By Jackson Cooper, Staff Writer

Published in print Jan. 28, 2015

Two years ago, IPS surveyed the UNCG faculty for feedback regarding it’s current Learning Management System (LMS) Blackboard and its impact on their classes and communication with their students. The consensus was clear: the faculty wasn’t satisfied, and neither were the students. Planned downtime, a crowded display, various tabs you click to get to your assignment–all of these were identified as negative aspects of Blackboard. As a result, the Provost commissioned the Academic Technology Coordinating Committee to spend 18 months studying alternatives to Blackboard.

After months of data and research, the Committee proposed three choices; Keeping with Blackboard, switching to an unfortunately named program called Desire to Learn or a Cloud-based program called Canvas.

The Committee sprung into action setting up focus groups, recruiting faculty to pilot one of the three programs for a semester and sending out surveys. In the spring of 2014, it announced to the Provost that Canvas had the most positive feedback.

“Canvas essentially does everything Blackboard does, but more accessibly and with fewer clicks,” says Bob Hansen, Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and the Chair of the ATCC.

For any of us who have experienced the maze that is trying to find course grades on Blackboard, this “fewer clicks” statement comes like a message from the heavens.

Both Todd Sutton and Nicholas Young in the ITS department served on the ATCC, which endorsed the use of Canvas as UNCG’s official LMS.

“Canvas met the needs that Blackboard customers had,” said Sutton. “It had a familiar feel that customers were used to–a Cloud based program like Google Drive and Dropbox.”

As for the time frame, the entire campus will use Canvas by 2016. Young says that UNCG is ahead of schedule.

“When we were doing surveys and research, we expected that, by this time, 25 percent of the campus would be Canvas based. Now over 42 percent of the campus is Canvas based.”

But what about those who are still on Blackboard? Sutton explained it best. “It’s the simple fact of time. Some people do not have enough time to reformat their classes for Canvas. It is not that anyone is objecting to the program, it’s just finding the time that is hard.”

According to both Sutton and Young, the true heroes in this process are the ITCs. ITC, or Instructional Technology Consultants, are employed in each school of UNCG to assist faculty in helping format and shape their classes to the needs of Canvas and helping with its execution. Send them a thank you card if you have the opportunity.

Blackboard works for well in many courses, readily able to have quizzes, discussion boards and assignment uploads at your fingertips. But Canvas seems to have more.

Andre Lash, a lecturer in the School of Music, is thrilled about the change. Over email, he said, “I remember an instance when literally everyone in the class I was teaching expressed enormous relief when I decided to give a mid-term exam live in class rather than through Blackboard.”

He went on to praise Canvas for its ease of accessibility. “Accessing [Canvas] is much quicker and seems less cumbersome. Students receive all of my announcements immediately; there was occasionally a delay in Blackboard.”

All in all, this change is meant to be a positive one—an effort to keep up with the times. According to Young, UNCG is one of the last schools in the UNC school system to do a study on LMS systems. Once UNCG began using Canvas, other universities have asked for feedback on the program, prompting others to consider a switch in the next few years. Lash sums it up perfectly.

“We live in the 21st century, we are teaching in the 21st century, therefore we need to be using 21st century tools, not to keep up with the latest educational fad but rather to ensure that our habits of thinking and skills in communication are as contemporary as is compatible with critical thought and clarity of speech and writing.”