Summary
Announcing the winners of the 2023-24 Canvy Awards for Excellence in Canvas Site Design
Creating a great Canvas course site requires care and creativity, so the Learning Design & Innovation team wanted to recognize the efforts of the faculty members who design great Canvas sites! This Spring, we relaunched Dartmouth’s Canvy Awards for the first time since COVID.
The Canvy Awards is a program designed to elevate the student perspective on Canvas site design: it provides students with an opportunity to recognize the course sites which best supported their learning. We sent out the following call for nominations…
“This year, Dartmouth’s Learning Design and Innovation team will be awarding “Canvy Awards” to those course sites that represent noteworthy Canvas site design—but we need your help. Please nominate the Canvas site that best supported your learning during the current academic year. It’s easy! Just complete our short survey.”
… and received over 280 nominations!
We determined the winning sites, and thought that sending the awards (a $25 gift card to Still North, in case you were wondering!) to the three faculty in question would be straightforward – but this turned into a more interesting story than we had thought. Two of the faculty members we contacted explained that the Canvas site for which they were nominated had been originally designed by a colleague, and shared with them, to be reused and refined. Our takeaways:
- Student-centered teaching (and correspondingly awesome Canvas sites) can flourish especially when faculty collaborate on a course.
- Generosity, sharing and collaboration help spread successful teaching practices.
- Great Canvas sites evolve over time, and often have a “footprint” of several prior iterations which keep getting refined.
And now, we are happy to announce the winners of the 2024 Canvy Awards!
From L to R: Rebecca Biron, Michelle Warren, Elizabeth Cascio, Robyn Millan, Alex Rimberg
- COLT 1 – Nominated by Professor Rebecca Biron’s students, who designed the site in collaboration with Professor Michelle Warren.
- ECON 38 – Designed by Professor Elizabeth Cascio and nominated by her students.
- PHYS 15 – Nominated by Professor Alex Rimberg’s students, who designed the site in collaboration with Professor Robyn Millan
What makes a winning Canvas site? Let’s hear it from the students!
- “It is really well organized, especially the modules section where everything needed for every class is so well laid out and deadlines are highly visible. I always know where to find anything I will need for the class and where to look if I’m not sure what I need to know”
- “Everything you need is easy to find from a link on the home page, all readings have citation info listed with them, and pdf names are consistent and clearly titled.”
- “The page is very organized. The layout is incredibly clear and very easy to navigate. It has made tracking work/assignments easy.”
- “The home page features the course schedule, which labels each week by topic. Each week has its own page where readings are listed by day. Because of this setup, it is incredibly easy to find our daily readings.”
Looking to learn more? The Learning Design & Innovation team provides support and training for faculty and staff who use Canvas! If you’d like help, click on our “Book a Consultation” link above to make an appointment or contact us via email at ldi@dartmouth.edu