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Canvas - Digital Learning 

This is an Independent Research Study, each student researcher was assigned to an online course and used it to conduct usability studies. With a goal of learning about the student's online learning patterns to help improve the professor's online teaching.

 

I was lucky to be selected to join with other research students and the University of Washington Tacoma (UWT)  faculty. The research was sponsored by the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences and the Institute for Innovation & Global Engagement (IIGE) of UWT. 

My role: lead researcher and research assistant.

Research method: Usability Studies

Tool: Canvas, Google Suite, Zoom, Slack, Calendly

The Team
2 facilitator
5 student researchers

Participants
5 clients (professors)  + 5 courses
30+ users (UWT students)

5 Courses: Math, Psychology, English, Business, Religion

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Canvas: is a digital learning platform that serves as a central hub for online, hybrid, and in-person classrooms. 

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Problem: due to the Covid 19 pandemic, professors were rushed into teaching online with little resources and equipment to create an effective online environment for students. Now everything is back to the new normal, the professors want to improve online teaching and learning at UWT. 

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Solution: We wanted to learn about the students' pattern of using Canvas and apply it to create a better course structure that is not only aligned well with the online learning principles but also makes it user-friendly to improve students' online learning experience. 

Process: I was responsible for the Introduction to Psychology class. After many discussions and meetings with the team, we came up with 15 tasks we want the users to carry out during the usability studies. We selected users by sending out screening surveys and contacted the ones that have similar majors to the course we are researching. I facilitated 6 sessions and assisted another student researcher as the note-taker with another 6 sessions. Each session is 45-60 minutes long. All were conducted through Zoom. 

FINDINGS

After the usability studies, we collected, analyzed, and organized all the quantitative and qualitative data to narrow down our findings and put them into themes: General Themes and Themes by Design Principles. We presented the primary results to all the clients, then a private 1 on 1 (a student researcher with a professor) for details results for each course.

General themes that we found:

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  • Students seek most of their information about the course and assignments in the syllabus 

  • Students struggle with text-heavy syllabi and instructions.

  • Modules are the key places students interact with a course and appreciate organized and clear modules.

  • Students sense the instructor’s engagement with the course through announcements and feedback.

  • Students appreciate content and text that meets best practices for readability and accessibility. 

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Themes by design principles

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  • ​Alignment: 

    • Students often skim through the course content instead of reading in-depth.

    • Some students don’t read the course's outcomes until the end of a course when those elements become clearer. 

    • Students appreciate it when the alignment is clear. 

    • Students in a major know and have their own expectations about alignment in their field.

  • Course Orientation & Structure: â€‹

    • Students struggle to understand the course Syllabus due to:​

      • Unclear labels and information sections. ​

      • Text-heavy and long list of items content. 

      • Some students prefer to have a PDF file to download. 

  • Engagement: 

    • ​Involvement:​

      • Students feel instructors’ engagement through announcements, assignment feedback, pre-recorded video lectures, and check-in office hours.

      • Many students prefer videos for earning materials.

    • Communication:

      • ​Interactive with professors: students appreciate office hours, emails, and canvas inboxes.

      • Interactive with peers: discussion posts, group work, canvas inbox, and different social platforms such as Discord. 

    • Range of experiences:

      • ​Students who read quickly prefer text over video because it’s more effective.

      • Hearing-impaired students may find video/audio materials less accessible. 

  • Accessibility & Inclusion: 

    • ​Instructors should refer to their Canvas Ally* Accessibility Report. 

    • Students appreciate content from diverse voices.

    • Students struggle to meaningfully assess how inclusive a course was based on this study.

*Ally automatically checks course content and files uploaded by instructors, and provides feedback to instructors about the accessibility of resources with respect to students with disabilities.” (UW IT)

  • Assessment: 

    • Variety:​

      • ​Students appreciated the variety of assessment types.

      • In some classes, group work assignments in asynchronous classes were seen as stressful.

    • Workload:

      • ​Students with different backgrounds had different opinions on whether the workload was appropriate for the class (100 vs. 200)

    • Grading

      • ​Students appreciate when there is a clear grading criteria/rubric for assignments.

Reflection

The clients were satisfied with the findings and the presentations. They expressed interest in another research for different courses to encourage more professors to take part in improving their online teaching. I enjoyed the research process and learned many new things in the research process, from selecting appropriate users to writing unbiased questions/ tasks and analyzing big data to help the clients understand the issues without overwhelming them. I love researching and am proud of the results that my team and I achieved. 

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