Designing Engaging Moments for All: Crafting Captivating and Accessible Courses

My name is Greta Rogna, and I am I've had a title change since I made this slide. I am now the president of soaring Ed. So, I am the company, and this is my amazing team, and we have an amazing team of developers. And, we are a teacher first education first company. And we recently did a rebranding, in the past three weeks. We changed our names, and people when I when I became the president, they said three weeks.

I don't I don't think you can do that before the structure con. Like, that's not a good idea. And I was like, you're talking to former teachers. Like, game on, challenge, accept it, we will rebrand. So we did, and it's been really fun.

If you haven't been down to the exhibit booth, we're the golf people. We have some birds. We like birds. So we want you to join our flock. But today, we're gonna talk about things that hopefully will resonate with you regardless of what you use.

You're all Canvas users. That's why you're here. And we really wanna talk about, just how we use our tools effectively And in a way that we, are appreciative of our teachers, respectful, or their times, and can really meet the needs of our learners. So I'm gonna get started with this making moment presentation. And we're gonna talk about designing those engaging, moments for all.

So hopefully you'll get some tidbits out of this as we go forward. Okay. So that's that's me. I already said that. And then this is Leerin Deyacht.

And she is the head of community engagement and content coordinator. And we wear a lot of hats at soaring Ed, and this is Red O'Garo. I'm gonna say right. And he is all all the way here from Australia, and he's soon to be picked up and relocated here to Australia. And he is our head of customer success and all things to do with our customer implementation.

So this company was founded originally in Australia, but now we have based, and we are a fully, US company. And, we are, kind of, educator took over, and we're ready to take this to new places. My background, just, you know, who I am. I just finished nineteen years in public education. My most recent position.

I was a director of digital learning for a school district in Texas of about nineteen thousand students, varying, socioeconomic status. And for the past ten years, we had Canvas, and it was my job, to make sure that we manage Canvas, all of our tools integrate with our curriculum department, make sure they knew how to use it, push it down to the principals, push it down to media specialists at the campus, push it under the teachers and make sure that everybody's needs are being met, which if you're in that position, whether it's in higher ed or in k twelve, you know, that's a huge job. It's a huge undertaking. To meet the needs of all those people and make them happy. Okay.

So these are our three guiding questions for this session. So what are the challenges of traditional LMS designs when we think about what are the things that we're struggling with today and how can we resolve them either with additional tools or with the tool set that we have. And how can we find the right tools to reduce that educator stress and really shift the focus to making sure that we have high quality content and then also, instruction. And how can we leverage Canvas, to support parent engagement? That's a big thing that I think has been kind of left behind a little bit, but it's now like front and center in the news in your face. You know, parents either they wanna be fully engaged with you or they wanna know at least what's happening in that classroom.

And, this is there are some ways that you can utilize your environment to really be ahead of that curve and kinda hear some things you can do, to make sure that they're they're kept in the loop. And then also how can we how can we address student accommodations, through transformative LMS design? How can we maybe take some of that workload off of additional paperwork and documentation whether you're in higher ed or k twelve to make sure that we're meeting the needs of students that, have special accommodations and modifications within their courses, but also to service all students. Okay. So this is something that you should be like, oh, that's off Like your eyeballs are like it's moving. There's so many pieces.

What is it? This is a teacher's brain when they kind of think about things. Okay? It's like, Here's the teacher over here, and they're like, oh, I've got all these thoughts. You know, faculty and I, I just wanna teach. I am hired to be the content expert You know, I'm a master at my craft, my skill. I wanna connect with my students, then you throw the computer in front of them.

And then they have to think about all the information. Then they have to think about all other student population that they'd address. They think about, okay, how am I gonna assess things? They think about, am I gonna have to, like, use code? They think about, discussion. How do I make it, like, interactive so they're they're doing things? I wanna make sure that they're talking and not just on a computer, do I make it fit into my time constraints? How do I make sure that it's high quality? There's so many things that go into that teacher's brain before they're like, oh, I have to get this kid all the way to success. How do I do that? They are overworked, they're overtaxed, and they're such important people in the world today, and we need them.

So there are things that we can do with technology to really leverage that experience to, to help them. Okay. So one of the things is to really shift the focus and shift the framework to being something as educator friendly. We really focus on, yes, we divine design learning, learning for our for our students. Alright.

They're ultimately the ones that we serve. Right? But how do we get there if we leave the educator behind? Okay. We need to make sure that that educator is being nurtured, that educator is being taken care of. Like I said, it really doesn't matter whether it's higher ed or k twelve. If they were hired to teach for their expertise and they come in and like, you want me to design what? You want me to do what? I don't know how to do that.

It's our job to kind of help them along and put on the training wheels as much as necessary. Know that a lot of times they're like, oh, I just want them to, like, learn and be by themselves and just like, do it and be independent. And that's great. That's great if they had all the time in the world. They had all the time in the world.

They had to have all the time to learn all the things and to truly be independent, but sometimes having those training wheels on is not a bad thing. And, some people would really appreciate that. But also offering the option where they can also have a freedom and flexibility to be creative And it's really about how they can deliver their content, and really feel like they have that ownership so they can do what they do best. So, we need to evaluate the way our core structures are laid out. You know, does it actually follow, a sequential order of how the teacher plans to teach and how they plan to, like, structure projects, is it designed in such a way that it meets the needs of that particular class? Because, I don't know about you, but a science class is vastly different from an ELA class.

It's vastly different from a math class. Is totally different from a gym class or any kind of fine arts class. They're they have different things. So saying like a one size fits all model is not going to gonna help them. I'm just gonna frustrate them.

So you have to recognize, yeah, we can make something that is cohesive that kinda goes together, but we have to make sure that we're taking into account. That it's designed for them so they can do their job to the best of their ability. Okay? But you're like, what about the support staff? If any of you are in here, like, well, That's I'm the designer. I'm the person that does all those things. We have to take you into account as well because if you say you're going to help personalize that experience for your professors and your teachers, how do we make sure that we're also valuing your time so that you're not like, I can't make ten thousand things like that.

I just can't I'm only one or two or three people. So how do we streamline that educator workload and how do we really provide that support? Okay. So through, LMS design, I don't know how many of you have encountered issues where you have students that, in regardless of level, have an accommodation, or how many of you know somebody that there's a student that has ADHD. You know, and that cognitive overload, if they see someone on a page, they're like, I'm I'm done. I'm I'm done.

No, thank you. I'll come back later. When my brain can maybe focus. And then you come back and like, oh, still looks the same. I'm I'm done.

I'm done. But, I mean, and you're like, you got all the information at your fingertips. Right? So how do we how do we make sure that we kind of address that? And, there are some things that we can do if we kinda just step back and we think about like design principles, but also really grounding it in like their accessibility and, pedagogy. So when we have students, let's say that well, we know that a lot of students today, like, they're constantly bombarded with stimulus. Right? So can we chunk direction? So in a common accommodation for, like, IEPs and five zero fours and things like that.

Some of the most common accommodations are chunking assignments into smaller steps. Well, that might be good for a lot of kids. So there are things that we can do that where we can use, maybe an interactive like an accordion. Or a tab. Right? So that's like step one.

And they can focus on just one step. And then they can do step two. Or if you have kids that wanna open it all at once. Awesome. It's their choice.

But then, I don't know how many of you, how many people are like a back end canvas admin? Somebody? Yeah. Yeah. And you're like, you know, you ever have that and structure, professor that comes up to you. It's like, I'm my course, I kinda like, you know, it like disappeared. Like, it's broken.

Don't know what I did. And you're like, oh, and they're like, I have no idea. No idea. It's, just not working. And then you look at it and you're like, okay.

And then you see it and you're like, did you, like, put, like, tabs and an accordion and, like, embed them together And then you put, like, like, neon, and then you put, like, some interactive inside of that. They're like, yeah, oh my god. I went to YouTube. And I found this video, and like I found the code. And then I took this code, and then I was like, oh my god, it worked.

And then I went to YouTube again. I found out a code. And I was like, if I just put it here, like I can put the code together, and then I put it together, and then I wanted to make a change, and then, like, something happened. I'm like, you, you do you deleted something for sure. But I don't know that we really wanted to do that.

So having all that freedom and flexibility is great, but then also how we make it so that we're not constantly fixing, you know, I I get what they were trying to do. And it's like, I need a better way to do this because I can't constantly fix these back end errors. It's like, you know, like, I'm teaching right now. Can you, like, fix it? I'm like, I need to I don't I don't know where to I don't know. I don't know what what are we doing? So it's stressful for you.

So we need to also, like, combat that issue. And really we want to have that transparency and documentation. So, so, yeah, they try to do tabs. And that's a great thing to lay out content. And then also what that does, is it adds that level of when a parent's like, I you're supposed to be following this, and they're supposed to be chunking out directions, you know, but when you have that actual evidence that the student logged into Canvas, the student logged into the page, and you have built assignments like that, then you're like, oh, you did it.

You did it. Awesome. Thank you. It kinda takes away that, like, hostility from a parent that may be, like, oh, you're not doing all that things you need to do. And it's like, I am.

I am. I am. I am right here. So what can we do to kinda help that along? So a teacher doesn't have to think about, oh, I gotta I gotta do it like this. And I gotta do it like you know.

And at the same time, like I said, they're just trying to focus on I need to teach this. I need to put this into the brain so they can be a critical thinker and a productive member of society. Okay. And then the last thing before I get into like a demo and kinda show you some things, And again, you can do this with multiple things. It's just really to kinda get you thinking about some of the possibilities of things that maybe you can do to leverage within your own Canvas instance.

Is that parent engagement. So COVID was like the window, and it was like cracked open a little bit. You know, those windows that only come up a little bit. And then they peeked in And then they were like, meh, I don't I don't know if I like what I see, you know, they're like, I'm not so sure that that's the content that or maybe it's was that wasn't the content. It was the lack thereof.

It was more like turn this assignment in when you're done. And and then a parent looks in and it's like, What was the assignment? What is it that they did that they turned in? So we have a real opportunity here when we talk about parent engagement, and this is more geared towards like the K twelve environment. We want the parents to be involved. There's there's sometimes when we think about involved me. I'm like, oh, the only way, but like, do the things at home with them.

But sometimes, you gotta give the parents some credit. They don't know what the thing is that you're trying to do at home. Because they don't know there's not a textbook coming home anymore. And they get a million or nine messages, and I'll I'll never mind. It's awesome.

Alright. I get a text message. But when I get, like, curriculum updates for my five and nine year old and they're like, do this, and it's like a s'more, and it's like all the things. And I'm like, okay. You want me to, like, they we're doing letter sounds.

Well, what? And they're like, these are the letter sounds. I'm from Philadelphia. My letter sounds are not quite the right letter sounds. So my husband is from Norway and he speaks perfect English and he's you're fired from the English. I will take over and he's like, I will teach them proper English.

And I'm like, wonderful. But wouldn't it be great? For those parents that are, you know, parents of Yale students, that if they actually knew what letter sounds you had, and then maybe like here's what lutter sounds are, and here's a quick two minute little overview of something you could do at home that would really help to reinforce we did in the classroom. You know? So, I get frustrated when my child comes home with math, and she's also dyslexic. And so her numbers and things are a little backwards sometimes, and she's like doing dots and lines. And then I'm like, we're doing math.

Okay. Cool. Are we adding subtracting? What what exactly is the answer? What are we doing? I need help with that. And I and I worked in the school district my children go to. And I'm like, what are we doing? I don't understand third grade math.

This is hard. I'm like, I'm just I'm like, I asked my husband. I'm like, are we just doing edition? And they're like, no, mom. It's like standard algorithm. Like, we do the blah blah blah, and I'm like, oh, we're like talking big fancy words.

Cool. Alright? So awesome. I don't know what you want me to use with her? I mean, I know you got English covered. I can cover, like, presentations and those kinds of fun things that I can do history. Like, I I've got that down.

That's what I taught. Okay. So So, yeah, I could just use a little help. And I'm not asking about like a full lesson, but like if I was able to log in and this is something I worked with their teachers. I'm like, oh god, don't hate me, but could you just maybe put some things in there? And even like for my five year old, you put it in there, And so there's an area that's all for the student, but then a little parent's corner, it's like, Hey, here's the things.

Maybe a little interactive, just review these with them. It'd be awesome. It takes the the pressure off the parent of like, I don't know what I'm doing with my kid. I know you want me to help. I wanna participate.

I don't know how to do it. So how do we leverage that as well? So let's let's dive in, and I'm gonna talk about a tool that, that my company develops It's Lori Design, but again, there are lots of great products out there. And even if you don't have this, you have canvas. You have the ability to create amazing things. So don't don't let this limit you.

This is really, yes, we're gonna log in to our account and talk about it, but don't think you have to run out and get something because you can do this with a lot of different things. Just gonna be creative. It's all about really how do we meet the teachers, the students? The parents, all the people that are engaged in, in this process. So we're gonna get in. I'm just gonna talk about a little bit about design structure, that you can Is that me? Oh, okay.

We're gonna we're gonna log in. I'll just talk for a minute. How's everybody's day? Everybody excited for a Casey in the sunshine pen. Oh, oh, leer oh, woo. Okay.

Leerin's gonna talk. Yeah. Yeah. So I can talk for a minute too, because I'm Lauren, so I just kind of wanted to to go into what Greta was saying, from a perspective of being like the media specialist trying to train teachers on Canvas using Lori. It's it was just a great shift for us in our district because like she was saying, not only could we have it to where parents could view it, but coming from like the students, if you have the information that is on there for them, especially for the students at our school district who transfer schools within our district, or who are absent for sporting events or things like this where they're gone for several days, several weeks, almost whenever you're missing some classes.

We had an an AB block schedule. So if they were involved in any sport, sometimes they miss like a whole week of that one class. So being able to almost have that window again into the classroom where they could go in and check to see what was going on in the classroom, have discussions with their peers, even though they weren't in the classroom, they could still understand what what was going through that. And just one other quick story. So, recently, I took a class, for the Texas Reading Academy.

And I hope nobody's in here from Texas Reading Academy. Okay. Does anybody have to do the Texas reading academy yet? Okay. So I did that. And, yeah, you know, I made it through school.

I don't have any problems. I don't have, I'm a master's degree, you know, I made it all the way there. But whenever I got into this class, I was like, oh my god. Somebody needs to help these people. They need some glory design because they need some design, because it was cognitive overload even for me.

And I just think, like Greto was saying, if we can learn how to just kind of chunk these, content into smaller blocks, it helps everybody. Not just students who need that IEP. And so I just feel like, yeah, that it's really relatable to every student there. Yeah. I'm not a hundred percent sure the internet's gonna work.

So I'm gonna try to create a mental picture don't know how good my mental picture skills are, but we'll we'll see. But this is I kinda gave you the example of like the broken code. Right? So there are some key things how many of you, like, have teachers that use tables? A tables? Like, they're like, I use a table because it, like, outlines everything, and then I can stick a nice little icon in and and then I remove the borders, and it's beautiful. Right? Have you ever used a screen reader on top of tables? It's like dog monkey pony, Milk, franchise. It doesn't read it the way that a student needs to read it.

And I'm like, I appreciate what the teacher was trying to do. They were just trying to do the best they could to organize the content because, like, I gotta make it look pretty. I'm trying to do it. So one way that we've used our interactive tools. It's it's more of like kind of a teacher friendly, like, we can make a template for them.

And you can do it at the admin level, different types of templates that maybe meet different types of lessons, and they can pull it in. And they just fill in the pieces. Right? So if you want it something to be like buttons, you would have it built out with the proper HTML that when a screen reader goes over it, it's gonna read it correctly for that student, and it's gonna look really nice because the spacing's already done for them. They're like, oh, I don't have to do like my padding and my cushions and all the things. It's just there.

They put it on there. And all the teacher has to do then is go in and fill in the content. So, like, if you're common things on an objective, like, it's having a content objective, a language objective, maybe just some directions, follow-up, whatever the basic things that you want on an assignment. And maybe you don't want that on like a content page. You have like things that are just like if I'm doing an overview of information, putting the titles in for the teacher, putting that parent corner and then saying here, go go forth and put the things in.

Now what the teacher does is they're like, I don't have to worry about the design. I'm gonna worry about, okay, I'm the teacher. I'm putting in the objective. I'm creating this amazing lesson. And then also connecting it to, like, all of our amazing Canvas LTI tools.

So anything that's one point three, I wanna put that all together. Right? And then you can also it's not gonna look very I'm gonna paint a picture. You all know what a accordion looks like. Right? We have some layout, interactives, and they're not for grading. They're strictly for chunking that content.

And then we can also different levels and permission where we can hide the code. So that teacher can't go in and, like, start breaking all the stuff. Right? You're like, you lot harder to break it. And they just need to go in and put the things in the accordion. But they can also, you can give them abilities where they can add additional things to a lesson.

This is this is probably not gonna work. It's not gonna work. Yes, sir. Instead of trying to wait for the desk. Yeah.

It might be right, but there's not a lot of things on that, I mean, yeah. You're like, you're like, and we wanna see, jump on a hotspot. Oh, is it your hotspot? I have a hotspot in my bag. Here, you know what? It knows my my hotspot. Pull my pull my yellow phone out.

My phone has this really awesome yellow phone case. It's the ugliest thing ever, but you know what? It's for me to find my phone because no one else has this bright yellow like discounted phone case. It's like, break yellow. There it is. I'm always losing it all the time.

Too busy thinking about things. Yeah. Let me turn that on. So, Lyra, and you wanna tell some stories? Story time. Or you have questions? Why I'm already talking? You're like, it's crazy lady's talking.

I live in Texas now, so I've got, like, y'all of my vocabulary. So I've been in, like, Houston for twenty years. And, yep, with the hot spot on. Pilly Girl. Oh, whoa, where's where's the Philly? Where's I'm from Manneung.

Where you from? No, weren't these? I went to central. Oh, my god. I did. Were you a professor of mine? How did you know? How how did you know that? You did what? Oh my god. You're like, I looked you up.

I saw it. I'm like, oh my god. I had a great experience. Like, I'm gonna tell you my love of technology in teaching actually started when I was that holy family. So I I I'm I'm not gonna lie.

I don't remember my professors' names. I just remembered that there were that sounds familiar. So I had this class, and I was learning about all different kinds of instructional practices. And we had all these assignments for we had to build, like, an angel angel website. I think it was back in the day.

Right? Do you remember angel? I'm like, no, I meant, oh my god. Oh, okay. Cool. So awesome. I'm gonna let Angel Fire but we had to build this website.

And then we had to build, like, this whole presentation on how we would, like, present and engage content. And I think they thought it was crazy. I was in a group with, like, this group assignment. I'm like, hey, guys, look. We can do this amazing thing.

We're gonna do, like, a back to the future theme. Right? Brand teach history. And we're gonna, like, put all these things in here and all this music. And, like, at that time is, you know, early two thousand. Like two thousand.

And, like, around that time. And, you know, you found like little sound clips. It was a really complicated thing because those things, you know, were not on all the internet stuff. It was like, you really gotta find it, find the right clips, and just got really into this assignment, and like what we would do and I was like, oh god. This is amazing.

Like, I'm gonna have my students do all these amazing things. I just wanted them to do all the things. So, And then when I graduated and had my masters and then, started teaching, that was like a philosophy that, like, stuck with me because I was like, can do amazing things. It's just so Oh, that's nice. I don't know if this never gonna work.

I really don't. It's on a hot spot. Okay. Alright. Cool.

Wasn't coming up. Oh, okay. It was, like, your husband wasn't good enough. Like, you're over your data limit for the month. And so, but the thing with the accordions and thing is that it's a no code, way to lay out content, things like that.

And to make it like easy for teachers, you can kinda build in those accommodations. I know, like, everyone's like, I'm tired. It's the end of the day. I hate to ready for the concert. But yeah, we can just do questions.

Shoot. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes. Yes. So the thing with tabs is like, yeah, they're great. But what this does is it kinda takes that, like the HTML out of the back end, and it's just the tabs are responsive. So you can look at it, and we actually have a preview button so you can see what your course would look like on a desktop, on a mobile device, and on a tablet.

So you can kinda look at it ahead of time. I'm just gonna answer questions. We're gonna give up. It's cool. I am at the golf booth, we'll still be there.

Tonight and tomorrow. Okay. Nope. It's all it's all directly inside of this not a very big picture, but it's all directly inside of Canvas. It's an LTI to a lift in the left hand side to the entire page view.

And then you just say, what do you wanna do? Click add a button, add, and what do you wanna add? I wanna add it in columns. It's no it's not even in the rich text editor. So this is an LTI tool that just mirrors your module structure, your pages, your assignments, and then you just completely build in a full page view, and it's kinda like building a wix site. Almost like we just add the pieces, like, plus this, plus this. And then you just say click a button that says save to LMS, and then it's on your page.

So, then it's good. And you move on to the next page. And if you really like it, you can say save it as a template. And then when you wanna use it for another assignment or another directions page, you just push start from template, and you find that template, and you say, I wanna use it, add, and then you just change the content. You know, you can edit it all you want, save it as a new template if you want.

So if you're a designer, instead of saving an entire page too, you can also save a custom block. So, like, if you're if you have littles, if you're in K twelve and you have littles, you're like, I want them to use Canvas, They totally can. My son's he's going to kindergarten this year. He's in pre k last year. He can use canvas because they put it in in, like, picture form, and he just touches the screen, it was just built with, like, just an easy button kinda editor.

Right? And, you just put the things in, but if you want, like, centers, you know, you make, like, it in tops, And then the center, you just color them at the top of the tab, red. Blue. Green. You can write the words too. So the kids see that, like, text print.

But then they're like, you're at the red center today. And they just have one device out. So, yeah, they're using the device. They need it at the center. You can embed a video in that tab.

That's gonna fully function. So when a teacher is working, with a small group of students at a small table, maybe listening to them read, or in high school, they're doing a paper review, giving feedback, And maybe they're, like, editing, and they're putting their, like, mastery, Master Connect. We had Master Connect. It was awesome. Then the student that's at the table, they can watch the video for some directions on what they're supposed to be doing physically with their hands manipulating, cutting, talking with other students.

So it's like, yeah, the devices are part of this. But it's not the whole thing. It's a resource to it. You're using it to leverage yourself, to multiply yourself, but not replace you. You know, just to get a little little extra help so that you can spend a little extra five minutes of FaceTime with that small group you're working with.

Right? I talked about my daughter having dyslexia. We, we did a big push, when we got in here, to make sure that all of our interactives were accessible. They were like, wow, it's really hard to make some of these things accessible. I don't care. I don't care.

We're gonna do it. So figure it out. You know, and our team is amazing. And they were like, okay. Okay.

We're gonna do it. Make them accessible because I never want someone to say to a student. Well, you know, like, it's on a piece of paper. You know, I get Johnny to help you read it. I don't know if Johnny can read.

You know, I want my daughter to learn to be self sufficient so she can get up there and she can get help when she needs it and do the things that she's supposed to do in class. So and then using the the, the device for feedback. So I'm really sorry that this didn't load. I know it's out of time. Again, I like to respect your time.

The forty five minute session. I'm one minute short of forty five minutes. But, if you do wanna see it, we would love to have you come down to, booth forty and check it out. But like I said, you can still achieve this and kinda take this back to your team and be like, oh, we these are some good things to think about. To design with whatever tools you have because there's a lot of great tools out there.

And if you're like a designer in the room, there are tools that, like, well, you're you're not intimidated by all the tools. You're like, awesome. More more the better. You know? And that's great. And there's teachers that are like that too, but let's try to think about everybody and how can we how can we make more time out of the no time that we have, to do the best we can for everybody.

So thank you so much for coming. I'm really sorry that none of our internet's worked. But thank you for offering your hotspot. But if you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer any questions, really, about anything. I have a true love for Canvas.

I have been to all these canvas cons that are brought back in them, like, the moments. And I'm just like, oh my god. I love it. I remember this one. I remember this one.

So it's a huge community and there's just amazing people here a lot of amazing people. So I would love to just talk to you about whatever. I mean, clearly I like the talk. Okay. Thank you so much for coming. Really appreciate it.