Canvas: to what extent is it user-friendly?

Introduction

Long gone are the days when paper reigned supreme in universities, when students received all the necessary information about their courses and schedules on good old-fashioned paper. Long gone are the days when we had to travel to the university and finally hear that the professor was sick and absent… And being there for nothing! Do students really miss that time? That is a good question! Nowadays, online educational platforms are an integral part of everyone’s academic life. Students are used to receiving emails from their professors, their schedule can be found online and every little modification is often notified on a platform. If some universities can have their own platform that can be customized and made according to their needs, a lot of other institutions are using Canvas. Canvas is “web-based learning management system, or LMS” (Canvas, n.d.) mainly used in universities; on that platform, you can find a lot of management tools that will help teachers and students organising their courses and find useful information about them (assignments, syllabus, zoom meeting links, files…). The list of their tools is so huge that you can easily get lost on Canvas. The first time I discovered it at the beginning of this master (that is to say 3 months ago), I was quite amazed by how functional it looked but at the same time, how the information seemed difficult to find. I was used to a very simple platform made by my former university. As we investigate the concept of user-centered design (UCD) in our podcast, I wanted to know what the students of my master’s degree thought about this platform, which has been used by Maastricht University since only this year. I had already heard complaints and I was curious to know what problems were encountered and how we could solve them. To what extent is Canvas user-friendly? Are people satisfied with it? What do they find annoying or difficult on this platform?

That is what I tried to discover!

Methodology

Why use a user-centered design approach?

User-centered design is a process where users are involved in every step of a product development. It was conceived by Donald Norman, a cognitive scientist, in the 1980s. After publishing a book in 1986 named User-centered system design: new perspectives on Human-Computer interaction where he described the principles of this design process, this concept became more and more popular and wildly used (Abras et al., 2004, pp 1-2). If you are interested in knowing more about user-centered design, you can check our podcast which would be link at the end of this article! But to summarize briefly, this concept is based on empathy and listening. User-centered design supports that users know what is the best for them; thus, by allowing them to participate to the elaboration of an artefact (an idea, a website, a place), the conceived product would answer their expectations and needs (Schreibman et al., n.d.). There are various ways to involve people in every step of the conception. One of them is by doing questionnaires. “Interviews and user satisfaction questionnaires enable designers to evaluate the users likes and dislikes about the design and to gain a deeper understanding of any problems.” (Abras et al., 2004, p.7) In our case, Canvas is a platform that is already conceived and used by the academic community. Nevertheless, it is never too late to improve it and ask questions: is it suitable for students and teachers? What could be improved? As Abras et al. (2004) mention, Eason (1987) distinguished three types of users: primary, secondary and tertiary users (p.4). These types make it possible to know what level of consumption these people are at. Primary users use this platform on a regular basis. Secondary users are those who use it from time to time or through someone else. Tertiary users are those who are affected by the use of this platform (Abras et al., p.4). By being a master student myself, I wanted to have feedback from my fellow students since they are the ones supposed to find and consume information on that platform, thus I focused on primary users. However, this case study could also have been made by involving teachers and staff; they would have highlighted another level of consumption. This educational tool is used in more or less the same way depending on the years of study; nevertheless, some things can differ which is quite logical. As part of a Master’s degree in Media Studies: Digital Cultures at the Maastricht University, I interviewed the students of my Master’s degree because they were the ones I had access to. Furthermore, since I was using this platform in the same context as them, I was therefore more able to explain the potential problems encountered.

How did I involve users?

Being very interested in user-centered design, I wanted to use a user-friendly approach to involve my target group: master students. Since I wished to reach as many people as possible in my master’s degree, I decided to make a questionnaire. I used the Typeform platform (www.typeform.com) to design it. It is a “people-friendly” website to create surveys and questionnaires that are pleasing to the eye and highly customable. When I designed the questionnaire, I had two goals in mind: I wanted it to be short and easy for students. I only made 7 questions: most of them could be answered by “yes” or “no” with the possibility to explain your answer with the “other” tool. We are about 28 students in this master’s program and 21 responded to the questionnaire, which allows me to have an almost global vision of how the students of the Master in Media Studies: Digital Cultures feel about this platform. The questions were as follows:

Do you find Canvas easy to use?
Can you explain briefly your answer?
Do you think Canvas is user-friendly?
Do you sometimes struggle to find information on Canvas?
What are the things you do not like on Canvas?
- Too much information in various places
- Discussion board
- Too many options so you do not know where to look
- Other
What would you improve on Canvas?
Are you satisfied with this platform?

In the results, Typeform directly gave me the response percentages and the average time it took students to answer the questionnaire (3 minutes 27 seconds which is quite short). This was a very useful feature to visualize everything. The results were anonymous; that is why I am going to refer to the participants by simply saying “students” and “informants”.

Results of the questionnaire

What problems were highlighted by the students?

The majority of the students surveyed (68,2%) found Canvas quite easy to use. Explaining their answer, they said the interface was well structured, intuitive and organized with many functions. However, they did say they had to get used to it at first. One informant reported: “The first time I used it I was completely lost, but after some days of experimenting and asking around I managed to discover most of the possibilities of the platform.” Furthermore, seven students still answered “no” to the question, already highlighting problems that will then be described by the majority in the next questions. Indeed, when investigating the issues students encountered in the platform, three problems were the most obvious for my fellow students. First, 16 students out of 21 had difficulties finding the information they need on Canvas (see picture below).

This issue is in correlation with another mentioned which is the fact that there are too many options in the platform and students do not know where to look to find something. Indeed, while Canvas provides a lot of tools for the academic body, these tools sometimes serve the platform badly. When choosing a course in the main menu, several options start showing up, so much that sometimes you have to search a while to find something. A student argued that it is sometimes difficult to find resources for the course since you have to go two levels deeper into the platform to find them. I particularly remember that one time when a teacher asked us if we had watched a particular film for the last tutorial of the period. Several of us were stunned, not understanding what she was talking about. She then told us that she had put the information on Canvas and what happened was that we never found it. At the time, I think she thought we were lying and hadn’t had time to see the film. But in reality, we really hadn’t had the information for this last tutorial.

The third issue mentioned is the infamous discussion board. This feature is used to post messages for the teacher to which he will respond publicly. This way, students can go to this tool if they have a question. Nevertheless, a lot of students think it is not user-friendly at all and that it does not work well. Finding an answer to a question is sometimes complicated when several students have already asked some things; students are easily lost in all these answers. Also, in the Canvas mobile app, the discussion board is not always updated.

User-friendly solutions

Several participants already suggested that some options should be made available on the main menu (overview, resources) and that some others should be deleted as they are not used a lot (mediasite videos, collaborate). Having so many tools available can make the student feel lost and stressed, especially when you run out of time. Thus, they would prefer the centralization of the information. An informant mentioned that one platform is more than enough and the fact that Maastricht University uses Student Portal as well can be confusing. Three students suggested the creation of a search bar where you can enter key words and find what you are looking for quicker. Finally, they also suggested putting a tutorial video in the platform so that everyone can watch it the first time they are introduced to Canvas.

What could be interesting is to change some features using user-centered design. As Abras et al. (2004) suggested, there are many ways in this process in which you can get feedback from users (pp.5-6). Canvas could also do questionnaires and interviews in order to distinguish the major problems encountered by students AND teachers. After that, they could organize focus groups where they would discuss potential changes and make brainstorming to generate innovative ideas from users. By doing so, they would make sure that their platform adapts to their users over time. After modifying some features in Canvas, they could then organize sessions where users could test the prototypes and give additional advice. The more a platform corresponds to its users, the more it will be used. It would also provide relief to some professors who are likely to receive complaints from students on this topic. Students already mentioned innovative solutions by only doing one questionnaire, extending this study could therefore offer some others.

Conclusion

The purpose of this paper was to study Canvas and see to what extent this educational platform was user-friendly for students. To this question, participants often answered “yes and no” because there are things to be improved and solutions to be found. As in our podcast, I wanted to use a user-centered approach to talk about user-centered solutions. I found that there was no better way to understand a concept than to practice it on my own. Although this approach can have disadvantages since it can be time consuming, I was surprised to see how much the students wanted to give their opinion and get involved in the process. That was one of my fears: that the students would not be interested in this case study. But quite the contrary! Just by filling out a questionnaire, they gave me a fairly clear picture of the problems they encountered and also provided me with potential solutions. This proves that in any project, involving users can be beneficial and rewarding. It is all about collaborative work! In the future, it would be interesting to do a more in-depth study of Canvas and to involve the different members of the academic body so that they can also give their opinion and participate.

And you, do you want to do a quick quizz about UCD and Canvas?

I value your opinion!

Listen to our interesting podcast to lean more about user-centered design!

P.S: In case you cannot listen to our podcast, here is the script:

Podcast script Download

Do you want to discover other interesting articles about UCD?

Check my teammates’ blogposts:

User-Centered Design in online education tools

User-Centered Design: a Tool-Kit also for Humanities and Social Sciences

User-centered Design and Educational Platforms: A Case Study of #dariahTeach

References

Abras, C., Maloney-Krichmar, D., Preece, J. (2004) User-Centered Design. In Bainbridge, W. Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
Schreibman, S., Esther Kamara E. and Ochiel, S (n.d). User- Centred Design. In Dariahteach. Retrieved December 11, 2020, from https://teach.dariah.eu/mod/lesson/view.php?id=782&pageid=708
Canvas community. (n.d.). What is Canvas? Retrieved December 11, 2020, from https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Basics-Guide/What-is-Canvas/ta-p/45

Podcast references

Abras, C., Maloney-Krichmar, D., Preece, J. (2004) User-Centered Design. In Bainbridge, W. Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
Blythe, S. (2001). Designing online courses: User-centered practices. Computers and Composition, 18(4), 329-346. https://doi.org/10.1016/S8755-4615(01)00066-4
Hadjerrouit, S. (2010). Developing Web-Based Learning Resources in School Education: A User-Centered Approach. Interdisciplinary Journal of E Learning and Learning Objects, 6(1), 115-135. Informing Science Institute. Retrieved December 06, 2020 from https://www.learntechlib.org/p/44777/
Helms, J. M. (2015). Is this Article a Comic? Digital Humanities Quarterly, 9(4). http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/9/4/000230/000230.html
Interaction Design Foundation (n.d). User Centered Design. Retrieved December 8, 2020, from https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/user-centered-design
Kahraman, Z.E.H. (2010). Using user-centered design approach in course design. Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2(2), 2071-2076. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.03.283
Norman, D. A., & Spohrer, J. C. (1996). Learner-centered education. Communications of the ACM, 39(4), 24-27.
Schreibman, S., Esther Kamara E. and Ochiel, S (n.d). User- Centred Design. In Dariahteach. Retrieved December 8, 2020, from https://teach.dariah.eu/mod/lesson/view.php?id=782&pageid=708
Schreibman, S. & Ochiel, S. (n.d). What is Design Thinking. In Dariahteach. Retrieved December 8, 2020, from https://teach.dariah.eu/mod/lesson/view.php?id=782&pageid=703&startlastseen=no
Torreggiani, A. (2020). Feature | Audience Development is dead. Long live Audience Centred Design. https://www.theaudienceagency.org/resources/audience-development-isdead-long-live-audience-centred-design