Default Font Option for Instructors

[MarilynWaller-N]

It would be very nice to have a user defined font option for instructors who want to put everything we write into a given font.  This was save enormous time over writing in the default font and then having to highlight everything and change to the font and font-size of choice.

[PaytonCole]

The baseline font is boring. Arial, what is this a computer manual? I was always told that font is important, but changing the font in Canvas has wasted a lot of my time (it might not seem like much, but 5 seconds for every assignment, for every class, every semester adds up).

I generally prefer a font with a little more flair, not much, something like Times New Roman or Georgia.

Serifs increase retention, make reading easier to read, and, in my opinion, are makes reading more enjoyable.

There's a difference between this and this.

Evidence: "Readability studies have actually found that serif typefaces are easier to read because the added strokes make each character more distinctive. More distinctive letters are easier for the eye to recognize quickly."

[James]

The base font in Canvas is Lato, not Arial. It was chosen, in part, because of licensing and good support for glyphs and international characters that may not be present in some of the other fonts.

I have adopted it for most of my handouts because it is the font that is used in Canvas. In other words, I want the familiarity of the font to not be a distraction. I wish that Canvas did not add the ability to change the font or font size the way they did because it leads instructors to pick their favorite font -- unlike you who has some knowledge about fonts, most tend to pick things that are not best for the students.

I searched long and hard for a different font to use. I tried some of the Adobe fonts. I went for things that look good in print and on the screen. I kept coming back to Lato. It's not perfect, there are some characters that run together, but it has support for the Greek letters I need and most of the unicode characters I use as well. Some of the older fonts aren't like that. I revisit my choice every couple of years, where I end up wasting a weekend just to come back to Lato.

While I do not think that Canvas should allow instructors to pick a base font, you could implement a solution with your local Canvas administrator. They have the ability to add custom CSS to every account, including subaccounts. They could put your courses into a subaccount and then add the CSS so that all of your user content is styled with the font of your choice. There is a CSS class user_content that can be used for this. 

I played around with this a little and added the CSS rule 

.user_content {
  font-family: "Times New Roman";
}

The rest of the page is still Lato, and the distraction of having to switch between fonts for the interface vs the content erased any benefit of having a serif font.

That's me viewing it on a web page with a 27" monitor. An important thing to remember is that whatever you pick (and this is part of why I don't like giving instructors the easy ability to change font or size) is that it needs to look good for everyone, no matter what device they're using. Many of my students use the Canvas mobile app and I'm not sure that a serif font would look good there.

[PaytonCole]

I gotta be honest James, reaching out to my ITF to have them edit my course on their end sounds like more of a hassle then Canvas improving their system for thousands of teachers all at once.

Furthermore, font with serifs helps students read and retain information, and Lato (not Arial) is boring and not as effective or aesthetically pleasing as other more-desirable fonts. The simple fact is that, teachers design their own courses, so they should be able to pick what font they want to adopt as their standard.

You can pick Lato, I will pick Georgia, while elementary teachers might pick "Architect's Daughter" or "Comic Sans MS." All I know is that the current system is annoying because I have to constantly reformat my assignments.

Yes, I know I can design a template (I have); I would much rather be able to pick my own font anyway.

Lastly, I do not care about "licensing," "good support for glyphs" or "international characters." If these things are not offered in Georgia and I happen to need them, then I will manually switch to the more-boring Lato as needed. It is not wise to prevent improvement because what we have works for us because it might not work for everyone else.

[DeborahThielman]

It would be wonderful if teachers could set a default font in their settings. It would be a time saver. Thank you!

[PaytonCole]

I really don't understand why anybody would want to take away teacher agency, but I guess James and Chris don't like teachers making their own decisions.

Considering that Canvas allows teacher to change the font anyway, I really don't understand why teachers picking their own preference is an issue.

[AllenReed]

Problem statement:

Change the font of the Rich text editor to one that distinguishes between a capital I and a lowercase l (L). This is important to be able to tell them apart in Math and Science, especiaIIy in Chemistry.

Proposed solution:

Pick a new default font that uses a capital I that has the horizontal parts on the top and bottom instead of one that uses the same symbol for the letter l or uses a slightly thicker line for capital I and a thinner line for lowercase l.

User role(s):

instructor,designer

[ProductPanda]

Comments from Instructure

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