Canvas – Course Pacing Redesign

Before the development of “Course Pacing,” instructors had to manually input due dates for assignments for each individual student in a rolling enrollment course. This was an extremely inefficient way of managing a course. Just imagine the amount of clicks required to set customized due dates for a course with over 100+ students. Instructors simply do not have the time to meticulously click away in Canvas. The problem becomes even more significant when students require due date extensions due to various circumstances.

THE ISSUES

The old design has a few flaws:

1. The old Course Pacing does not support individual students and sections, which is essential for teachers to configure paces tailored to each student’s learning needs.

2. The user interface does not support a large number of students and sections. Using a dropdown menu for selecting a large number of students and sections is not efficient.

3. There is very low usage of Course Pacing, and we want to increase its usage.

The old design utilizes a dropdown menu for navigating between sections and students. It functions well with a small number of students, but becomes impractical with 25+ students.

We considered various options but ultimately decided on one due to time and technical constraints. This design addressed the scalability issue we initially aimed to solve and also improved a few other aspects:

Improvements:

1. We added a H1 header to provide clear orientation for the user, which was lacking in the previous design.
2. A short description was included under the header to remind users of the page’s purpose.
3. We increased the prominence of the “stats” and “Default Pace” components.
4. Sections and a students tab were included to address the navigation issue for large courses.
5. Clicking into any section or student item will open a fullscreen modal for instructors to set paces for the chosen section or student.

We conducted moderated user tests and surveys to validate our approach. Additionally, I reviewed the design with our in-house accessibility engineers to address screen reader and keyboard highlights issues.

The engineering team then broke down the work across multiple sprints. Throughout development, I was actively engaged in answering usability questions, addressing accessibility concerns, and offering alternative solutions whenever issues arose.

In the redesign, we added some extra features. These include the ability to set blackout dates, so that tasks will be skipped and assignments will not be due within a specific date range. We also added the ability to view and reset pending changes.

TAKEAWAYS

The instructors were excited about the change because they could now set custom pacing for their students. After we introduced the redesigned Course Pacing in Beta, there was a small increase in usage.

Here are some learnings:

1. It was challenging to determine the main driver of the increased usage – whether it was the redesign or the added features.
2. We did not establish a clear measure of success. We simply considered more paces created as sufficient for success.
3. Due to lack of documentation, it was difficult to understand some of the design decisions made by the previous designer. It was easier to communicate with the engineers who built the first version.
4. I was unsatisfied with the process of adjusting durations for individual items. I found it to be inefficient. There was significant resistance to redesigning that interaction/UX.