build information and context into your course structure. Because you can add anything to a content page, you can add information, context, and content in one place.

Timely Information

What are some things you asked yourself when you first logged into this Canvas 101 course? You probably had some questions like:

What am I going to learn?
What do I need to do?
Where do I go to get the information that I need?

Canvas 101 is a self-paced course, but students in your courses will need to consider due dates and other time time-related factors.

Students have limited time to devote to each course they take. If the course is streamlined and well-organized, students will be able to spend more time focusing on learning the content and working on meeting the course objectives. It is important to give students timely information so that they can quickly determine what they need to do, where they need to go, and when they need to do it.

Thinking Point: In-person vs. online facilitation

As educators, we naturally provide instructions and facilitation in an in-person class. When a student walks into your classroom you don't make them find the desks, figure out where to sit, try to determine who the teacher is, etc. Typically, those things are already clear to the student based on visual cues or instructions given, whether written or verbal. If you want students to sit in a specific seat, you tell them that there is assigned seating and give them access to the seating chart. If you want them to read a particular chapter of the textbook to prepare for the next class, you verbally tell them what the reading assignment is or remind them to refer to the syllabus for that information. Additionally, the syllabus or assignment schedule has already been introduced and established as a resource for assignment information. A lot of guess-work is eliminated, because you are there to facilitate the learning.

In an online class, or in the online portion of an in-person class, it is important to build in the facilitation that is missing without an in-person instructor.

Context

One of the best ways to build facilitation into an online class is to provide context. An online course should not feel like a scavenger hunt to students. They should not have to go find several different pieces of information and then figure out how to put them together on their own. That takes time that they could be spending learning the content.

Providing context and instructions for everything in an online class will eliminate guess-work and allow students to focus on their learning. For example, if there is a video that you want students to watch to help them understand the content in a deeper way, write a sentence or two above the video and explain what you want them to do. You could say something as simple as, "Please watch the following video to learn more about____." Anything you would tell the student if you were with them in-person should be written out so that they gain the context in addition to the content.

Context is needed for the course organization as well, not just for content-related resources. Students will not know where to go to submit an assignment unless you tell them. They will not know how to find the weekly materials unless you provide that information. The next few pages will give you some ideas about how to provide that context in Canvas.