Home page of the T-PREP Undergraduate Handbook in Canvas, showing the program banner and introduction

T-PREP Undergraduate Handbook

Project Summary

T-PREP trains students at rural Colorado colleges to become teachers in their own communities. Those students are scattered across the state, so the program’s Canvas handbook serves as the front office: it’s where they go to check requirements, deadlines, and everything else. Like any living document, it had grown over the years, and it was due for a refresh: some links no longer worked, some information needed updating, and useful content had accumulated in places where students had trouble finding it.

I took this on as the capstone for my graduate degree in Learning Design and Technology at CU Denver, partnering with Dr. Valerie Sherman, T-PREP’s director. We audited the handbook together, and I rebuilt it in Canvas by updating the content, restructuring how students navigate it, and building some components using Canvas’s HTML editor. The rebuilt handbook is live in Canvas today.

Details

  • Goal: Give T-PREP students one current, easy-to-navigate, accessible place to find program requirements.

  • Type: Canvas LMS Course Redesign

  • Context: Graduate capstone, Learning Design and Technology, CU Denver

  • Partner: The Partnership for Rural Educator Preparation (T-PREP), CU Denver School of Education and Human Development

  • Audience: Students at rural Colorado colleges accepted into the T-PREP program

  • Responsibilities: Instructional Design, eLearning Development, Visual Design, Accessibility

  • Tools Used: Canvas LMS, HTML/CSS, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop

Design Process

Dr. Sherman and I went through the entire handbook together on Zoom, all 29 pages across seven modules. We read it the way a student would, flagging four kinds of problems: links that no longer worked, out-of-date information, missing information, and content that was accurate but hard to find. I kept running notes in Canvas during those sessions.

The audit set most of the work: every fix traced back to a specific problem on a specific page. Dr. Sherman also gave me room to go beyond correcting errors, so I fully redesigned one page and used it as the template for the rest. Where the content didn’t fit that pattern, I varied the layout rather than forcing it.

The handbook was already organized into seven modules, each with several sections, but nothing on the home page showed that. I built a menu listing the seven module names, each with an arrow that expands to show the pages inside it, so the whole handbook fits on one screen and a student can see what a module covers before deciding where to go.

One page carried an overwhelming amount of content, much of it in long bullet lists a student would have to scroll through to find a single answer. I cut each list to its first one to three bullets and added a “read more” button that reveals the rest on click, so the page stays scannable while remaining complete for anyone who needs the detail.

I designed a set of icons for the handbook to separate sections and break up long stretches of text, giving students a visual marker for where one part ends and the next begins. The photography throughout was supplied by Dr. Sherman.

Canvas’s standard editor couldn’t produce the expandable menu or the “read more” buttons. I built both in Canvas’s custom HTML editor, which I taught myself for this project, building on the basic HTML I already knew.

I ran every page through Canvas’s accessibility checker and fixed what it flagged.

“Danny Twieg’s considerable Instructional Design expertise, collaborative nature, and exemplary work ethic transformed the T-PREP Undergraduate Handbook housed within Canvas from a lengthy, difficult-to-navigate resource into a clear, accessible tool that is perfectly aligned with instructional design best practices. His guidance improved the organization, readability, and usability of the handbook, making key information easier for students to find and understand. The result is a more effective, student-centered tool that better supports undergraduate success.”

– Dr. Valerie Sherman | Director, T-PREP | University of Colorado Denver