Crafting Space for Student Belonging Part II: Using Canvas to Promote Belonging in Undergraduate Courses

By Jonah Chambers and Elizabeth White Vidarte

Imagine it’s your first visit to Philadelphia where you are meeting an important client for a new job. The only address you’ve been given is “The Rocky statue on the Parkway,” so after pulling off I-676, you struggle to figure out where to go once you’ve exited onto The Ben Franklin Parkway. Eventually, you ask a kind stranger who suggests you try navigating to the Philadelphia Art Museum, but following “Art Museum Drive” takes you to a tiny parking lot overlooking the Schuylkill river (a river,  you’ve since discovered with some light embarrassment, that is not pronounced the “Shoo-lee-kill”). You’re clearly at the Art Museum — a large banner proclaims, “Art Splash,” and the pillars and entryway seem familiar from Google Images — but you’re no closer to finding the boxer of 80s legend or your new client. You start to worry, with a vague sense of gloom, that this new job may not be in the cards for you. 

As silly as this scenario may be, it’s not entirely unlike what a brand new college student may feel, to greater or lesser extremes. Walking into a classroom, most students know from twelve-plus years of experience where to sit, who to talk to, and where the professor will likely be standing. But everything else about college may be utterly bewildering (not to mention an online course!). So how do we get our students to feel capable, excited, and welcomed in our learning spaces — instead of lost, confused, and checked-out? 

We know from the research (Strayhorn 2018) that belonging matters a great deal when it comes to student engagement and success. By intentionally structuring your Canvas course, you can promote clarity, inclusivity, and motivation—all of which contribute to students feeling they belong. Here are some practical strategies to help you use Canvas effectively to support belonging in your courses.

1. Design for Clarity and Accessibility

A well-organized course structure makes it easier for students to navigate your content and understand expectations. This reduces anxiety and sets the stage for deeper engagement.

  • Organize content and activities into Modules: In Canvas, Modules are more than just the primary way to organize course content into structured units: they contribute to a sense of belonging for students by providing a clear path through the material, promoting consistency, and creating a feeling of being part of a cohesive learning journey.
  • Organize your modules in a linear progression: As Michelle Miller emphasizes in Minds Online, “Structure is the enemy of procrastination” (2014, p. 214). Arrange your modules chronologically, such as by week or topic, and ensure each includes all required content, activities, and assignments with clear due dates.
  • Provide a Tour of Your Course: A short video tour of your Canvas course can familiarize students with the layout, assignments, deadlines, and resources. This simple step reduces confusion and helps students navigate your course effectively.
  • Provide clear instructions: Break down tasks into manageable steps and use descriptive headings so students can easily find what they need.
  • Ensure accessibility: Use Canvas’s accessibility checker to ensure your course materials are usable by all students, including those with disabilities. Consider font size, color contrast, and the use of alt text for images.

2. Personalize Your Presence

Students feel more connected when they see their instructor as an approachable, real person. Canvas offers several tools to help you build rapport:

  • Welcome video: Kick off the course with a short video introducing yourself, your teaching philosophy, and what excites you about the course. Videos you record in Panopto will automatically generate captions and can be easily embedded in Canvas. The CAT’s Ready, Set, Panopto! self-enroll course lets you learn about Panopto at your own pace.
  • Announcements: Use announcements not only for logistics but to celebrate student achievements, offer encouragement, or share relevant opportunities and current events. You can even use the availability dates to pre-populate your course with timely announcements, such as a weekly announcement that students can expect to appear every Monday at 9am outlining how the content for this week builds upon that of last week’s.
  • Discussion board participation: Engage with students in Canvas Discussions by responding to their posts, posing follow-up questions, and connecting their ideas to course concepts or other students’ ideas. If the number of students in your sections makes this impossible, message a smaller number of students directly each week, offering thoughts and feedback on their contributions, ensuring every student receives at least one such message each semester. Consider writing a final post to the discussion bringing together common threads, highlighting points of divergence, and posing further questions that can be taken up in class.
  • Multimedia comments: Use Canvas’s built-in media recorders in SpeedGrader to provide feedback in audio or video form to add a personal touch. Captions are also now auto-generated for video comments in SpeedGrader.

3. Foster Peer-to-Peer Connections

Belonging doesn’t come just from student-instructor relationships; peer interactions matter too. Use Canvas to facilitate collaboration and community building.

  • Introduce icebreaker activities: In the first week, create a discussion prompt that allows students to share something about themselves—their academic interests, hobbies, or goals.
  • Leverage group work: Use Canvas Groups to facilitate collaborative projects or study groups. Assign roles to ensure everyone contributes and feels valued.
  • Create a Q&A board: Set up a forum where students can ask and answer questions, fostering a sense of shared responsibility and support.

4. Connect Course Content to Student Goals

Students are more likely to engage when they see how the material connects to their personal and professional aspirations. Canvas can help you make these connections explicit.

  • Preview learning outcomes: At the start of each module, include a brief overview of what students will learn and why it matters.
  • Reflect on relevance: Encourage students to reflect on how course topics relate to their experiences, interests, or career goals. Use discussion boards or short journal assignments for this purpose. Consider embedding a question that prompts reflection on relevance into quizzes and exams.
  • Alternate Content with Assessments & Activities: Layer content delivery with activities. After each new segment of content, provide opportunities for students to apply their knowledge through discussions, quizzes, or collaborative projects. This multimodal approach will deepen learning.

5. Support Student Progress

A supportive course structure keeps students on track and engaged.

  • Schedule a Clear, Reasonable, and Consistent Workload with Due Dates: Plan assignments and activities that align with the course’s credit hours, and provide sufficient time for students to complete their work. Set consistent deadlines—e.g., initial discussion posts due Tuesdays at 9 PM and replies due Fridays at 9 PM—to help students develop routines.
  • Guide Students Sequentially through Modules: When you want students to progress sequentially through Modules, consider using Requirements within the module to require students to complete one activity or task before moving on to the next. This will help keep students on track and scaffold their learning.
  • Check in with Your Students: Offer mid-course surveys to gather feedback and monitor student progress using Canvas Analytics. These tools allow you to track login frequency, page views, and assignment submissions. Early interventions, such as personalized emails, can help struggling students re-engage.
  • Offer multiple ways to engage: Provide content in various formats—videos, readings, and interactive elements—to appeal to different learning preferences.

By thoughtfully using Canvas to structure your course, personalize your presence, and build connections, you can create a learning environment where students feel they belong. Supporting students with clear structures, regular check-ins, and inclusive practices fosters motivation and success. Start with small changes, and watch how your students’ engagement grows!

References

Strayhorn, T.L. (2018). College Students’ Sense of Belonging: A Key to Educational Success for All Students (2nd ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315297293

 

Elizabeth White Vidarte, Ph.D., is Online Learning Specialist at Temple University’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching.

Jonah Chambers, M.A., is Senior Educational Technology Specialist at Temple University’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching.

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Crafting Space for Student Belonging, a CAT Series, Part I: Designing Courses to Promote Belonging

by Stephanie Laggini Fiore, Ph.D

Anyone who has spent time with me has heard me say that I’m bionic. I had my knees replaced in 2018 and now have titanium in my body that sets off alarms at the airport. I’ll take it! The TSA can pat me down anytime they want if it means I can live without the chronic pain I experienced for decades. During that painful time, especially in the latter stages of my condition when climbing stairs was particularly difficult, curb cuts in sidewalks were a lifesaver. As was intended when they were created post-WWII to provide a more accessible environment for people with disabilities, curb cuts allowed me to maintain mobility, making it easier to cross streets while walking around town. But here’s the thing: I still use curb cuts and I’ll bet you do too. As Angela Glover Blackwell explains: “Then a magnificent and unexpected thing happened. When the wall of exclusion came down, everybody benefited—not only people in wheelchairs. Parents pushing strollers headed straight for curb cuts. So did workers pushing heavy carts, business travelers wheeling luggage, even runners and skateboarders.” Blackwell is describing universal design, which allows better access to people with a range of abilities and needs. Similarly, Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is an educational framework that provides better access to learning for people with a wide variety of abilities and needs. For 40 years, CAST has been working to educate faculty on the power of UDL to create more inclusive learning environments, ones where courses are designed to value every learner, thereby catalyzing student belonging. 

Why is belonging important? Studies report a variety of benefits that a sense of belonging provides for students, including academic engagement and motivation, academic achievement, retention, and positive effects on well-being, among others. Our pedagogical practices play a very real role in improving student belonging, which is why we have created Crafting Space for Student Belonging: A CAT Series. We have chosen UDL to begin this series because belonging starts with course design. By eschewing a one-size-fits-all approach and instead following UDL principles in designing your course, you will lower barriers to learning, allow students to have greater agency in their learning, and increase students’ sense of belonging. 

The UDL 3.0 guidelines encourage us to design our courses by considering how we can provide multiple means of engagement, representation and action & expression. Much as with UDL in the built environment, a UDL-designed course will provide support to students with a range of abilities and needs. For instance, many consider captions of video content to be a necessity for students with hearing impairments. But other students may use captions to move through a video more quickly or slow down, repeat, and listen again. And some may use captions because they are watching the video in a space that is not private, where they cannot turn on the sound. I’m guessing you’ve used captions when you watch TV for greater clarity of dialogue. (For me, the Scottish English in Shetland is hard to decipher, but I love that show – so captions it is!) Here are a few ideas for beginning to design a course according to UDL principles: 

Multiple Means of Engagement— the “why” of learning

Welcoming Interests & Identities:

  • Allow choice and autonomy wherever possible. Let students choose a research topic that connects with their interests or permit them to choose the mode of delivery that is most motivating for them.
  • Incorporate storytelling that allows students’ creativity and lived experiences to connect to content in the class.

Sustaining Effort & Persistence

  • Intentionally embed activities in your class that help students to connect with each other and form mutually-supportive networks.
  • Provide specific feedback that both recognizes the positive aspects of a student’s work and areas that need improvement. 
  • Message your belief that they can reach standards set for the course.

Emotional Capacity

  • Allow space for individual and group activities that encourage reflection.
  • Elevate the assets students bring to the class.
  • Develop classroom agreements on appropriate interactions in the classroom.

Multiple Means of Representation—the “what” of learning

Perception

  • Ensure that the materials for your course follow accessibility standards.
  • Review the materials and examples you use in your course to provide a more diverse representation of identities in them.

Language & Symbols

  • Use a variety of media beyond text for student access to content.
  • Clarify unfamiliar terms, vocabulary or references. Don’t assume that everyone in the class has the same background.

Building Knowledge

  • Have students use concept mapping to visualize connections among ideas in the course.
  • Point out key concepts in your course, or have students reflect on the key concepts they believe they have learned and provide feedback.

Multiple Means of Action and Expression—the “how” of learning

Interaction

  • Use the accessibility checker in Canvas to ensure that your course materials are accessible.
  • Design course requirements to allow for flexibility, wherever possible.

Expression & Communication

  • Scaffold major assignments, gradually releasing scaffolds as skill develops.
  • Allow students to use a variety of media in order to demonstrate what they have learned.

Strategy Development

  • Clarify course and assignment goals. 
  • Provide opportunities for students to reflect on their progress and learning.

If you click through the UDL 3.0 Guidelines, you will find so many more ideas. It can feel a bit overwhelming! So here’s an approach I recommend. Review the guidelines and conduct a self-assessment of your teaching practices. Where are you already enacting some of these principles? Where might you want to improve your practices? Then commit to one way in which you will improve your course design using UDL principles. Once you have successfully implemented that change, choose another, and so on. Incremental change is fine – the important thing is to get started! 

Remember that we at the CAT are here for you if you need assistance in how to implement practices that improve belonging.  

Coming up next in the Crafting Space for Student Belonging series:

This spring series on belonging will provide blogs and videos that describe practical ways for you to enact practices that lead to student belonging. Here’s what coming up this month:

  • January 21, 2025: CAT Tip video: Introducing the new UDL Guidelines
  • January 27, 2025: EdVice Exchange: Canvas design that encourages belonging
  • February 4, 2025: CAT Tip video: Using modules to organize your content in Canvas
 
Stephanie Laggini Fiore, Ph.D., is Associate Vice Provost and Senior Direct of Temple University’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching.