How to: UXify Your Digital Classroom
What kinds of EdTech platforms are popular at your school? Learning Management Systems, like Canvas and Google Classroom? Grading software, like Aeries or Gradelink? What about educational apps like SeeSaw, Padlet, and Duolingo?
Now, think for a moment: which ones do you love to use? Hate to use? If you’re like me, you want your digital experience to be brainless: you want to intuitively know where to go, which icons to click, and how to access your data and make changes. But, if you’re also like me, you dread any platform that you consider “fussy,” preferring to pull out a pen and paper rather than dealing with all the hassle. And when the district makes you change your preferred platform? Oh, the outcry!
The digital struggle is real. Some apps and platforms make you feel like you’re skating effortlessly across silky fresh ice, while others are more like trudging through hot sand—with umbrella, cooler, and beach toys in tow. EdTech companies will do anything to give you that smooth-like-butter feeling: investing millions of dollars into the field of “UX” (shorthand for “User Experience”).
Much like talented teachers, UX designers make thousands of tiny decisions that add up to one beautiful, seamless experience. They decide where to place which button, which icons make the most obvious symbols, and how to optimize their apps for people from different backgrounds. While the results look high tech, their methods are often charmingly analog: a UX designer might, for example, print out mock-ups on a sheet of computer paper, and interview 100 people about where they would “click” with their index finger. I could do that—adorable!
As classroom teachers, we can offer our students a seamless digital experience, too—and, unlike UX designers, we have the benefit of interviewing our “users” every day. Our ELD, ADHD, and dyslexic students, especially, deserve digital environments that make it easy to intuit where they can find what they need…hopefully, without sending us dozens of midnight emails in the process. Hey, upgrading our classroom’s UX can make our user experience smoother, too!
So, after years of “interviewing” my students, I present you with my top 10 tips for improving the UX of your classroom. Take what you like, and leave the rest: even tiny changes here can yield big results!
Link Worksheets Directly into Your Slides
Make it easy on yourself…and on your absent students. Link every worksheet to the title of your slide with the instructions: that way, you’ll be able to pull up the associated worksheet easily, without having to dig around your Google Drive folders. This also makes it easy to show your classes the worksheet itself while you’re presenting, and easy to find the activity again in subsequent years.
Link Online Activities to Your Slides
Playing Kahoot? Leading a Nearpod? Teeing up a Quizlet Live? Link the specific activity page to your slide title, so that you can cue it up with just a single tap. And, for students who have trouble navigating different platforms, they can log in from the comfort of your slide deck!
Link Notes into Your Slides (Before You Take the Notes!)
Prefer to take your notes “live,” the old fashioned way? (Me, too—vintage is in, I hear!) When you prep your slides, include a link to a simple, catch-all Google Drive folder labeled “Notes.” Then, at the end of class, use your cell phone to upload your notes directly onto Google Drive: open the app, click the plus sign on the bottom right, and scan the document. Drop that photo in your folder, and voilà! Students have all of your notes at their fingertips, and you can reference them in the future as well.
Link Online Assignments to Your Class Calendar
Hopefully by now you’ve implemented a class calendar; it’s the best thing I’ve ever done to keep my classroom running smoothly! As you mark down assignment deadlines, add a link to the Google Classroom or Canvas page for submission: this will make it easy for students who struggle with executive functioning.
Link Slides to Your Class Calendar
Likewise, your class calendar is the perfect spot to link daily slides as you create them—that way, there’s no need to post them separately. In my class, absent students know to review the day’s slides before they email me to check for missing work! (And, if they do email me? I’ll simply send back a link to our class calendar!)
Add Your Class Calendar and LMS Page to Your Email Signature
Better yet, include a link to your class calendar, your Google Classroom, or your Canvas in the footer of your email. That way, instead of hunting for links, you can simply reply with a breezy: “Thanks for letting me know! Check the class calendar link below, and be sure to review the slides and assignments before you return.” Sent and archived, baby!
Maintain Consistent Assignment Names Across Platforms
My role often requires me to go digging through other teachers’ gradebooks…and, you would be surprised how much trouble I have tracking down their assignments! Triple check that your assignment names are exactly the same across slides, worksheets, Canvas and Classroom pages, and, of course, your gradebook. Bonus points for a title that either includes the grading category (“Engagement: Chapter 3 Homework”; “Comprehension: Catcher in the Rye MCQ”) or the time of year (“Q2 Week 4: Photosynthesis Lab”).
Post Retake Deadlines on Each Assignment
Consider, too, posting retake deadlines on your class calendar, on your grading software, or even typing it on the assignment itself. (This has the added bonus of making it easier to maintain boundaries for students who don’t observe the deadlines.) On my Aeries page, for example, I set the “date assigned” as the date the we completed the assessment, but the “date due” as the final deadline for submission. When the date passes, I fill in my gradebook’s red squares with the code “PD” to indicate “Past Due,” simplifying any confusion!
Maintain Consistent Slide Deck and Activity Names
I don’t know about you, but by the end of the day, I have at least 20 tabs open across multiple browsers. And, when I’m moving quickly, files are quick to get lost! Name your slide decks and documents with a simple and consistent set of labels, preferably including the class, unit, and file type. Try “Biology Ch 3 Day 1: 9.22.24” or “Alg 2 Q4: Quadratics (Assessment A).” This way, even if you lose track of a file, it’s easy to search and find it again—even if that’s all the way in 2026, when you’re hunting for that brilliant activity you created!
Create a Classroom Favorites Folder
Set aside 10 minutes of class time to help students create a classroom favorites folder. Show them how to create a bookmarks folder and pin it to the top of their browser: then, project a checklist of pages (linked, of course!) for them to favorite. Students can quickly click each link on their checklist and add it to the folder. Thanks to this method, my class can start a Kahoot in ten seconds or less, and I field vastly fewer questions about where to find my course information.
And there you have it! Ten tips to improve the User Experience of your classroom. What do you think—did I miss tip number eleven? Do tell, below! I’d absolutely love to hear more UX tips that I can borrow in my classroom!
