The Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) lab launched a sexual education canvas page last quarter with 10 modules covering all topics from the basics of “What is Sex?” to “Pornography” and “Sex Toys.”
Started as a senior project in 2023, the SRH lab continues to update the canvas page with the mission of allowing students easy and anonymous access to accurate information about taboo topics surrounding sex.
Public health senior Amanda Hodges is part of the team adding improvements to the modules. She said this canvas site is a lot more helpful than her prior health classes.
“Well, my high school sex ed [class] did not talk about butt plugs, [so] that’s a start,” Hodges said. “I mean, I’m just joking there but like, it’s so much more comprehensive. It’s so much more interesting. It’s not some old guy telling me not to have sex.”
The canvas module brings sex education to students in a format they are familiar with and can easily access during their time at Cal Poly. Rather than a one time course, Hodges said it was important to the team that users could go back and look at resources as they were confronted with situations in real life.
“It’s very self-driven,” Hodges said. “I like that aspect. You can also come back to it, like this is something you can have on your dashboard for the entire college experience you have.”
She recommends exploring the page with an open mind and learning about what is most interesting to each student.
If certain information is unavailable on the canvas page, users can ask questions in the anonymous questions tab and receive answers from student researchers in the SRH lab. The idea is to give a forum for topics not covered in the modules.
A few of the questions asked already on the page include, “Could you still get STDs and such if it’s between two women?” and “How do you masturbate cleanly?” The responses included links to module pages and reliable outside resources for students to explore.
Public health sophomore Leora Feinsmith works in the lab and adds updates to the module. She said hyperlinking the canvas pages throughout the other modules is a unique way to engage students as they move through it.
“You can kind of jump around a little bit and go deeper,” Feinsmith said. “But you can also just see the connectedness and I think that’s beautiful.”
Most recently, the team is adding quizzes to the canvas module to test students’ knowledge on subjects before and after they complete the module. A few professors of health classes are assigning these quizzes as extra credit or as assignments in their classes.
Elimination of sexually transmitted infections and pregnancy on campus is not the direct goal of the modules, but Hodges hopes these occurrences will indirectly decrease as more people have access to better education about sexual health.
“We want people to feel empowered about their sexual health,” Hodges said. “So I think that’s my favorite [part of the] module because it just challenges the norms of society we have so far.”
Alumna Alexa Asson, who began the module as a senior project, spent eight to 10 hours per week working on the canvas page during the fall and winter quarters of 2023-24, which included working with a graphic designer to organize all the information into the module format.
She credits her high school health teacher for sparking her passion surrounding sex education as well as her family’s openness in talking about sex, making her comfortable to have these conversations.
Asson’s favorite module to design was about contraceptives, because she got to experiment with the design and features of canvas — such as including drop down menus and tabs to sort sections — in order to pare down the information and make it digestible.
“It can be very complicated and people don’t usually know all of their options outside of the [birth control] pill, which doesn’t work for a lot of people,” Asson said.
Asson hopes the module will grow its audience by making it a component of Cal Poly’s “back to school” orientation. If the module becomes a part of Canvas Commons, other schools will be able access it. Canvas Commons allows users to publish a canvas page to all students with access to the platform, regardless of their university affiliation.
In their efforts to outreach, Hodges approached the risk management officers of greek life organizations to share the resource with their members. She also hopes to reach out to other organizations to connect with as many students as possible.
To anonymously join the canvas module, students can use this link to the Canvas page. All modules are live and are updated by the students at the SRH lab.
“We’re constantly evolving as a society in regards to gender and sexual orientation,” Hodges said. “So it’s important that we’re staying on top of it.”