Better Course Navigation: UX Design for LMS

UX design for LMS is the single design area most likely to reduce student confusion and increase engagement in online courses. This post explains what the August 10, 2026 Faculty Focus analysis found, what those findings mean for instructional designers, and how AI-enabled qualitative research speeds evidence-based redesign. The primary audience is instructional designers and higher education researchers who run student surveys and open-ended feedback and who need reproducible, segmentable insights from that data.

Key Takeaways

Two-course comparisons published by Faculty Focus on August 10, 2026 show that a redesigned D2L shell improved student navigation and satisfaction.

According to Faculty Focus on August 10, 2026, approximately 65% of respondents favored the newer KSP 330 layout over the older KSP 202 layout.
According to Faculty Focus on August 10, 2026, KSP 330 received an average satisfaction rating of 4.7 out of 5 and a comparative score of 4.43.
According to Faculty Focus on August 10, 2026, students cited the structured weekly format, embedded submission links, and visual checklists as the most helpful navigation features.

What Happened and how the study was measured

Answer: Faculty Focus authors Dr. Mark Savignano and Dr. Scott Page compared two D2L course shells and reported mixed-method findings that favored the redesigned shell.

According to Faculty Focus on August 10, 2026, the authors studied a Technology Integration course (KSP 202) and a redesigned Planning and Instruction course (KSP 330) at Minnesota State University, Mankato and gathered both open-ended responses and Likert-scale satisfaction ratings.

According to Faculty Focus on August 10, 2026, the study used open-ended qualitative questions in one course and Likert-scale quantitative surveys in the other, producing both narrative feedback and numeric metrics for comparison.

According to Faculty Focus on August 10, 2026, the comparison emphasized navigational features: left-hand content menus, breadcrumb navigation, accordion templates, and links that open in new tabs.

Findings snapshot

Date	Metric	Value	Implication
August 10, 2026	Share preferring new layout	Approximately 65%	Majority of students preferred the redesigned KSP 330 layout
August 10, 2026	Average satisfaction rating (KSP 330)	4.7 / 5	High perceived usability for the redesigned shell
August 10, 2026	Comparative score vs other D2L shells	4.43	Design rated above typical D2L shells at the institution

Implications for instructional designers

Answer: Instructional designers should prioritize clear weekly structure, embedded submission links, and persistent navigation to reduce cognitive load and support student task completion.

According to Faculty Focus on August 10, 2026, students explicitly praised a structured weekly format and visual checklists because those elements improved time management and orientation within a course.

According to Faculty Focus on August 10, 2026, accordion templates and links that open in a new tab helped students keep their place while viewing assignment details, which implies that design decisions that preserve a student’s spatial context reduce navigation errors.

Instructional designers should treat a D2L shell as a product: test signposting (breadcrumbs), reduce redundant links, and standardize checklist patterns before scaling a template across courses.

How Evidano helps teams run this kind of UX-informed evaluation

Evidano in one sentence

Evidano is an AI-powered qualitative data analysis platform that helps researchers analyze interviews, open-ended surveys, and documents.

Problem: Open-ended student feedback is rich but slow to synthesize, especially when comparing two course designs.

Solution: Evidano automatically ingests transcripts and survey text, produces thematic coding, frequency counts, and cross-segment comparisons so teams can see which navigation elements students mention most often.

Feature mapping: Problem: Confusing manual coding → Solution: automated thematic and co-occurrence analysis in Evidano features.

Feature mapping: Problem: Rewriting identical navigation patterns across courses → Solution: pattern reports and exportable visualizations to share with faculty and LMS admins.

How an instructional design team would use Evidano step by step

Step 1: Export open-ended responses and Likert items and upload them to Evidano for immediate thematic and frequency analysis.

Step 2: Use Evidano’s cross-segment analysis to compare comments from KSP 202 and KSP 330, isolating mentions of "breadcrumbs, " "checklists, " and "accordion" and ranking them by frequency and sentiment.

Step 3: Produce a stakeholder-ready report with quotes and statistics for each design recommendation and export visuals to accompany a redesign proposal.

FAQ: UX design for LMS

How much does changing an LMS shell actually affect student satisfaction?

Answer: Changing a shell’s navigation and layout can produce measurable improvements in satisfaction, as demonstrated by the Faculty Focus comparison.

According to Faculty Focus on August 10, 2026, the redesigned shell earned an average satisfaction rating of 4.7 out of 5 and a comparative score of 4.43, and approximately 65% of respondents favored the newer layout.

Which specific LMS features most influence student navigation?

Answer: Students most frequently cite weekly structure, embedded submission links, visual checklists, breadcrumb navigation, and accordion content as navigation aids.

According to Faculty Focus on August 10, 2026, students specifically identified the structured weekly format, embedded submission links, and visual checklists as the most helpful features for staying organized.

Can AI help synthesize open-ended student feedback about LMS UX?

Answer: Yes, AI-enabled qualitative analysis can rapidly code themes, extract representative quotations, and quantify mentions across student segments.

According to Evidano’s approach, teams can upload transcripts or survey text and get thematic, content frequency, and cross-segment reports that surface which navigation features drive satisfaction and which create friction.

What is a practical next step for a department that wants to test a new shell?

Answer: Run a small mixed-method pilot comparing the current shell and a redesigned shell, collecting Likert ratings and open-ended feedback, then analyze using a qualitative platform.

Faculty Focus authors Dr. Mark Savignano and Dr. Scott Page recommend the mixed-method approach used in their August 10, 2026 article because it captures both measurable satisfaction scores and the verbatim student concerns that explain them.

Conclusion & Next Steps

The Faculty Focus analysis published on August 10, 2026 shows that intentional LMS UX changes can increase student satisfaction and reduce navigation friction.

Instructional designers should prioritize weekly structure, embedded submission links, and persistent navigation patterns and validate changes with mixed-method student feedback.

If you want to run rapid, reproducible qualitative analyses on student comments and compare course designs at scale, see how Evidano automates thematic and cross-segment reporting in Evidano features and supports survey uploads via Evidano surveys.

Try a demo today and get actionable quotes, frequency counts, and segment comparisons from your own student data: Try Evidano for free.

Topics

UX design for LMS
LMS UX
course navigation design
AI qualitative analysis

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Better Course Navigation: UX Design for LMS

Key Takeaways

What Happened and how the study was measured

Findings snapshot

Implications for instructional designers

How Evidano helps teams run this kind of UX-informed evaluation

Evidano in one sentence

How an instructional design team would use Evidano step by step

FAQ: UX design for LMS

How much does changing an LMS shell actually affect student satisfaction?

Which specific LMS features most influence student navigation?

Can AI help synthesize open-ended student feedback about LMS UX?

What is a practical next step for a department that wants to test a new shell?

Conclusion & Next Steps

Topics

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