for
NEW PRODUCT BREED
INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
— TAKES YOU TO THE NEXT LEVEL —
Design Matters
— Design, Collaborate & Scale —
Smartdesigner is an extensive set of design tools designed to simplify and enhance the process of creating high-quality course content that is easy for students to navigate and engage with. With zero coding skills, users can create customized, responsive, and accessible quality course content that is rich and engaging. Power users get the management system to allow secure collaboration and the ability to scale and create institution-wide consistency.
Smartdesigner Key Features:
Smartdesigner Empowers
Emphasizing ease of use, Smartdesigner supports seamless collaboration among educators. Its visual no-code drag-and-drop interface with direct point-and-click-to-edit user interfaces makes it intuitive. Even the least technical educators can easily create quality content. Power users can delve as deeply as they like to customize components, templates, and even user interfaces.
Instructional Design System Management
Design. Collaborate. Scale. Instructional design becomes truly impactful when rolled out institution-wide and adopted broadly. Consistency and effectiveness become achievable by sharing and packaging best practices into visual, draggable components and templates. A management system is needed to support efficient teamwork.
Responsive Design
Smartdesigner offers an interactive, responsive designer tool readily at hand, with visual controls to design the mobile learning experience (LX). Moreover, nearly half of students (48%) say they frequently use the mobile app to access their institution’s LMS, compared to educators (41%), from a 2023 global study by Hanover Research for Instructure. Specific mobile rules are set interactively (WYSIWYG).
Accessibility Score & Checker
Designing for neurodiversity is critical for supporting some students, but adopting Universal Design for Learning (UDL) benefits all students. Smartdesigner includes built-in tools to systematically identify, understand, and fix accessibility issues. In some regions, complying with WCAG 2.2 AA standards is a requirement.
Components Library
Reuse best practices. Smartdesigner offers a systematic approach to enable the packaging of successful quality-approved design elements into reusable components. This visual (no HTML code) ends the error-prone practice of HTML code snippet sharing. The instructional lead designers release components to the shared Component Library. All users can create and take advantage of Personal Components.
Templates Library & Editor
Template boost: Ready-made templates with instructions for common content types significantly boost instructional design. SmartDesigner’s built-in capabilities to lock down specific components or elements enhance order, control, and consistency, making content creation even more straightforward. Each template has its settings and can be opened, locked down, or anywhere in between. Super-flexible. Quality-assured. Scalable.
Permissions Management
Role-Based Permissions: A role-based permissions management system empowers your institution by offering flexibility in how access and control are delegated. This system allows you to set boundaries while maintaining academic freedom. In a platform like Canvas, which is generally an open playground, students' learning experiences and success are improved when engaging course content is consistently delivered.
Canvas Partner
Smartdesigner provides deep integration with Canvas, significantly enhancing its capabilities. For example, Smartdesigner integrates the edit button in the Canvas interface. Edits are saved inside Canvas, and page edits can be reverted. Additionally, our link, video, and image tools efficiently retrieve resources directly from Canvas. Should you need more, we also provide custom development services to meet your needs.
Live Demo @ Zoom Meeting
Smartdesigner is an Instructional Design Management System — an entire suite of design and management tools. an entire suite of design and management tools. At first glance, these are super-intuitive and enable the creation of quality instructional content that ticks all the boxes incredibly fast and in a team-orchestrated fashion. On a deeper level, we'll show you how templates and tools can be tailored to fit your institution's requirements and reflect how you want to work: super flexible and very powerful. Book a live, personal demo to get a quick overview and understanding, as well as get the opportunity to follow up with questions. Schedule a live demo to get an overview of Smartdesigner and the chance to ask questions.
Book a Live Demo
Personal Smartdesigner Live Demo with Q&A Session
Trial @ Your institution — with your people and your courses
Smartdesigner as an Instructional Design Management System will empower your faculty and instructors to rapidly design visually appealing and engaging course content that aligns with the institution's branding. Smartdesigner allows institutions to create course materials that cater to diverse learning styles and needs, fostering an inclusive learning environment. This helps educators level up their teaching methods and deliver impactful, elevated learning experiences, resulting in student success.
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Test drive Smartdesigner on your own Canvas instance free for 30 Days
» Smartdesigner is the design management system that has transformed our way of working. Our goal was to empower all colleagues within our organisation to easily create courses without HTML knowledge, and that is exactly what we have achieved. The intuitive interface has streamlined course development, allowing educators to focus on content without compromising on design. «
Pauline Van Neygen,
Learning Builder,
Vlerick Business School
Proudly Serving Educational Leaders Worldwide
Our Valued Partners in Innovation
We are honored to collaborate with these prestigious institutions as they leverage our software to transform education and welcome more schools and universities to our thriving network of visionary institutions.
Smartdesigner™
In the dynamic landscape of education, engagement, accessibility, consistency, and coherence are paramount. Smartdesigner™ for Canvas LMS brings about a transformative system solution that empowers educational leaders and instructors, a game changer for collaborative and scalable course content creation. Imagine a permission-based instructional design management system that bridges the gap between technology and pedagogy, enabling non-technical educational leaders to craft impactful course content.
Smartdesigner is precisely that: a management system that includes an entire suite of innovative design tools, offering a no-code, drag-and-drop interface, empowering instructors to create inclusive, accessible, and engaging content. With real-time visualization (WYSIWYG) and in-place editing, content creation becomes efficient and intuitive. Custom components are quickly created and shared, ready to be used to create tailor-made content templates that can be shared institution-wide, which in turn may be used to create entire courses to be shared.
Avoid Challenges:
- Avoid: Inconsistent Content Quality and Branding: The design system ensures the creation of consistent, coherent, brand-aligned quality content.
- Avoid: Accessibility Non-Compliance, Exclusion & Fees: The tool offers easy and proactive accessibility scoring, spotting and practical guidance for instructors how to conform to accessibility standards. Make sure all content is responsive.
- Avoid: Limited Engagement & Student Attrition. Make sure your Canvas content doesn't look dated, but rather looks stunning, contemporary and is both engaging and inspiring.
Institutions' unofficial, non-scalable, and non-manageable fixing of the problem is the sharing of code snippets:
- A technical approach that is error-prone (as most instructors can't code)
- A haphazard fix that doesn't scale well and is
- An attempt that lacks any means to enable, enforce, or empower.
What institutions need — a holistic design approach — a collaborative instructional design management system solution, that scales and can be effectively implemented institutionwide, for maximum impact.
» Smartdesigner empowers us to design Canvas content that minimize cognitive load for every learner. Using our shared as well as personal component libraries, we can recycle design elements to visually organize content in an engaging manner, applying signaling principles across all pages and courses etc. Smartdesigner allows us to create and reuse design templates ... facilitating comprehension of learning materials. «
Carina Bois
Instructional Designer & UDL Expert
Karolinska institutet, KI
Privacy
GDPR Compliance. Smartdesigner is compliant with EU’s GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). Smartdesigner process or store no personal data outside Canvas and only holds the information necessary to function as an LTI App, according to the open LTI standard.
Accessibility
WCAG 2.2. Content created with Smartdesigner can be made conformant with the accessibility standards under US GCA’s Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act and WCAG 2.2. As well, content can be made conformant with the Directive (EU) 2016/2102 of the European Parliament and of the Council. Smartdesigner actually has a built-in proactive accessibility tool that helps users find, educate and eliminate accessibility issues.
More info Read the Smartdesigner Accessibility Statement and WCAG 2.2 Conformance Report.
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Product Sheet
Smartdesigner product sheet:
DEMO
TRIAL
Other Product & Service Offers
VISIARC is an expert on Canvas LMS and how to utilise its interfaces (APIs), as well a specialist designer and developer of apps (LTI) for Canvas LMS.
Canvas expertise at your service from a Canvas/Instructure Partner:
- Custom App Development
- Extensions
- Integrations
- Consultancy & Advice
Smartsearch is the most extensive search tool for Canvas LMS. It offers always live and predictive search and is a time saver for educational leaders as well as for students. The perfect companion to Smartdesigner — As Smartsearch's innovative design enables searching of content the same second it's created, it offers an efficient tool for instructors to make sure they can navigate courses while being under construction and to make sure content is consistent.
The negative overall institutional impact of the absence of a search tool is multifaceted, affecting operations, student experiences, collaboration, compliance, institutional image, and the institution's ability to fulfil its educational mission.
