Early Bird

Canvas spotlight: New and improved online resources

Get your questions answered and access critical teaching tools on the updated CTLD Ready website.

By Todd Wolfe, Tanner Wilde, Jennifer Whitton-Trujillo and Alex McDaniel

June 1, 2021

The Center for Teaching, Learning and Design’s Ready website is the 24/7 go-to solution for Metropolitan State University of Denver faculty and staff to find help teaching with Canvas, Microsoft Teams and other instructional technologies.

Within 72 hours of the campus closure announcement in March 2020, the CTLD launched the first phase of the virtual support site, MSUDenver.edu/Ready. It contains essential tutorials and resources to facilitate a rapid transition to online instruction – part of the numerous digital solutions designed to help instructors pivot during the pandemic.

Over the past year the Ready website has received nearly 100,000 pageviews, with visitors receiving almost 5,200 hours of training and instructional solutions. With such high usage, this instructional resource continues to be vital to faculty and staff.

Based on feedback and requests from faculty and staff, the CTLD has further improved this instructional resource. The newly updated Ready website greatly enhances usability and functionality, introducing some new, often-requested features and resources. Click to have a look around!

Key improvements

• The minimalist design focuses on sharing content with instructors as effortlessly as possible, reducing cognitive load.
• Each tutorial is now a unique page, complete with a unique URL, allowing for direct/deep links from anywhere on the web as well as easier navigation and sharing.
• Users have additional options to find content, including direct searches, an explore page, tags and categories.
• Google Analytics and search results data are enabled for future website tutorial creation and optimization.

Migration information and stats

• 143 tutorials migrated to the new website
• 45 cross-listed tutorials
• 170 content tags created
• 25 content categories created
• 110 integrated tutorial videos (equivalent to four feature-length films)

For a more in-depth look at the changes and upgrades made for this current version of Ready, please view the following:

Visit the new and improved Ready website at ready.msudenver.edu!

Don’t forget, virtual support is available Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

The CTLD always welcomes constructive comments/feedback/suggestions, so please don’t hesitate to reach out at ctld@msudenver.edu.