Course Author (Faculty) Preparation

Before designing an online course, course authors should complete professional development that focuses on online teaching and design. Many colleges have created their own in-house professional development that is typically modeled after CVC@ONE’s Online Teaching & Design (OTD). It is recommended that his type of professional development covers: 

  • Course design
  • Interaction 
  • Assessment
  • Accessibility

Course Orientation Module Template

We have created a "Quick Start" Canvas Course Orientation/Module template in the Canvas Commons for you which can expedite your Canvas course development with the ability to then duplicate modules as you need. You will find a homepage, orientation module, and one content (course) module with pages you can 'fill in'. There are also tips and hints on each page. This is meant as just one example of course design. 

Grab the Course template from Canvas Commons

  1. Choose the Commons button on the left navigation in your Canvas course.
  2. Search for "CVC Orientation Module Template" and click to open.
    (You'll see the OEI logo and Canvas logo on the course card.)
  3. Choose the Import/Download button.
  4. Click on the course(s) into which you wish to add the template.

Accessibility

All areas mentioned above are important; however, accessibility training deserves extra focus because of the nuances and details required to make content accessible. Within the accessibility portion of the training, integrating the use of any accessibility tools available to the college is key. This approach will ensure that faculty can identify and remediate accessibility issues before the course is reviewed by the POCR team. 

The accessibility training should include: 

  • Ally
  • Heading styles
  • Alt text
  • Lists
  • Descriptive links
  • Table headers
  • Color (both contrast and meaning)
  • Captions/transcripts
    • Videos should include appropriate captioning including capitalization and punctuation 
  • Accessibility Checkers:
    • Canvas Accessibility Checker
    • WAVE
  • College Specific Accessibility Checkers
    • Pope Tech
    • UDOIT
Unless otherwise noted, resources shared on this site are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Copyright © 2019 by California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office