The following guidelines are for your written content in Canvas. The key principle underlying this advice is that this is an ‘online home’ for your students. It’s a place they should be able to work, engage with resources, undertake activities and collaborate with others.
Tone of voice
- Friendly, informal language works well online
- Teacher talk should sound conversational, and can reflect the personal style of the academic. Even when students are just reading a page, they want to hear their teachers’ voice
- Don’t forget to explain why you have included an activity
- Use your voice to explain, summarise and annotate your content
Less is more
A common problem is having too much text on one page. The student gets swamped with content and the key points get lost. Make sure you just include the content that students need to build the skills and knowledge they will need to demonstrate in their assessments. If you want to include extra topics of interest, make it clear that these are optional extras, not core content.
Language choices
- Use plain English
- Address the student as ‘you’
- Use inclusive language to reflect our students’ diversity and keep in mind that content needs to be appropriate for international audiences
- Make sure text is gender neutral where possible
- Be clear and concise, but also add your insights where appropriate
Capitalisation and punctuation
- Headings: capitalise the first word only, e.g. International good manufacturing practice (sentence case)
- Proper nouns: follow the item’s actual capitalisation and spelling, e.g. YouTube, Canvas, PowerPoint
- Specific vs. general references: use lower case for general references, e.g. four units but Unit 4; six weeks but Week 6
- e-words/electronic words: use lower case ‘e’ , e.g. ePortfolio, ePub, eResources
- Compound adjectives: use a hyphen for compound adjectives, e.g. third-party resources, face-to-face delivery, web-based resources
- Examples: use e.g. (without a comma) and not eg XYZ or e.g., XYZ
Note: Sentence case is the default for ‘courses’ and ‘subjects’ when they appear on a Canvas page. Course names and subject names may vary in the Subject Outline if described as such by the Academic.
Paragraphs and emphasis
Chunking your content into ‘bite-sized’ pieces makes it easier to scan material quickly and find key information.
- Use short paragraphs. Long blocks of text are hard to read online
- Write in an inverted pyramid style. Place the most important information at the top, and less important information toward the bottom
- Use headings and subheadings to organise your content and make it easier to read
- Use bold and italics sparingly. Too much bold makes text harder, not easier, to read and differentiate. Italics can also be hard to read on screen
- Do not underline text. On the web, an underline represents a link
- Avoid overuse of exclamation points!
Signposting module structure
When you want students to progress through certain content either before, during or after a class, workshop or lecture, create signposts. Use a text heading on the modules page with the following terms:
- Before [class, workshop, etc]
- On campus (optional)
- After [class, workshop, etc]
In cases where you have a reading immediately preceded by a pre-reading, it’s ok to use ‘pre’.
Numbering Pages within a Module
Pages should be numbered by the module they are under. Pages under Module 1 will be numbered 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 … 1.10, 1.11, 1.12. If you consistently have more than ten pages per module, you can number 1.01, 1.02, 1.03 … 1.11, 1.12, 1.13 if you find that more appealing. Start with 1.1, not 1.0.
Don’t number overviews or summaries, just title them clearly, e.g. ‘Module 4 summary’. If you really want dates or weeks, add them into the heading. This is to ensure modules are complete, easily moveable blocks.
Numbering pages helps students to navigate on mobile devices and will help you to navigate pages from the pages section.
Structure
Signposting module structure
When you want students to progress through certain content either before, during or after a class, workshop or lecture, create signposts. Use a text heading on the modules page with the following terms:
- Before [class, workshop, etc]
- On campus (optional)
- After [class, workshop, etc]
In cases where you have a reading immediately preceded by a pre-reading, it’s ok to use ‘pre’.
Numbering Pages within a Module
Pages should be numbered by the module they are under. Pages under Module 1 will be numbered 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 … 1.10, 1.11, 1.12. If you consistently have more than ten pages per module, you can number 1.01, 1.02, 1.03 … 1.11, 1.12, 1.13 if you find that more appealing. Start with 1.1, not 1.0.
Don’t number overviews or summaries, just title them clearly, e.g. ‘Module 4 summary’. If you really want dates or weeks, add them into the heading. This is to ensure modules are complete, easily moveable blocks.
Numbering pages helps students to navigate on mobile devices and will help you to navigate pages from the pages section.
Image use
Images help to make a page more appealing and dynamic, illustrate concepts, add emphasis to ideas or provide prompts. Follow these image-use guidelines to ensure consistency throughout Canvas subject sites.
- Banner images are the primary type of image used in pages. Smaller images within a page can be used to illustrate concepts
- When using images for decoration, rather than specific teaching purposes, use photos or images that are licensed, copyright-free or Creative Commons
- Avoid cliched or overly ‘stock photo’ looking images
- Use photos that represent a gender balance and a range of ethnicities reflective of the Australian context
- Images that illustrate concepts are encouraged, both to break up large chunks of text and to provide alternative ways of presenting concepts
Banner images
- Each module needs a banner image on the first (overview) and last (summary) page
- These are used to set the tone for a module
- Images should reflect the module concept or theme
- Try to use slightly abstract ways of representing concepts rather than being too literal or obvious
Specifications
- Banner images must be 1100 pixels wide by 300 pixels deep
- Make sure you use “width: 100%;” in the image style to make the image responsive to the width of the browser page
- Ensure that you optimise your images – they should be less than 100KB and ideally around 60KB to prevent slow loading of pages
- Make sure you add alt text to describe the image for students who use screen readers (unless it’s purely decorative, in which case tick the box for ‘decorative’ when uploading)
- Use Photoshop or another image editing program to resize and optimise your images
Sources
- Creative Commons – These are images that are in the public domain on sites such as Unsplash, pexels and Flickr. Images are free to use but authors generally request an attribution which can be added underneath the image
- Third Party Images – If you are using third party images, please make sure to check the copyright policy before using. If you have any questions, you can check with UTS Library Copyright staff for more details on using third party images
- Educational Usage – Some institutions allow use of their images in Educational material, this Fact Sheet (PDF, 706KB) is available for download
Supported image formats
Canvas will accept the following image files:
Note: While TIFF files can be uploaded to file storage, they will not display within any area of Canvas.
UTS colours
The UTS colour palette with hex colour codes and RGB values are provided below for reference.
| Blue |
|
#0f4beb |
R15 G75 B235 |
| Red |
|
#ff2305 |
R255 G35 B5 |
| Dark Grey |
|
#323232 |
R50 G50 B50 |
| Light Grey |
|
#ebebeb |
R235 G235 B235 |
| Mid Grey |
|
#b2b2b2 |
R178 G178 B178 |
Heading styles
Page layout and a clear heading hierarchy makes content clear and readable and helps direct students through content. Headings are also used by screen readers and search engines to understand content. Boxes can be used to define content, break up blocks of text and highlight activities. White space should be used around images and illustrations to create visual space and clarity. The following are frequently used elements in Canvas layouts with examples of how they appear and how to apply.
- Headings are ranked
through
in Canvas with the
heading being the page title, with content sections using
headings and sub-sections divided with
level headings, and so on.
- Screen reader users can navigate a page according to its headings, listen to a list of all headings, and skip to a desired heading to begin reading at that point.
- Keep heading concise and directly related to content.
- Do not use bold instead of a heading. Though the text may look like a heading, the underlying code will not benefit screen readers.
H2 Heading (headings)
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Leo a diam sollicitudin tempor id eu nisl nunc. Sed cras ornare arcu dui vivamus arcu. Lacus vel facilisis volutpat est. Donec ultrices tincidunt arcu non sodales neque sodales.
H3 Heading (section headings)
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Leo a diam sollicitudin tempor id eu nisl nunc. Sed cras ornare arcu dui vivamus arcu. Lacus vel facilisis volutpat est.
H4 Heading (section sub-headings)
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Leo a diam sollicitudin tempor id eu nisl nunc. Sed cras ornare arcu dui vivamus arcu. Lacus vel facilisis volutpat est.
Icon use
Icons are currently not permitted for use in Canvas. This ensures:
- Consistency of use: Modules from one subject or course may be re-used in another product in the future. Content needs to be transferable and to sit consistently within a new environment.
- Semiotic complexity: icons are rarely self explanatory. They create another element that we need to make sense of.
- Simplicity: there are alternative layout strategies for highlighting content in a resource. Removing unnecessary items from a page reduces clutter.
- Accessibility: when icons are used incorrectly they create problems for screen readers, using clear headings eg. Activity, Keywords, Readings makes if easier to navigate a page.
- Efficiency: eliminating icons means that we don’t need the time and resources to create or edit them.
Accessibility is about ensuring that students and staff can:
- access the supporting teaching and learning tools, content and activities
- make independent decisions about using these technologies
- ensure that people are not disadvantaged or limited when engaging with content or undertaking activities
Language & structure
- Use plain and simple language
- Be consistent with terminology (in navigation labels, headings, content, field labels and alt tagging) and font/style – creates predictability, confidence and continuity for the user
- Ensure headings fall in cascading order to ensure operability of assistive technology
Alt tag images
Apply the appropriate alt tags and descriptions to visual assets, including marking decorative images appropriately.
Tables
- Use table headers when formatting tables
- Tables and diagrams should be used to manage display of data and key information, not for design and layout purposes
Colour
Colour used to convey information without any specific information is not universally understood – many users are colour blind, have low vision, or are unable to view colour.
Ensure there is good contrast with your colours and be mindful of backgrounds, such as patterns and shades, as these can impact on the visual experience; use the colour contrast checker to achieve at least 4.5:1: https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/
Navigation
People should be able to navigate your pages and perform all functions with a keyboard and mouse. Assistive technology users should be able to skip navigation and into content. A skip navigation example is well documented on WebAims site.
File & Link information
Advise people what to expect when opening links and triggering actions, such as installing plugins or playing media files. Label your links meaningfully by stating the name of the destination page and avoid terminology such as ‘click here’ and ‘more information’. It is important to help people by declaring what your links are opening, installing or playing. Types and examples are:
- External sites to UTS (inform with ‘opens an external site’)
- Statically formatted files such as PDF (PDF, 25 pages, 85MB)
- Plug in installs (exe, 5min, 35MB)
- Embedded video files (MP4, 5:25, 26GB)
Accessible alternatives
Publish alterative formats to the source if the source offering is not HTML, such as transcripts for podcasts and closed captions for video files.
Quality checks
There are a large number of checklists available for checking your content. You may even have an accessibility checker built in to the system you are using. We recommend checking your content as you go, and definitely once your drafts are complete and you are ready to publish. For more information, check our Clear and accessible learning environments collection.
Accessibility
Accessibility is about ensuring that students and staff can:
- access the supporting teaching and learning tools, content and activities
- make independent decisions about using these technologies
- ensure that people are not disadvantaged or limited when engaging with content or undertaking activities
Language & structure
- Use plain and simple language
- Be consistent with terminology (in navigation labels, headings, content, field labels and alt tagging) and font/style – creates predictability, confidence and continuity for the user
- Ensure headings fall in cascading order to ensure operability of assistive technology
Alt tag images
Apply the appropriate alt tags and descriptions to visual assets, including marking decorative images appropriately.
Tables
- Use table headers when formatting tables
- Tables and diagrams should be used to manage display of data and key information, not for design and layout purposes
Colour
Colour used to convey information without any specific information is not universally understood – many users are colour blind, have low vision, or are unable to view colour.
Ensure there is good contrast with your colours and be mindful of backgrounds, such as patterns and shades, as these can impact on the visual experience; use the colour contrast checker to achieve at least 4.5:1: https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/
Navigation
People should be able to navigate your pages and perform all functions with a keyboard and mouse. Assistive technology users should be able to skip navigation and into content. A skip navigation example is well documented on WebAims site.
File & Link information
Advise people what to expect when opening links and triggering actions, such as installing plugins or playing media files. Label your links meaningfully by stating the name of the destination page and avoid terminology such as ‘click here’ and ‘more information’. It is important to help people by declaring what your links are opening, installing or playing. Types and examples are:
- External sites to UTS (inform with ‘opens an external site’)
- Statically formatted files such as PDF (PDF, 25 pages, 85MB)
- Plug in installs (exe, 5min, 35MB)
- Embedded video files (MP4, 5:25, 26GB)
Accessible alternatives
Publish alterative formats to the source if the source offering is not HTML, such as transcripts for podcasts and closed captions for video files.
Quality checks
There are a large number of checklists available for checking your content. You may even have an accessibility checker built in to the system you are using. We recommend checking your content as you go, and definitely once your drafts are complete and you are ready to publish. For more information, check our Clear and accessible learning environments collection.
All content used in UTS courses needs to be copyright compliant. For digitised content such as articles and book chapters, use the Reading Lists module within each Canvas subject.
Although there is a lot of content accessible on the web, the types and amounts you can use need to be identified and applied (see below). In some cases you will need to meet the license conditions of the site or seek permission from the owner.
Useful links
Copyright check
Video
- Any teaching materials you create are accessible only by UTS students and staff
- Videos are either links, or legal copies from a legitimate source
- Embedded, downloaded or edited videos are attributed appropriately
- For more information, check out the UTS Library’s Copyright Guidelines for Video Materials
Images
- Copies of, or extracts from, a still image (ie. a photo, drawing, map, etc) can be used from any legitimate source provided you acknowledge the source and creator–see Artistic Works under UTS Library’s Use Content online tool
- You can also use still images from websites, or Creative Commons licensed material, where you have permission from the copyright owner to use the images
- The image is attributed to the source (unless you have license to use without attribution)
File naming conventions
Use lowercase and dashes to separate words rather than spaces. It’s easier to find and select images in Canvas if you follow naming conventions.
Filename = image-name-523653610.jpg (Shutterstock) – licensed images
Filename = authors-name-17993-unsplash.jpg (Unsplash) – accredited images
Attribution
Images that are purchased from an image library, such as Shutterstock, and have a license agreement can be used without an attribution. However, it is good practice to attribute the source and creator. If an image has been used from a Creative Commons site such as Unsplash or Flickr, it is good practice to add an image credit.
TASL
A good rule for giving attribution is to use the acronym TASL, which stands for Title, Author, Source, License.
For further information on TASL and attribution, please refer to the Library’s Copyright Guidelines.
Copyright
All content used in UTS courses needs to be copyright compliant. For digitised content such as articles and book chapters, use the Reading Lists module within each Canvas subject.
Although there is a lot of content accessible on the web, the types and amounts you can use need to be identified and applied (see below). In some cases you will need to meet the license conditions of the site or seek permission from the owner.
Useful links
Copyright check
Video
- Any teaching materials you create are accessible only by UTS students and staff
- Videos are either links, or legal copies from a legitimate source
- Embedded, downloaded or edited videos are attributed appropriately
- For more information, check out the UTS Library’s Copyright Guidelines for Video Materials
Images
- Copies of, or extracts from, a still image (ie. a photo, drawing, map, etc) can be used from any legitimate source provided you acknowledge the source and creator–see Artistic Works under UTS Library’s Use Content online tool
- You can also use still images from websites, or Creative Commons licensed material, where you have permission from the copyright owner to use the images
- The image is attributed to the source (unless you have license to use without attribution)
File naming conventions
Use lowercase and dashes to separate words rather than spaces. It’s easier to find and select images in Canvas if you follow naming conventions.
Filename = image-name-523653610.jpg (Shutterstock) – licensed images
Filename = authors-name-17993-unsplash.jpg (Unsplash) – accredited images
Attribution
Images that are purchased from an image library, such as Shutterstock, and have a license agreement can be used without an attribution. However, it is good practice to attribute the source and creator. If an image has been used from a Creative Commons site such as Unsplash or Flickr, it is good practice to add an image credit.
TASL
A good rule for giving attribution is to use the acronym TASL, which stands for Title, Author, Source, License.
For further information on TASL and attribution, please refer to the Library’s Copyright Guidelines.
