Canvas Adoption Proposal

Evaluation

Recommendation Summary

Why Adopt?

Timeline

Support

Evaluation

Middlebury adopted Moodle as its LMS in 2011 after a year-long evaluation ( At that time it was decided that we would use Moodle for a minimum of 5 years. At the end of the 5 years we would ask ourselves: Is Moodle still the right LMS for Middlebury? The 5 years will end in August of 2016.

Canvas, a service developed and delivered by Instructure, was relatively new to the market at the time of the previous evaluation and was not considered. Since it has launched over 1,200 colleges, universities and school districts have adopted Canvas, including many of our peer and neighboring institutions, including Amherst, Williams, Harvard, Yale, and Dartmouth. Academic Technology and MIIS Digital Learning Commons ran a pilot of Canvas during the fall semester of 2015 to determine if Canvas could meet Middlebury’s current and future academic needs.

38 courses participated in the pilot. Data was collected from the faculty and students in the form of one-on-one conversations, meetings with the faculty, and 2 surveys.

Recommendation Summary

The Curricular Technology Team is making a “whole product” recommendation. Our feeling is that a successful adoption requires us to have the appropriate planning and services to support a new LMS for Middlebury.

●Middlebury adopt Canvas as its LMS beginning the fall term 2016

●Implementation planning begins in March of 2016

●Canvas provisioning happens through the Course Hub

●Moodle is maintained for one fiscal year

●Tier 1 support by Instructure is included in the adoption

Why Adopt?

Canvas performed well based on our criteria for adoption. The features of Canvas scored 7.5 out of 10 or above in the faculty and student surveys (MCUG and MIIS) for usefulness and ease of use. Open responses indicated that Canvas is very popular with faculty and students, with 9 out of 14 faculty responses asking for adoption in the end-of semester survey (we did not directly ask this question). Faculty mentioned that features of Canvas will be missed if it is not adopted, most notably the SpeedGrader. Faculty and students made good use of online documentation and other support services. All of this suggests that Canvas would support Middlebury’s academic activities.

Recommendation: Middlebury adopt Canvas as its LMS beginning the fall term 2016

Timeline

There is very little time, about two months, between final budget decisions and the beginning of fall classes. The final budget decisions occur in July. Faculty noted that there was not enough time to learn Canvas before classes began, they would have liked the opportunity to learn more about the features and how they could use them to support class activity. Staff time to help with the rollout is important, and we will need to develop Canvas course spaces on a per semester basis. Language Schools and other programs will need time to migrate their placement exams. We propose the following high-level timeline for a thoughtful rollout of Canvas.

What / Who / When
Research, design and develop code to provision Canvas course spaces using the Course Hub. This includes the creation of the space and roster syncing. / Web Services / March - July 2016
Develop Canvas communication and training. / Academic Technology and MIIS Digital Learning Commons / March-July 2016
Create an application administration strategy / Academic Technology, MIIS Digital Learning Commons / May 2016
Budget decisions / July 1, 2016
Allow Canvas course spaces to be provisioned through using the Course Hub. / Web Services / Early July 2016
Assist in the migration from Moodle to Canvas / Academic Technology and MIIS Digital Learning Commons / Start July 2016
MIIS classes begin / August 29, 2016
MCUG classes begin / September 12, 2016
Decommission Moodle / Academic Technology, MIIS Digital Learning Commons and ITS / June 2017

Recommendation:Implementation planning begins in March of 2016

Recommendation: Canvas provisioning happens through the Course Hub

Recommendation: Moodle is maintained for one year

Support

The Tier 1 support by Instructure was used during the pilot, many faculty and students noted that they had good experiences in their interactions. The service is available 24/7, so Instructure was able to respond to questions that came up at all hours. This immediate response will be important to support Middlebury students in various places around the world. Also, most faculty that participated in the pilot did not migrate their content from Moodle, noting that they took the opportunity to reimagine their classes. Including Instructure support would free our faculty and staff from “how-to” technical questions and enable them to have strategic conversations about the design of the course sites.

There is one version of Canvas, all institutions use the same software. Instructure relies on the institutions to test new releases to make sure all features work for their activities before the release is in production. Also, there have been some technical issues between Canvas and their integration with other services, some of them unavailable for a time. This environment requires oversight and a better understanding of what features of Canvas are being used and how they are used, so that updates and the addition of third-party services can be thoughtfully managed.

Recommendation: Tier 1 support by Instructure is included in the adoption