Salve Regina — Custom Canvas Templates

§ CASE STUDY — HIGHER ED · CUSTOM BUILD SALVE REGINA UNIVERSITY

Salve Regina
Custom Canvas templates.
Adopted across the institution.

A modular, accessibility-first Canvas template adopted by adjunct faculty and published to Canvas Commons.

↓ READ ON № CS-04
§ 01 — AT A GLANCE THE FACTS

A Canvas template adjunct faculty actually adopted.

  • Client: Salve Regina University
  • Project: Custom Canvas course template (7- and 15-week formats)
  • Stack: Instructure Canvas · published to Canvas Commons
  • Standards: WCAG 2.2 AA baked in
  • Audience: Adjunct faculty across the institution
  • Course Kitchen role: Template design, accessibility, faculty enablement
§ 02 — THE PROBLEM WHAT THEY HIRED US FOR

Make accessibility, consistency, and good navigation the default, not an extra ask of overworked adjuncts.

Salve Regina needed adjunct faculty to ship Canvas courses that were consistently navigable, brand-aligned, and accessible — without expecting every adjunct to be an LMS expert. The existing approach asked too much of part-time instructors. The right fix was a template they'd actually adopt, because using it was easier than not.

§ 03 — APPROACH FOUR MOVES

Design the path of least resistance to be the accessible one.

  1. 01

    Faculty-led discovery

    Interviewed adjunct faculty to identify the friction points in their current Canvas workflows, then designed the template to remove those points first.

  2. 02

    Two cadences, one system

    Built coordinated 7-week and 15-week template variants from a single design system, so faculty teaching multiple cadences saw the same patterns.

  3. 03

    Reusable content blocks

    Pre-built modules, syllabus pages, assessment shells, and announcement templates — so faculty assemble courses, they don't author from blank.

  4. 04

    Accessibility baked in, not bolted on

    WCAG 2.2 AA-aligned components by default. Color, contrast, heading structure, and alt-text scaffolding handled at the template level.

§ 04 — WHAT WE SHIPPED DELIVERABLES

What landed in their hands.

01

Modular Canvas template

Coordinated 7- and 15-week course shells with intuitive navigation.

02

Reusable content blocks

Pre-built syllabus, module, assessment, and announcement templates faculty can clone and edit.

03

Canvas Commons publication

Template published to Canvas Commons so adoption scales beyond the original launch.

04

Faculty enablement

Quick-start guides and onboarding artifacts so adjunct faculty could adopt the template in under an hour.

§ 05 — OUTCOMES WHAT IT MOVED

Adoption that stuck.

  • Template adopted by adjunct faculty across the institution.
  • Accessibility floor raised institution-wide without per-course remediation cost.
  • Reusable content blocks and Canvas Commons publication continue to drive adoption beyond the original launch.
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For internal review: Higher-ed services · Trust & Compliance