Text Formatting

Presenting information in Canvas is quite easy. The rich text editor allows you to create visual hierarchies within a page, assignment or other element within your course. This page highlights some ways to create this hierarchy to present information in ways that enhance accessible for all learners. 

 

Headings

  

Image Caption: Image of the new Canvas rich text editor, drop down menu for text formatting, highlighting the Header 2 option.

By using text styling in the Canvas rich-text editor, you can create a visual hierarchy of text, which can be read by most screen readers in place to assist learners who may be visually impaired. To use these, just select a Heading size you'd like to use - usually you can use Heading 2 for major sections, and Heading 3-5 for subsections. This also helps to create a visual structure for all students, to let them know that content is broken into sections. All sections on this page are broken up in this way.

Sub-headings

Sub headings are also encouraged, as these will allow learners to skip through content to see major sections, with minor sub-sections both visually and through screen reading software.

  

Image Caption: Image of the new Canvas rich text editor, drop down menu for text formatting, highlighting the Header 3 option.

Sub-Headings and accessibility

Using heading tags is important as it allows those using screen reader software who many have visual challenges to 'read' text in a hierarchical fashion, so structuring content around major topics with sub-topics can help learners jump to specific areas of a page and focus on what they want to. The below structure outlines how this may work.

• H2: Animals
  • H3: Mammals
    • H4: Gibbons
  • H3: Reptiles
    • H4: Iguanas
• H2: Plants

 

Indenting

  

Image Caption: Image of the new Canvas rich text editor, drop down menu for options, highlighting the indent text option.

Text can be indented...

...like this, to bring attention to a quote or other important line of text. Text can even be made bold or italicized or underlined or all three to bring extra emphasis to written content.

 

Bullets

Just as in other word processing applications, the use of bullets to provide concise and stratified information is a great way to present information.

• Dotted bullets
  • are a great way to provide
    • hierarchy

 

1. Numbered bullets
2. could be used to list the
3. steps involved in completing a task 
4. within Canvas

 

   

  Image Captions: Image of the new Canvas rich text editor, drop down menu for options, highlighting the list options.

 

References

Many online readings pages will include references to academic articles, book chapters or websites. To keep these in the hierarchy of the page, use H2, but to visually separate them, it's recommended to use a horizontal rule, followed by a heading and each reference in APA format. Example below with sample text:

  

  Image Caption: Image of the new Canvas rich text editor, drop down menu for inserting things, highlighting the horizontal line option.

Example Text: 

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References

Agostinho, S., Tindall-Ford, S., Ginns, P., Howard, S. J., Leahy, W., & Paas, F. (2015). Giving learning a helping hand: finger tracing of temperature graphs on an iPad. Educational Psychology Review, 27(3), 427–443.https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-015-9315-5

Atkinson, R. C., & Shiffrin, R. M. (1968). Human memory: a proposed system and its control processes. In K. W. Spence & J. T. Spence (Eds.), The psychology of learning and motivation (Vol. 2, pp. 89–195). London: Academic.

Ayres, P. L. (1993). Why goal-free problems can facilitate learning. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 18(3), 376–381. https://doi.org/10.1006/ceps.1993.1027. Links to an external site.

Ayres, P., Marcus, N., Chan, C., & Qian, N. (2009). Learning hand manipulative tasks: when instructional animations are superior to equivalent static representations. Computers in Human Behavior, 25(2), 348–353. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2008.12.013.