As an educator, you are both a curator and creator of course content. Following common universal design practices will help ensure that your students can access this content regardless of their abilities, and foster a positive learning environment for all. Modules can be a great way to organize assignments, quizzes, and pages with media for your students. In the sections below, you can find tips for presenting assignments, documents, and other media clearly.

Step 1: Consider structure

The first step is to decide how you want to organize your course content for students. Is there a structure that is familiar to your students, whether it be from your department, school, or field of study? Some examples of structure include:

Weeks or classes
Topics or units
Chapters in a book

Consider what system would make it easiest for you and your students to navigate course content.

Step 2: Get good content

The second step in course development is often curating content. This could involve gathering or creating materials, such as:

Articles
Documents
Textbooks
Website links
Images, videos, and other media

When finding and creating content, we recommend checking that it is accessible to all students, regardless of their strengths and abilities. For more information, see What does it mean to make content accessible?

Tip: Contact subject librarians, instructional designers, and the Student Disability Access Center for help.

Step 3: Create assessment opportunities

Determine how you want to assess your students, providing multiple ways of checking student understanding.

Formative assessments: Low-stakes activities that give students a chance to demonstrate their understanding while giving both students and instructors the opportunity to identify learning gaps. For more information, see the A&S Learning Design & Technology team's Formative Assessments overview. Tools you could use for formative assessments include:
- Assignments
- External tools, such as VoiceThread, Annotations (Hypothesis), or Kaltura Video Quizzes
- Discussions
- Quizzes
Summative assessments: Higher-stakes activities that evaluate a student's proficiency after the completion of an instructional unit. For more information, see the A&S Learning Design & Technology team's Summative Assessments overview. Tools you could use for summative assessments include:
- Quizzes
- Assignments
- External tools, such as Gradescope or Peer Review

Step 4: Build modules

Using the structure from step 1 above, create modules in your Canvas course and add your content to pages in the modules.

Create a module.
Add a page to the module.
Use headings to structure the page and present concepts in small "bite-sized" pieces.
Guide your students with clear and concise instructions.
Make navigation as simple as possible by adding links to activities (e.g., assignments, discussions, quizzes) on the page. Create accessible links with uniquely descriptive link text. Examples of meaningful link text:
- "Submit Week 3 Essay" - link to an assignment.
- "Intro to Accessibility (PDF)" - link to an article
- "Access the Oxford English Dictionary online" - link to a website
Provide context around embedded content. For example, if you embed a lecture video, provide a brief description of the content so that students will know what to expect when they watch it. For images, add meaningful text descriptions.