5 Takeaways from Canva Create for colleges and universities

During the first decade of Canva, we focused on empowering individuals to design, and as we enter our second decade, we’re doubling down on empowering every organisation to design. If you work in higher education, you may have heard your campus buzzing about Canva for Campus⁠(opens in a new tab or window) and all it can do for teaching, learning, marketing, collaboration, and preparing students for the workforce.

The theme of our recent annual event Canva Create 2024 was ‘Work Redesigned’⁠(opens in a new tab or window), where we launched even more new solutions, tools, and features needed for every person in your university to thrive. More than 2.5 million online registrants around the world, along with around 3000 in-person attendees, came together as a community to hear about the latest insights and product updates to help every workplace achieve their visual communication goals.

Here are some of the most important Canva lessons to take back to your campus:

1. Stay ahead of the trends with new and upgraded AI tools

Navigating AI is a new, and nuanced, arena for universities and colleges. It’s important for students to be proficient at using innovative AI tools, and still think independently without using them as a crutch. But as Disney CEO Bob Iger mentioned in his fireside chat with Canva Founder Melanie Perkins at Canva Create: “We should view technology as the wind behind our sails, rather than the wind in our faces.”

According to Canva’s AI in Education surve⁠(opens in a new tab or window)y, 60% of teachers agree AI has sparked innovative ideas to enhance student productivity, and 56% of teachers agree AI simplifies their lives by reducing administrative burdens. Canva’s Magic Studio™⁠(opens in a new tab or window) tools both enhance learning for university students and enable faculty to do their best work, at scale. Professor presentations are more engaging, students can jumpstart their work with text prompts, and the use of AI sparks creativity in projects across the university. Not to mention, college marketing teams love the Magic Studio™ tools for all their videos, social media posts, and admissions presentations.

Here are a few Magic Studio™ tools your university might want to try:

• Resize & Magic Switch™⁠(opens in a new tab or window) lets you turn any design into a doc with one click. Lecture presentations can easily be made into exam study docs, brainstorm whiteboards can turn into a recap doc, resumes can easily turn into presentations or websites and more.
• Styles⁠(opens in a new tab or window) is an AI feature that marketing teams will love for even more brand control. It lets you easily apply the style of any design to another with just one click. Imagine the time you’ll save adding your university brand to all your collateral.
  

• Accessibility⁠(opens in a new tab or window) is built into every Canva design you create with the click of a button. Use the “Check Design Accessibility” function to quickly create alt text, change colour contrast, translate to different languages, change font size, and more. on stage at Canva Create, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer Cameron Adams shared that Canva’s Translate⁠(opens in a new tab or window) feature enabled a global insurance company⁠(opens in a new tab or window) to turn around a first draft translation in five minutes, down from two weeks.

2. Dive into Work Kits to jump-start your projects

It can be challenging to know where to start on a project or how to approach a new idea. That’s why one of the most exciting announcements to come out of Canva Create was the introduction of Canva Work Kits⁠(opens in a new tab or window). These four tailored content hubs give departments and teams across Sales⁠(opens in a new tab or window), Marketing⁠(opens in a new tab or window), HR⁠(opens in a new tab or window), and Creative⁠(opens in a new tab or window) access to a curated collection of resources, templates, articles, apps, and tools to help you do your best work.

University marketing, admissions, HR, and creative teams can now kick off their projects with ease. The new Work Kits⁠(opens in a new tab or window) are packed with template options to help get your content creation juices flowing. Whether you’re building a marketing strategy, an admissions pitch deck, a university newsletter, or an onboarding plan, Work Kits has everything you need to communicate visually and with impact. You can even apply your university Brand Kit⁠(opens in a new tab or window) to every design with the click of a button. With templates, tips, and tools built for Marketing, Sales, HR, and Creative, there are resources for every specialty.

3. Create courses and record them to make hybrid learning easier

Every educator knows how important it is to make teaching and learning fun and engaging, both in person and online. At Canva Create, we announced a new feature⁠(opens in a new tab or window) that allows you to make your remote lessons or training engaging with Recording narration, screen recording, and voiceover features. This is a game-changer for professors who want to share a presentation virtually with tone of voice and facial expressions added in. It also makes training for the HR or marketing department a breeze.

Now, professors can plan their entire semester with a Canva course comprised of lessons assigned to students that help them engage with the curriculum. University HR departments can also use courses for onboarding new employees or even introducing new students to university traditions, events, and more. Best of all, a course tracks the students’ progress and lets the professor or course designer know when it’s complete.

Pop your recording into a presentation, put the presentation into your course and you’re done. Don’t forget, Canva also integrates with popular LMSes⁠(opens in a new tab or window) like Blackboard, Canvas and D2L to make technology integration seamless.

4. Get ready for a fresh new Canva

At Canva Create, we were excited to unveil the biggest upgrade to our editing experience in a decade with the launch of a whole new editor designed for work. Currently in beta and available to our whole community from August, our brand-new homepage and powerful editing experience puts content at your fingertips, making it easy to seamlessly move between projects, access team or faculty resources, locate and apply brand guidelines, and share and collaborate on designs across your organisation.

Your creativity can flow with a streamlined editing experience that puts your most-used features right where you need them. You can also set up your space just the way you like it: star your most important designs, folders, or templates so you can always find what you need. Teams can also now easily share and access important designs, resources, and news through our new “Starred for Team” sidebar, which allows team admins to highlight important content like the latest staff newsletter or curriculum documents.

5. Rest easy with advanced security controls and enterprise-level tools

Security is top of mind for university CIOs and IT leaders. Just like enterprise organisations, universities require advanced security, reporting, administration, brand management, and integration requirements. Keeping all campus data safe is a top priority when it comes to adopting new technology or maintaining existing tools. With the rise in AI usage, CIOs are even more vigilant about security and private information.

At Canva Create, Cameron Adams spoke about how AI technology was a game-changer for organisations, simplifying once-complex tasks to mere seconds for all users. Now, this can all be done securely through our Canva Enterprise⁠(opens in a new tab or window) solution for large organisations, including universities with Canva for Campus⁠(opens in a new tab or window). Canva Enterprise via Canva for Campus keeps your content secure with advanced security, privacy, and AI indemnity⁠(opens in a new tab or window), all while consolidating all AI, design, content production, and collaboration tools under one centralised account.

Centrally manage your brand at scale with brand controls, receive bespoke platform support, seamlessly integrate your tech stack, and monitor team usage with reports to ensure your university is set up for success.

If you missed Canva Create, you can still take advantage of all the amazing new features and tools. Check out What’s New⁠(opens in a new tab or window) to dive into everything Canva has to offer your university from students and faculty to marketing and IT, or find out more about how Canva for Campus⁠(opens in a new tab or window) empowers everyone on your campus to create, collaborate, and communicate.

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