Graphic Design with Canva for Faculty and Students

Our CTLA office assistant, Julia Glodoski uses Canva at work and in her free time to create and enhance posters, presentations, and social media profiles. Canva has really fun and easy-to-use free templates, which Julia really enjoys. It is a very user-friendly tool and the design options inspire creativity! You can choose a template that works best for your situation and work from there. Every template is very engaging and visually appealing. Students can also use it and it allows for collaboration, similar to google docs/slides. How to Use Canva in College: 4 Tips for Students and Teachers has some fun ideas as well!

---

---

Coming to you from Dr. Jade Williams, Communication Faculty, who uses Canva for assignments in her online sections.

You might already know that Canva.com is an excellent instructional tool for creating presentation slides, videos, and an array of engaging infographics. But did you know that it is an excellent tool for students, too? The freeCanva account provides hundreds of stock images, videos, templates, and more, and its sharing feature makes team collaboration a breeze--even in online classes. Two of my students' favorite Canva assignments are social media posts and videos.

 #1 – With one of Canva’s “Social Media” projects, creating an impactful online presence has never been easier. Students can choose from and customize templates for popular platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. And when the post is ready to publish, a simple click does the trick.
 
#2 – Help your classes to create professional and engaging videos using one of Canva’s many project options. Students can record themselves directly on the presentation slides (including audiovisual or voiceover), as well as insert stock footage, animated elements, uploaded videos, music, and so much more. In the following example (shared with permission), a group from my synchronous online COM230 class created this 1-minute video to recruit students into future sections. This is the assignment description.

If all of this isn’t enough, the all-new Canva Docs allows students to bring individual and collaborative documents to a whole new level with all the same elements and ease as other Canva projects. So, say goodbye to the boring old days of Google Docs and PowerPoint, and welcome in the vibrant and exciting new world of Canva!

---

---

CTLA Faculty Liaison, Jen Peterson, also has students utilize Canva to professionally and creatively demonstrate learning.

Students create infographics on critical course concepts, selecting from hundreds of infographic templates in Canva (or starting from scratch). The Infographic assignment:

• Encourages critical thinking
• Requires students to synthesize and summarize complex course concepts
• Engages creativity

During Hybrid Summit, faculty were encouraged to make an infographic for their students, presenting the hybrid format of their course in a clear, straightforward, and visually appealing way. Using Canva to Create an Infographic

NEW BETA Feature - Present & Record allows for video and audio recording to narrate the infographic, which is helpful for accessibility, however; the infographic image is very small during recording.

---

---

​Canva is 100% FREE for Teachers and provides teachers with access to class space to share, review, and manage work. In 2022, Canva unveiled their Visual Worksuite: a robust selection of Docs, Presentations, Videos, Whiteboards, and a Website builder.
​

Canva has also acquired Pixabay, a collection of over 2.7 million high quality, royalty free stock images, videos and music. When downloading an image from Pixabay, there is now a direct link to "Retouch with Canva", allowing users instant access to a bank of tools to customize and edit images.

• CONS: The image created is saved as a PNG (image) and not accessible by a screen reader. The mobile app version is not as easy to use. Edits must be made in Canva. Many education templates are geared more for K-12.
• PROS: Free. Simple and intuitive design, with drag and drop features. Thousands of images and templates to select from (or upload your own). Constantly launching new features (new Text to Image AI feature recently launched in Beta).

Canva's MISSION - "Empowering everyone in the world to design anything and publish anywhere".

---

Share Your Ideas
Special thanks to Julia, Jade, and Jen for the Canva ideas and resources! For upcoming Tech Tuesdays, we will be calling on you to share your examples or assignments. If you cannot wait to share your ideas, contact us at [email protected] and
 [email protected] so we can follow up with you asap.
​
Your Faculty Liaisons, Jen & Vanessa

---