Admin Guide Training Options for DesignPLUS

We have a ton of training resources to help you be successful in implementing DesignPLUS at your institution.

Learn first how to train the trainer and then see how you can use our Cidi Labs resources to train educators.

Train the Trainer

First, let's get your Canvas admins, trainers, and instructional designers (i.e. "power users") up to speed with our DesignPLUS Training:

Live Training via Zoom...

Send your power users to attend live training (as often as desired!), so they can get their questions answered.

🖌️ DesignPLUS Sidebar Training - great for any power users, trainers, instructional designers, etc.

🎨 DesignPLUS Customizations Training - intended for admins and instructional designers who will be building customizations content for their institutions or departments to access through the Sidebar.

🙋‍♀️ DesignPLUS Q&A - "office hours" style sessions to answer any questions you may have about DesignPLUS.

... or On-Demand Video Training!

Alternatively, anyone at your institution can sign up for our DesignPLUS Sidebar Training via email, with on-demand videos.

You will receive one video per day for 8 days. The videos are each 5-20 minutes long.

This series is a high-level overview intended to provide a quick onramp to using Design PLUS. It does not cover Customizations.

You may also want to consult our DesignPLUS Sidebar Resources. This guide contains several links to resources and one-pager documents that can be downloaded and/or printed for quick reference.

We also have a one-stop-shop where you can browse all of our training resources for DesignPLUS:

DesignPLUS Training Resources

Customizations Course Admins

Will you be creating templates, content blocks, snippets, and other kinds of customized content to help you scale best practices? Be sure to review the DesignPLUS Admin Guide to learn how to optimize your Customizations Course!

Next, learn how you can use our resources to train your educators!

Use Our Resources to Train Your Educators

We know Canvas admins and trainers have too much on their plates already, so we've tried to tackle a lot of the heavy lifting for you!

Want to embed our videos directly into your own resource pages and training courses?

This page contains an ever-growing list of videos and their associated embed codes:

DesignPLUS Training & Tutorial Video Embed Codes

We offer two on-demand video training options for your designers and educators:

High Level, Faster Paced Training (~90 min)

We built an on-demand version of the same training we offer live in our Train-the-Trainer sessions, added a few things, and made it available to anyone at your institution!

These sessions are great for those who want a quick onramp to what DesignPLUS can do.

The videos:

Introduction
Creating a Basic Page
Creating a Home Page
Styling Existing Content
Accessibility & Usability
Using Templates
Elements & Resources
The Multi-Tool

In-Depth, Designed for Educators (5 hours)

We also created a 5-part series, designed with educators in mind. Each session is an hour long, and educators can watch one or all, depending on their level of interest and how deeply they want to dive into DesignPLUS!

These sessions are great for those who want a little more guidance through the individual steps.

The videos:

Getting Started with DesignPLUS
Elevating Canvas Content
Course Building with Templates
Exploring the Tools
Course-Level Customizations

We also have lots of resources built right into the Sidebar to help your educators and designers!

While viewing any tool, as available, you can quickly launch a video tutorial, walkthrough, or user guide for that tool:

And the Help / Tutorials tab of the sidebar offers many additional resources, such as:

Local support contact information for your institution
Searchable tutorials that allow users to learn and try things out all from within Canvas
Searchable user guides
Training videos and video tutorials
Walkthroughs that launch an overlay on top of the sidebar, highlighting different interface options and what they do
Release notes so users can learn about new and updated features/tools

Feel free to share the one-stop-shop of resources with your educators:

DesignPLUS Training Resources

The searchable User Guide has helpful information for every element in DesignPLUS:

DesignPLUS User Guide

Ideas for Implementing Our Resources

Embed our training videos into a professional development course in your Canvas instance. Share the sidebar keyboard shortcut with those instructors who successfully complete the course.
Add the DesignPLUS Training Resources page to an Instructor Resources module that is copied into every course.
Create a Canvas Global Announcement to let your instructors know that they have access to DesignPLUS. In the announcement, link to the two training sequences.
Use the Account Settings tool in the Customizations Course to create an Account Tools Group to highlight institutional favorite sidebar elements. Let your instructors know how to launch a video tutorial, walkthrough, or user guide for that elements and encourage them to review the Help / Tutorials tab.
Use the Customizations Course to add Support information and create custom Tutorials that can be launched from the sidebar to ease the implementation burden for your instructors.
Add Action Items to template pages to share guidance on how to use and optimize DesignPLUS tools. Action items are only visible to editors, so students will never see them.

Not ready to unleash the full power of the sidebar to all your educators? Leverage the QuickStart Wizard!

Leverage the QuickStart Wizard

We know you want all your learners to benefit from beautiful, engaging, accessible course design – and the DesignPLUS Sidebar helps you deliver! But let’s face it: not all course designers have the time, skills, or desire to use the robust course design capabilities of the Sidebar. That’s why we created the DesignPLUS QuickStart Wizard, a tool that lets you rapidly design new content by selecting from your existing DesignPLUS Templates and Content Blocks, without opening the Sidebar!

With the DesignPLUS QuickStart Wizard, course designers can explore DesignPLUS templates in a full, interactive preview and easily rearrange elements with drag-and-drop functionality. At the touch of a button, the design is added to the Canvas Rich Content Editor and ready to be edited.

If enabled, the DesignPLUS QuickStart Wizard will be available whenever you’re creating a new item using the Canvas Rich Content Editor, including Pages, Assignments, Discussions, Announcements, Syllabi, and Classic Quizzes.

You can enable the DesignPLUS QuickStart Wizard for your whole institution or a specific subaccount. Here are the steps: How do we enable the DesignPLUS QuickStart Wizard for our institution?

Note that once you enable the Wizard, it will be available to all users whenever they create new content, regardless of whether the sidebar has been hidden behind a keyboard shortcut, unless you have limited access to DesignPLUS by course ID, Canvas roles, Canvas users, or course formats.

Here is an email template for communicating with instructors about the availability of the DesignPLUS QuickStart Wizard. The template includes a link to a one-minute video introduction to the interface.

Where do the templates and content blocks in the Wizard come from?

Cidi Labs has provided pre-populated templates and content blocks in the Wizard that automatically apply your institution’s colors. All other templates and content blocks will come from your Customizations Course(s), where you can create content from scratch or import from the DesignPLUS Library.

If you’d like to chat about how to optimize your Customizations Course and create amazing templates, contact your Customer Success Manager

QuickStart Wizard

Quick Facts & Resources

The Wizard is available whenever you create new content using the Canvas Rich Content Editor
It provides access to Templates and Content Blocks, which give you an easy starting point for building engaging and accessible content quickly and easily.
With the Wizard’s interactive preview and drag-and-drop functionality, you can effortlessly add, remove, and rearrange elements.

Finally, check out extra resources everyone can appreciate.

Resources for All

Our guide Best Practices for Online Course Design with DesignPLUS highlights some of the elements that we consider to be both easy to use and incredibly helpful for improving the experience of designers, educators, and students in Canvas courses.

While we are firm believers that the full power of the sidebar should be open to anyone who wants to use it, we also understand that not everyone is going to utilize all of the advanced functionality DesignPLUS offers. The guide DesignPLUS Comfort Levels suggests which tools you might like to get started with depending on whether you consider yourself a beginner, intermediate, or advanced user.

Want research-backed ideas about how to use Cidi Labs tools to support learners, reduce cognitive overload, scale best practices, and overall enhance your Canvas course design?

Read the monthly Design Matters Digest
Watch recordings of past webinars and register for upcoming ones in our Cidi Labs Webinars page

To keep up with all things Cidi Labs, check out our monthly Newsletter!

Join our Slack user group to connect with DesignPLUS peers, share ideas, get updates on products, and ask questions directly to our Cidi Labs team.

Review our bimonthly Release Notes to be notified of new resources, new features, and bug fixes. Our release notes also feature a Bug Appreciation section because bugs in code should be squashed, but bugs in nature are worthy of love. If you'd like to be notified of new releases, subscribe to receive Release Notes via email.

The ULEARN Accessibility Guide is a free resource for all our customers that highlights each issue UDOIT Advantage (our Accessibility Assistant) can detect, explains how these issues affect students, and provides guidance on how to fix them with native Canvas, DesignPLUS, and UDOIT.

Train the Trainer

Train the Trainer

Live Training via Zoom...

... or On-Demand Video Training!

Customizations Course Admins

Use Our Resources to Train Your Educators

Use Our Resources to Train Your Educators

High Level, Faster Paced Training (~90 min)

The videos:

In-Depth, Designed for Educators (5 hours)

The videos:

Ideas for Implementing Our Resources

Leverage the QuickStart Wizard

Leverage the QuickStart Wizard

Limited DesignPLUS Access

Where do the templates and content blocks in the Wizard come from?

QuickStart Wizard

Resources for All

Resources for All