Cidi Labs Design Tools for Canvas: A Scalable Delivery Model that Texas Reading Academies Program Leverages to Improve the User Learning Experience in Canvas

Concurrent Session 1

Brief Abstract

Texas House Bill 3 (2019) requires that all K-3 teachers in the State, including special education teachers, and principals to complete the Texas Reading Academies program by 2023. To accommodate the state requirement, the Reading Academies program delivers courses online via the Canvas LMS. With the help of Cidi Labs tools, course developers have created a scalable delivery model that improves the participant’s learning experience in Canvas.

Texas House Bill 3 (2019) requires that all K-3 teachers in the State, including special education teachers, and principals to complete the Texas Reading Academies program by 2023. To accommodate the state requirement, the Reading Academies program delivers courses online via the Canvas LMS. With the help of Cidi Labs tools, course developers have created a scalable delivery model that improves the participant’s learning experience in Canvas.

Presenters

Lead Presenter: Kenneth Larsen, Cidi Labs

Kenneth invented DesignPLUS when he worked as a programmer/analyst with Utah State University’s (USU) Center for Innovative Design and Instruction (CIDI). He blends a master’s degree in Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences from USU with 14 years of Internet development experience to empower teachers and designers to push the boundaries of online course development.  He loves exploring the outdoors with his wife and 2 daughters and often spends downtime taking pictures, drawing, reading, and scheming new features to add to DesignPLUS.

Co-presenter: Jodi Mata, Education Service Center-Region 11

Dr. Jodi Mata is the director of the State Initiatives Team at the Education Service Center, Region 11 in Fort Worth, Texas. She has been a classroom teacher, adjunct professor, and instructional designer, and has spent the last 3 years working on different aspects of the Texas Reading Academies project. She has a background in education with a bachelors and master’s degree in Elementary Education and a PhD in learning technologies. She has a passion for effective design in online learning. When not engaged in all things Reading Academies, she enjoys cooking, traveling, fly fishing and spending time with her husband, and her four children.

Extended Abstract

The Texas Reading Academies program (aka HB3 Reading Academies) delivers courses online via the Canvas LMS. With the help of Cidi Labs tools, course developers have created a scalable delivery model that improves the participant’s learning experience in Canvas.

Creating accessible courses for K-3 teachers is critical to the success of the program. The TEA team has used Cidi Labs tools for instructional designers, to build beautiful and accessible courses quickly using DesignPLUS, check accessibility for existing courses with UDOIT Cloud, and identify published pages and documents for remediation using TidyUP.

Texas House Bill 3 (2019) requires that all K-3 teachers in the State, including special education teachers, and principals to complete the Texas Reading Academies program by 2023.

With DesignPLUS course creators with the TEA program can build beautiful and accessible courses in minutes without knowledge of CSS and HTML. The UDOIT accessibility checker (developed by the University of Central Florida and Cidi Labs SaaS hosted UDOIT Cloud) checks for accessible course content. TidyUP saves time by giving designers the ability to identify files and pages in use in the course, and an easy way to delete extra files and pages no longer needed.