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University still trying to convert to Canvas

STEVE KENT, web editor

Despite challenges, the change from Blackboard Vista to Instructure Canvas is going well, said Associate Vice Provost Robert Wagner. Canvas is replacing Blackboard as the school’s official computer-based learning management system (LMS).

  Slowness performing tasks and hard-to-understand menus and communication tools are among some of the complaints users have made since courses began using Canvas. Those issues are being addressed faster with Canvas than they would have been with Blackboard, Wagner said.

  “Canvas is an evolving product,” Wagner said. “Facebook, Twitter — all of those applications change, and they get better. That’s what we’re getting with Canvas that we weren’t getting before.”

  Ashley Hart, a junior studying family, consumer and human development, said she likes Canvas personally, but many of her classmates have complained about the system. She said in one of her courses, her classmates discussed ways they might persuade their professor to switch back to Blackboard.

  Hart said her own opinion of Canvas was influenced by the way one of her instructors demonstrated the site.

  “Our teacher provided a video of the important links in Canvas that we needed to get through, and it was easy,” Hart said.

  Hart’s brother-in-law Ben Blau is an assistant professor in the department of economics and finance. Blau said he adopted Canvas this semester because he knew USU would be dropping Blackboard, and he wanted to make the transition sooner rather than later. So far, the two systems seem about the same, Blau said.

  “And in my opinion, both are pretty slow,” Blau said. “Entering grades into the grade book seems to be a little more monotonous with Canvas, although announcements made in Canvas seem to be a lot more efficient than they were in Blackboard. Canvas has worked well with that.”

  Blau said he hasn’t taken any training on using Canvas, and that may be one cause for the difficulties he’s had with the system.

  Faculty Assistance Center for Teaching Instructional Designer Shane Thomas said technical support is available for those struggling with Canvas.

  “USU faculty have more hands-on support in this migration process than any of our peer institutions,” Thomas said.

  Wagner said tutorials for students and faculty are available on the site itself, and that the IT Help Desk has played a large role in the transition.

  “They have done just an amazing job of being there for students and faculty — mostly students — in providing them help,” Wanger said.

This semester, instructors had the option to adopt the new system, to stay with the old one or to forgo the use of an LMS altogether, Wagner said. Utah Education Network’s contract with Blackboard expires June 30, 2012. 

After that, he said, USU will lose access to the website and any instructors who wish to use an LMS provided by the university will have to use Canvas. Blackboard is no longer developing its Vista product, so the university was forced to upgrade to Blackboard’s new product or change companies. 

The new Blackboard product is so different that USU would have faced substantial changes whether the school switched to a different company or not, according to a report compiled by LMS Administrator Neal Legler.

  Wagner said about one third of the process of transferring courses from Blackboard to Canvas is complete. Nearly 25,000 students and more than 850 teachers are now using Canvas, according to Legler’s report.

  Legler said as courses are moved from Blackboard to Canvas some problems with content on course sites can’t be avoided. 

  “There’s been a lot of troubleshooting at the individual course level, as students come across broken links and things like that,” Legler said. 

There have been fewer of those problems than he anticipated, given the unprecedented amount of information that needs to be transferred from the old system, he said.

  In order to facilitate a smoother transition and make Canvas a useful tool for the university, the FACT is compiling feedback from instructors and students, Legler said. In addition to collecting feedback through its website, FACT conducted an email survey of more than 900 students. 

When some instructors who adopted Canvas this semester had concerns about using the system, Thomas said those instructors were able to discuss the problems in person, in a meeting with the software engineers working on Canvas.

  One advantage Canvas has over Blackboard is the ability to respond to faculty and student concerns quickly, Thomas said.

  “We’ve given them suggestions, and we’ve seen fixes and changes in minutes. Before in any other learning management system it would have taken weeks (or) months to get some of those changes,” he said.

  Along with the better customer support and room for future innovation Canvas has compared to the old system, UEN has also saved money in its contract with Instructure.

  One instructor at USU who will not be making the switch to Canvas this fall has found another way to communicate with his students. Associate Professor Preston Parker said he got sick of using Blackboard and as of last spring started using Facebook, instead. 

Using the social media site’s group-building feature and an online a
pplication called Gradebook Portal, Parker said he successfully replaced the role of Blackboard for three of his public relations courses.

  Parker said that none of his students have expressed concern about using Facebook to communicate for the course, and he’s only had two or three students who didn’t already have a Facebook account.

  Legler said students can avoid some frustrations with Canvas by making sure they’re using the latest version of their web browser. “Canvas pushes the latest technology,” Legler said. “As a result, students using browsers predating that technology will have trouble.”

 

– evan.millsap@aggiemail.usu.edu