Associate Professor Adam Saffer Wins Exceptional Canvas Site Design Award
Saffer has been recognized for his Canvas Site Design for JOUR 3201: Principles of Strategic Communication, a class of about 40 students.
"This course has been easy to navigate because of the clear organization located on the home page. My professor has clearly put in a great deal of extra work to set up the modules in weekly-tabs. There are never any surprises because the tabs organize everything you need for the week into one place. This includes chapter readings for the week and also his own commentary, which is exceptionally helpful in understanding the course content. This deserves recognition because it is unique and has vastly improved my learning experience in his class."
– Quotation from student nomination
Recipient Q&A
What are you most proud of in your Canvas course site?
I'm most proud of the structural consistency across the course where students navigate through modules that follow the predictable patterns so they always know what to expect regardless of the week's topic. That consistency isn't just an organizational preference; it's designed to scaffold student success. The modules are designed to walk students through milestone assignments that build toward a major assignments. This creates a design where students are never facing a high-stakes deliverable cold. They've already drafted and gotten feedback on the component pieces along the way and have resources in the modules to make revisions or review content. The site's navigation and structure are really in service of that scaffolding.
What is one lesson you learned while building or using your course site that might help other instructors who want to improve their use of Canvas?
I started with a vision of what I wanted the course site to look like back during the pandemic, and took student's feedback about the earlier versions seriously. I've been building toward that vision incrementally each time I've taught the course since and have asked students for specific feedback about the design I incorporated. The lesson for other instructors is that a great Canvas site doesn't have to happen all at once; it can be an iterative, multi-semester project. Each time I teach the course, I refine a piece of it rather than trying to perfect everything in one pass. That's made the improvements more sustainable and let the design mature based on what I actually see working (or not) with students, rather than guessing upfront.
How have you noticed your Canvas site supporting student success? What does student success look like in your course?
Ease of use that allows students to access materials they may need to review from earlier modules as they are completing the milestones that build to major assignments in the course. I suspect that with good design, students want to stay within the course. I've really tried to lower the barrier to entry and reduce points of friction as students are navigating through the site. One example is how I've organized reference materials like database tutorials (Simmons Insights, Mintel, Statista, Hoovers) into their own dedicated resource module, rather than burying them inside each week's content. Students can find what they need exactly when a milestone or activity calls for it, without hunting back through old modules or losing their place in the current week's work. I think of student success less as a single moment and more as students staying oriented. Students can excel when they know where they are in the course material, what's due, and where to find what they need. When the site removes that friction, students can spend their energy on the actual thinking and writing, not on figuring out Canvas.
When building this course site, what was your process?
Over the past ten years of teaching some form of online courses, I've spent a bit of time attending workshops on instructional design principles and reading about what other faculty have done in their courses. I've done a lot of trial and error across a lot of my course sites, and now I have a set of design features that I draw on and apply across all of my course sites: consistent module structures, predictable navigation patterns, and a rhythm of readings, activities, and assessments that repeats every week so students never have to relearn how the course works. That said, my process isn't to build everything from scratch each time. I treat each new version of the site as a refinement of the last, carrying over what already works and only changing what genuinely needs to change rather than rebuilding for the sake of it. When I've adapted a site for a different course format (for example, condensing a 15-week semester course into an 8-week summer intensive), I still start from the existing site and work forward, testing changes on a single week or unit before rolling them out across the whole course. That approach lets me catch problems early and keeps the student experience consistent, even when the underlying calendar or pace has changed significantly.
Is there anyone you would like to acknowledge that you collaborated with or who helped you on your course site?
I would like to acknowledge Rachel Dallman, who is an Academic Technologist in CLA. Rachel has been so supportive with problem solving, an outstanding thought partner when I've had an idea but wasn't sure if it was worth the effort, and so generous with her time to review my course sites when I was uncertain about how I structured earlier versions of some course sites. Her feedback has shaped how I think about the site as a whole, not just whether an individual page or module works, but whether the overall experience holds together for students. Having someone with her expertise willing to sit down and talk through a half-formed idea has made a real difference in how confidently I've been able to iterate on the design over the years. I feel very fortunate she is my colleague.
What were some of the benefits (or challenges) of using DesignPlus to build your Canvas course? What suggestions do you have for others to get started?
I learned DesignPlus gradually, the same way I've built the course site overall. I had to refine my use of it each time I taught the course rather than trying to master every feature at once. The biggest benefit has been consistency: DesignPlus templates make it much easier to apply the same visual structure (banners, buttons, section headers) across every module, so students get that predictable ""always know what to expect"" experience without me manually recreating formatting every week. The main challenge early on was learning which components were worth the setup time versus which added visual polish without actually helping students navigate the course. My suggestion for someone getting started with DesignPlus: don't try to redesign everything at once. Pick one structural element like a consistent module header or a navigation banner. Once you get that right, test it with students, and expand from there. It's much easier to maintain a design system you built incrementally and understand deeply than one you assembled all at once from a template gallery.