EXPERIENCE

• Website: Canvas

Our experience with Canvas is more negative than positive, as we believe the platform is trying to do too many things. For example, most of the navigation links within each Canvas page are repetitive. The Modules tab, Assignments tab, and Files tab have the potential to contain all of the same types of files. It is confusing for students to try to find a particular file or assignment when there are so many categories to choose from. This confusion elicits experiences of frustration, since students have to spend long periods of time looking under each navigation link for one file. The universal aspects of Canvas would be looking at assignments and grades because all users who are students will have to visit those sections at some point. The individual experience is built depending on which classes someone takes. Since Canvas has so many options and ways to configure a class page, professors, who are also users, can set up their class in a myriad of ways. Because of this, some students will use certain tabs or be familiar with certain routes within Canvas while others will know more about other aspects.

Since many canvas instructors organize their curriculum in different ways, there are many inconsistencies among each course’s navigation patterns. Some instructors organize their course with module groups for each course week. Some instructors keep their reading assignments in files. Some instructors only keep their assignments externally, so students may not even see all their assignments in one location on the dashboard. The lack of universal curriculum structure makes multi-class navigation very challenging and forces students to rely on complex memory recall.

The left navigation menu is quite complex and unnecessary. We discussed the tabs we visit most and the ones we’ve never clicked on. Half of the tabs we do not use. The dashboard, courses, and calendar are useful, but the rest are rarely visited. “Groups” shows us our assigned groups for all of our classes, even though we can find these groups within the course page. None of us use “Commons.” Inbox is also unreliable because not all canvas students or instructors use it. It is mostly filled with automated update messages. “History” seems awkward because the design pattern for showing precious history is usually located somewhere else, possibly at the top left corner. We do not use it to race our steps.

• Proposed Design Change

Our revised design would address the compositional thread of experience by eliminating unnecessary and confusing features to streamline the experience of both professors/instructors and students. This would also help to make the experience on Canvas more universal instead of based solely on how an instructor interprets Canvas. Assignment deadlines and instructor announcements would be much more effective if canvas had a better notification system. We would modify canvas to email students to remind them when their upcoming assignments are due. Currently, there is no warning for students missing assignments until it's too late. We would also modify the grading rubric experience to allow students to view their rubric and comments more easily. Instead of a small link on the right side, students should be able to click a button to view their grading on a larger scale rather than in a skinny column on the right.

• Story for Improved Canvas

Tom has a project due for his SI 388 class. He is reminded of his upcoming deadline by an email from Canvas. He doesn’t remember exactly what his project entails, and wants to check Canvas to review the project structure and rubric. In the past, he wouldn’t know whether his project information would be under the Assignments tab, the Modules tab, or the Files tab. With the new redesign, Tom knows if he wants to find information about an assignment, it would be in one place, the Assignments tab. If he wants to find the articles that he needs to use for his assignment, he would go to the Files tab. The Modules tab no longer exists, eliminating any confusion he had in the past. This story highlights the compositional thread of experience in that Tom and other users would understand how the Assignments tab fits into the overall scheme of Canvas. Students assign meaning to the Assignments tab because it is important to easily locate this part of Canvas in order to be on time with school work.