Tools Development

In collaboration with faculty and instructional designers, we develop Canvas LTI tools to improve the online academic experience.

57+

tools and counting

3743

USU courses used our tools in Spring 2022

spin off company

A Sampling of Our Tools

Canvas LTI Virtual Reality Other

Connections Dashboard

Provides a way for Connections instructors to manage a calendar and make it available to the students in their courses.

Course Evaluation

Provides an easy way for teachers and instructional designers to evaluate their course design and organization in Canvas to ensure quality learning experiences for all students.

Course Report

A course dashboard that provides a one-stop overview of all course content and learning activities along with links to help instructors provide effective online learning experiences.

COVID Dashboard

Shows faculty which students in their class need an accommodation because they cannot attend in person due to quarantine or isolation. Data are pulled from Service-Now, where COVID case management operates.

Office Hours

Allows instructors to create and display office hours that students can view and schedule within Canvas.

ReadyGO

Assists instructional design teams in tracking course development progress including ensuring courses have content, contain a syllabus, and have instructors and students assigned.

TidyUp

Helps faculty and instructional design teams quickly and easily identify and remove unpublished pages, outdated content/files, and empty folders from Canvas courses.

Service Preferences

Allows instructors to specify in Canvas how they would like the CIDI support team to address potential technical issues in their Canvas courses. Instructors can also specify additional topics and services that interest them.

ECG App

A VR experience connected to Canvas where students complete an electrocardiogram by placing 12 leads on a patient to measure and assess their heart rhythm.

Learn More

Spinning Off a Company

In 2013, after seeing the amount of work that went into designing a course in Canvas, Teaching & Learning Technologies (TLT) created Design Tools for Canvas (now known as DesignPLUS) to better empower faculty and instructional designers in designing high quality online courses. Recognizing the value DesignPLUS could bring to other institutions, USU collaborated with edtech industry veteran, Mike Zackrison, to spin out a company focused on "enabling "Saas-sharing" of locally-developed instructional design tools and innovations." In 2016, Cidi Labs was born.

Today, Cidi Labs works with over 400 higher education and K-12 organizations, helping them improve the instructional design and learning process in Canvas courses. Three of the four products currently offered by Cidi Labs were created by TLT: DesignPLUS, ReadyGO, and TidyUP.

For more information about Cidi Labs, visit cidilabs.com/about.

Contact Us

Interested in learning more or collaborating? Get in touch with us!