WYSIWYG vs HTML Moodle Canvas

Why Do We Make Things More Difficult For Ourselves?

I once spent forty-five minutes trying to get a bullet point to sit half a centimetre to the left.

Forty-five minutes. On a bullet point.

I was building an eLearning module, sitting inside the WYSIWYG editor, dragging, nudging, undoing, redoing, convinced that if I just clicked the indent button one more time it would magically behave. It didn’t. So I did what any stubborn, slightly proud instructional designer does. I dove into the HTML.

Within about ninety seconds I’d found the problem, fixed the padding, and moved on with my life.

Ninety seconds. Compared to forty-five minutes.

What I learnt was that I’d spent most of that time fighting the tool the hard way, purely because it was the way I was used to. Not because it was the best way. Not because it was the fastest way. Just because it was familiar.

Sound familiar?

We default to the way we’ve always done it

There’s a reason for this, and it’s not that we’re lazy. It’s actually the opposite. We’re busy, we’re under deadline, and the familiar path feels safer than the unknown one, even when the unknown one is quicker.

I used to run a small web design business years ago (badly advertised, as it turns out, but that’s a story for another day). Back then, if you wanted a decent looking page, you had to know your way around some code. There was no other option. Fast forward to today, and the tools have got so good, so visual, so drag-and-drop, that an entire generation of course builders can create a professional-looking module without ever seeing a single angle bracket.

That’s brilliant. That’s technology doing exactly what it’s meant to do, removing the barrier to entry so more people can create more things.

But here’s the twist.

Some of us learnt the old way first. And old habits, like an out-of-tune trombone, don’t just disappear because someone hands you a better instrument.

The eLearning question nobody really talks about

When you’re building a course in Moodle or Canvas, you’ve got two paths in front of you.

Path one: stay in the WYSIWYG editor. Format your headings, drop in your images, let the platform do the heavy lifting the way it was designed to.

Path two: click that little “Source” or “</>” button, roll up your sleeves, and get into the actual HTML.

Neither path is wrong. But I’d bet money that which path you choose has less to do with what’s actually efficient, and more to do with which one you learnt first, or which one makes you feel like you’re really “in control.”

Is that optimising your time? Or is that just doing it the way we’ve always done it, because that’s what’s comfortable?

I don’t think there’s a single right answer here. Some HTML tweaks genuinely save time; a WYSIWYG editor can mangle your spacing, strip your formatting when you paste from Word, or quietly wrap your paragraph in three invisible <div> tags for no good reason. Other times, the HTML is a rabbit hole. You go in to fix one small thing and come out an hour later, blinking, wondering where the time went and why your bullet point still isn’t indented properly.

The bigger lesson

Every industry has its version of this. The musician who insists on recording everything live in one take because “that’s how the greats did it,” even when a click track and a few overdubs would get a better result in half the time. The band that keeps doing everything themselves because asking for help feels like admitting defeat, when a good producer could save them months.

Technology doesn’t remove the need for judgment. It just gives you more options, and now the job is choosing the right tool for the job in front of you, not the tool you’re most nostalgic for.

So here’s the question I actually want answered, and I need your help with it.

How do you edit your content in Moodle or Canvas?

When you’re building or updating a course, do you ever dive into the HTML and make changes by hand? Or do you stay entirely in the WYSIWYG editor and let it do the formatting for you?

• Rarely touch the HTML code — I stay in the WYSIWYG editor almost all the time
• 50/50 — I use the WYSIWYG for most things but drop into HTML when something’s not behaving
• Always editing in code — I go straight to the HTML because it gives me more control

Drop your answer in the comments, or vote in the poll. I want to know if the rest of us are quietly wasting forty-five minutes on bullet points too, or if I’m the only one.

Because at the end of the day, it’s not about which editor you use. It’s about whether the way you’re working is actually working for you, or whether you’re just doing it the way you’ve always done it, out of habit dressed up as preference.

Choose the tool. Don’t let the tool choose you.

WYSIWYG vs HTML Moodle Canvas