Using the DesignPLUS Sidebar to Design Canvas Courses
Cidi Labs DesignPlus is a powerful course-design suite integrated directly into the Canvas LMS. It empowers instructional designers and instructors to quickly build, format, and scale high-quality, visually engaging online courses—all without needing advanced HTML, JavaScript, or CSS coding skills.
Getting Started with the new DesignPLUS Sidebar
Opening the DesignPLUS Sidebar in Canvas
To open the DesignPLUS sidebar in Canvas, use the keyboard shortcut Alt-Shift-D (Windows) or Option-Shift-D (Mac) any time you are editing content in canvas to open the tools.
You must be editing content in Canvas for the keyboard shortcuts to work. If neither of these shortcuts work, you can also try Ctrl-1.
Automatically show launch button
Once the Sidebar opens, we recommend changing your user settings to always show the launch button. Then, you will be able to click on the launch button to launch the DesignPLUS sidebar and will not need to use the keyboard shortcut.
To do this:
Use the kebab menu to go to “User Settings”
And check the box next to Show Launch Button.
Updating Legacy DesignPLUS content to work with the sidebar
If you used the older version of the DesignPLUS sidebar to build content in Canvas, you may be asked to update the content prior to editing it with the current version of the sidebar.
Select Go to the Upgrade Tool and upgrade all elements on the page at once.
Upgrade all legacy course content at once with the Course Upgrade tool
If you have a lot of content that was created using the legacy CIDI Labs DesignPlus toolbar and you would like to upgrade all of your course content at once so it can work with the new DesignPlus Sidebar, use the Course Upgrade tool.