Canvas Usage

At SUU, Assistant Professor Sarah Allen, along with her development team, used Canvas to create a gamified roadmap for her course, Family Life in Italy. To make the online component more engaging, she worked with Instructional Designer Kyle Dillon and Graphic Artist Andrew Mitchell to present the course modules as stops along a virtual tour of Italian cities. Students earned badges and unlocked new content as they moved through the course, preparing for a real-life class trip to Italy.

“Instead of having a really intimidating syllabus, what if you visually represent it as a map, as a roadmap?” she said. “That’s much more accessible, especially for first-generation students, to understand where you’re going in the course, how to orient yourself to the course, what’s next, what’s the overall vision.”

Students loved the visually dynamic course, sharing comments in their course evaluations such as “I was less stressed,” “I was more inclined to put in some effort,” and “I was more present.”