Canvas Course Maintenance Support at USU

The Center for Innovative Design and Instruction is available to support teachers in providing accessible, user-friendly, and effective learning experiences. To better serve our instructors and students, CIDI performs certain basic maintenance services, as needed, on a proactive basis, informing instructors of the changes after they are made.

The focus of these changes is to remove obvious points of confusion and barriers to content access without impacting content delivery. We will not make any changes to content or disturb the integrity of the course curriculum. All modifications will be documented and shared with you as the course instructor.

If you would prefer to be contacted before these changes are made, you may opt out of these services here. 

Default Course Maintenance

This is the default level of proactive support that we provide to all courses unless you opt-out. We are happy to help you make any of these changes as well.

Fix broken links

Links break over time and there are tools available in Canvas to help identify them.

Fix broken HTML

Sometimes HTML that makes up Canvas pages get broken when creating content. This might include fixing broken images.

Clean up duplicate, unused files or content

Sometimes content is duplicated unnecessarily when copying courses. We will remove or hide it for you.

Hide unused menu items

Hiding Canvas menu items that are not being used makes it easier to find menu items that are important.

Correctly embed videos as Kaltura videos

If you use videos in your course, the way you add them makes it easier for students to access them and allows you to see how often students view them.

Course and file accessibility

Making your content more accessible to students with disabilities can also make it more usable for all students. Services include

  1. Add alt text to images
  2. Convert existing content to headings, fix incorrect headings
  3. PDF file accessibility (without changing the appearance)
  4. Fix color contrast problems
  5. Fix table accessibility
  6. Fix inaccessible links
  7. Fix images that can induce seizures
  8. Adjust font size to be more readable and accessible

Identify and suggest areas for improvement, including

  1. Course orientation material
  2. Objective and assessment alignment
  3. Course organization
  4. Pacing issues and chunking issues
  5. Content quality, amount, and duration issues
  6. Assessment reliability, validity, equity, or security issues

Higher Impact Improvements

CIDI can provide the following additional services on a proactive basis to teachers who would like help in implementing additional best practices. Some consultation may be needed as we implement these improvements. 

Set a basic home page and/or course template

If no home page is set, we will set an existing page as your course home page or create a basic home page for you.

Check assignment and exam settings and fix as needed

Make sure assignments and exams are set up so that they are available at the appropriate time for the intended type of submission.

Format syllabus as HTML in the syllabus tool

If your syllabus is located somewhere other than the syllabus location in Canvas we will move it there where it is easy for students to find.

Make additional course and file accessibility improvements

  1. Convert PDF files to Canvas pages
  2. Add headings in content where they don’t exist

Update Videos to Use Best Practices

  1. Embed or add to a playlist videos that were not previously embedded.
  2. Where multiple videos exist, combine them into a playlist.

Hide or remove unused Canvas content

Old, irrelevant content tends to pile up in Canvas courses over time. We have tools that can help to identify and clean up that content.

If you would like to authorize CIDI to perform these services without first requesting permission, please complete this brief opt-in form. If you do not opt in, CIDI can still provide these services, but will ask you first for permission or wait to hear from you.