Overview of Visual and Style Considerations

The look and feel of your online course can have a huge impact on the learner's experience. Communicating content in a clear, consistent, and engaging manner should consider multimodalities in the design. "Multimodal" describes communication practices in terms of textual, aural, linguistic, spatial, and visual resources.    

From Multimodalities in Online Education: Digital Literacies (CC-BY licensed)

As online instructors and learning designers, we need to learn how to choose the best mode of communication for the purpose: the most effective way for conveying the message. We must think about the core competencies and skills we want students to acquire. One of the solutions for achieving this may be by giving participants more control over the content and permitting them to participate in its design and creation. Using student editable pages within Canvas can be one way to engage your student in creating content for the course and for each other. 

Content in the course should be designed to be:

  • perceivable — student can see/hear content in multiple ways
  • operable — students can easily operate technology to use the content to type, mouse over, or activate elements 
  • understandable — directions and content are clear, concise, and easy to understand
  • robust — can be accessed with a variety of different technologies such as mobile, tablet, computer, assistive technologies (W3C Introduction to Accessibility and W3C Standards Links to an external site. video)

When designing Pages, Discussion prompts, or Assignment descriptions in Canvas, considering the visual appearance of the content you are communicating. Enhancing the style of the elements on the page can communicate implicitly. The look and feel of your pages will impact the student's learning experience in your course. While Canvas has limitations within the bank of tools available, there are mechanisms to enhance the appearance of your course content when you consider the application of visual and style considerations such as:

  • text formatting
  • use of white space and underlining
  • using color
  • using images and video
  • tables, call-outs, and tabs
  • using anchor links
  • applying HTML for visual enhancement

While knowledge of HTML is not necessary, there are some basic tips shared in this module of the ETS showcase that will enhance your course appearance. If you need any support to apply any of the ideas presented here, please contact ets@educ.ubc.ca.