Blueprint Templates

Post date: Aug 13, 2019 9:00:46 PM

A goal of my department was to have a common homepage, navigation bar, and student resources in all of our Canvas courses. With the help of our wonderful CTLE, I researched Blueprint Courses to see if it would work for us. Polly Laubach and I ran some tests to troubleshoot and see how the Blueprint course would respond in different situations. We discovered that we could also use the Blueprint template to post program announcements.

We deployed the Blueprint I created into all of our EXS courses for Fall of 2019. The Blueprint streamlined the appearance and navigation bar in all of our courses. The program announcements were helpful to my team because I could post an announcement one time in the Blueprint course and it would post to all of our students, instead of each of us posting the announcement in each of our courses.

After working with the EXS Blueprint in the Fall, we determined that the common homepage was too much, so I created just a banner with links to use in the Spring. The announcement feature was so helpful, that I made four separate Blueprints for the Spring (one for EXS, one for HES/WED, one for REC, and one for PED), so I can post relevant department announcements to each of those areas. The Blueprint courses have been an effective way to enhance communication with our students.

We used the blueprints during COVID-19 to keep our students updated and inform them of campus resources. During the rapid shift to online, I was able to help our adjunct PED instructors by creating assignments in the blueprint and sharing them to all of their PED courses.