1. Lisa Ames University of Mary Washington Mark Blosil Instructure Canvas
Designing from a
Good morning. Thank you for coming. I’m Lisa Ames, E-Learning Specialist and the LMS Administrator at the University of Mary Washington.
This is Mark Blosil, Regional Director from Instructure.
Our presentation today will introduce you to Canvas, the learning management system that UMW adopted last spring. I’ll talk about UMW’s LMS adoption process and show you through faculty examples why it was a good fit for the learning landscape at UMW.
Mark will demonstrate additional features in Canvas and explain Instructure’s goal, which is to disrupt the Learning Management System market by setting a new standard for education technology.
Lisa Ames
University of Mary Washington
Mark Blosil
Instructure Canvas

2. So first a little bit of information about UMW that you won’t find in our catalog.
We have three different campuses, all with different student populations and course delivery needs.

3. Fredericksburg Campus College of Arts and Sciences
Traditional
Undergraduate
Liberal Arts
4,000 students
Residential
Commuters
Our main campus is located in historic Fredericksburg,
It’s a traditional, undergraduate liberal arts college with a student population of approximately 4,000 - mostly residential, some commuting students.
Courses are delivered in a face-to-face format and may be “web-enhanced” linking off to external resources that support the teaching and learning.
LMS use by instructors is primarily for content distribution, quizzes and exams.
Courses
Face-to-face
Web-enhanced
LMS use
Content distribution
Quizzes, Exams

4. Stafford Campus College of Business College of Education
1,000 students
non-traditional
school/work/family
Graduate &
Professional Studies
Our Stafford campus serves the graduate and professional student population of approximately 1,000.
As “non-traditional” students with an average age in the mid-forties, they typically attend college part-time, work full-time and juggle family commitments.
Courses are delivered in blended and online formats.
The College of Business courses are developed in condensed, eight-week formats and therefore are group-centric. The primary LMS need is for mobility, group content creation and distribution; and virtual meeting spaces.
The College of Education courses encourage self-directed and exploratory learning and tend to be media-heavy.
Courses
blended
online
8 week
14 week
COB LMS need:
group-centric
mobile
virtual meeting spaces
COE LMS need:
self-directed
exploratory
media-heavy

5. Dahlgren Campus Education & Research
Host Institution
Naval Post Graduate School
GMU
VCU VT
ODU
Germanna CC
Rappahannock CC
Regional Partnerships
Businesses
Education
Military
Government Security
Our third campus, Dahlgren, opened this year serving as a host institution for regional partnerships in the business, education, government and military population.
Courses are delivered in distance education formats from four Virginia institutions (George Mason, Virginia Commonwealth, Virginia Tech, Old Dominion) and the Naval Post Graduate School with Germanna and Rappahannock Community Colleges soon to join.
Distance Education

6. LMS History Blackboard Web Course in a Box
UMW ‘s first foray into using a course management system was Web Course in a Box, followed by Blackboard.
Making a significant investment in infrastructure, we renewed our Blackboard contract year-after-year because it fit the need at the time, which was primarily content delivery.
In 2008, our servers were in need of upgrading and due to a variety of factors, the decision was made NOT to invest in the infrastructure but move to a hosted environment with Blackboard 8.
Unfortunately, the quality of the user experience declined, we experienced more down-time than expected and had difficulty with responsiveness from the vendor.
So in the Fall of 2010, with our Blackboard contract expiring in the summer, we knew the time was right to examine the current learning management system market and find a solution that would better suit the needs of the multi-dimensional environment at UMW.

7.
A committee of faculty, staff and students was formed to lead the project.
They began by conducting a needs analysis of the UMW community and issuing an (RFI) Request for Information from LMS vendors.
After narrowing the LMS selection from ten down to four, an RFP (Request for Proposal) was issued along with an invitation to the final four to demo the product to the UMW community.
The final four LMS products were Blackboard Learn, Desire2Learn, Moodle Rooms and Canvas.
You can access the entire adoption and implementation process at

8. Q: What did we want?
…just a few things….
A: A LMS that allows faculty to design, develop and deliver effective, high quality instruction while incorporating ALL the possibilities on our checklist.

9. Choosing the Next LMS Platform
Instructure awarded LMS contract
This is our LMS Adoption Timeline.
The planning process took 8 months.
We awarded the contract to Instructure Canvas in April 2011.
The implementation phase was fast-tracked to four short months.
Piloted in the summer with a small group of faculty and implemented it across the entire community Fall 2011.
Planning - 8 months
Implementation – 4 months

10. Canvas Mark: general overview of the product
*note the slides that have specific talking points

11. Canvas as a Communication Hub
“meaningful learning occurs in conversations both formal and informal”
Canvas: communication is an automated function of the LMS – Notifications feature showcase
Insert graphics of gmail, facebook, twitter, cell phone
Get faculty/student comments about Notification feature
Integretation of social media into formal living
“open education”
Skype, google docs, facebook, linkedin, twitter, delicious, diigo

12. Web conferencing

13. Open
Open education
Under a creative commons license, materials can be accessed from a growing number of institutions world wide
Stand alone wikis can transcend a course, contribute to knowledge and reducing the need to create online course materials from scratch

14. Cloud technology

15. Canvas as an Extension of the Web
“leveraging multimedia content”
Integrate multimedia from the Internet, “the greatest repository in the world”
Canvas courses can be made public so you can contribute your carefully-designed course to the huge repository of open educational resources already out there
Guests have read-only access
Rich content Editor in Canvas makes it easy to mix text, images, math equations, video all together in a single page
Pasting a You Tube link – faculty examples – once you paste the link, Canvas automatically embeds the video
Linking to PPTs or Word docs – faculty examples – Canvas talks to Scribd to create an embedded preview that you can browse without having to download it to your computer
Recording and embedding audio – faculty examples – video comments can go almost anywhere in a course- videos created in iMovie, GarageBand projects can be uploaded to specific discussions, announcments, or a page
Leave audio recordings inside of “SpeedGrader” or Conversations, our messaging tool.
(uses Kaltura in the background so can be accessed on any computing device)
HTML – link option
Accessibility – NFB Gold certification, allow limited customization of colors and schemes – W3C’s Web Accessibility Initiative Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WAIWCAG) 2.00 AA and Section 508 guidelines

17. Enabling Technologies
LTAs – low threshold applications

18. Digital Media Example of embedding YouTube in a Discussion
Student engagement
Enabling technology an interactive media elements increase the potential for interaction

19. Learning Activities
Problem solving – discussion forums, file exchange, virtual chat
Case studies – discussion forum
Guests’ – web conferencing, chat, discussion forums
Authentic projects- documents, artifacts
Tutorials - interactive and media-enhanced tutorials
Assessments

20. Canvas as a User-Centric Interface
“customized just for you”
User interface looks the same for everyone no matter your role, student, teacher, admin
6 main parts of Canvas:
Global Navigation menu across the top, which shows you all of the courses and groups you belong to, the assignments you need to turn in or grade, your grades for all classes, and your calendar for all classes
The Course Navigation on the left, links to different areas in the course
The Breadcrumb Navigation at the top of the Main Body of the page, which helps you to move in course hierarchy
The Sidebar on the right which gives you all links and butt0ns you need to get stuff done in the main body of the page
The Help Corner to the top right, where you can ask for support, check your inbox, or modify your profile
Greater emphasis on learning control of the interface, learner input and the ability for instructors to “plug n play” external resources
Mention learning styles – developing materials in multiple formats

21. organizer
Calendar
To do
Coming up

22. Canvas as a Course Curator
“import magic”
Pull in resources and assemble courses from other courses of your own, someone elses, another LMS system, ePac of quizzes from a textbook publisher or other packaged content from the web
Copy course material from one semester to another, select only the content you need and build from there

23. Groups Examples of faculty using Google Docs or Etherpad
Students setting up their own groups-
Engaging in dialogue or collaborative activities
Joint projects, collaborative research, discussion boards, peer reviews

24. Learning design
Creativity in teaching methods and learning technologies come together to create engaging online learning experiences

25. Examples of course content

26. Mobile
Digital textbooks

27. Learning Analytics By department By course By student E-portfolios
Instructors, administrators and students can learn about how students are learning and the factors that appear to be influencing their learning
Learning analtyics allow for the collection of data, hard evidence of “student performance” espceiallay online, demonstrate to accredidation agencies how and what students have learned
Identifying at’risk students
Identifying and collecting the data in ways that are useful to for decision-making
Peer and self assessment give some control back to the student

28. Assessment & Evaluation

29. E-Portfolios

30. Rubrics

31. Learning Outcomes

32. Canvas Community

33. Student Centered Pedagogy
Students construct their own knowledge
Student-centered

34. New Media Consortium

35. Interaction Student Content Instructor
Michael Moore in the American Journal of Distance Education, described three types of interaction necessary for quality distance learning courses and programs: learner to content, learner to learner, learner to teacher.
How does Canvas support student interaction with content?
Traditional methods: lectures, reading assignments, research assignments, practice activities, group work, projects, and guided discussions
Online strategies: Provide interactive media elements: include links to internal materials (handouts) and external materials (related Web sites)
How does Canvas support the student to student interaction?
Research clearly shows that students learn from each other in addition to learning from their instructor. Strategies to encourage the interaction: group work and team building activities.
“Cooperative learning” learning relationship includes positive interdependence, shared and individual accountability, and application of interpersonal skills
Collaborative exercises
Active learning (groupwork)
Passive learning
How does Canvas support the Student to Instructor ineraction?
Asynchronous discussion boards, synchronous conferences, office hours
Student to student – engaging in dialogue and collaborative activities
Student to instructor – research shows that interpersonal communication between faculty and students leads to student satisfaction – tutorials, virtual office hours, synchronous web conferencing, live chat or asynchronous through DBs, messaging “Conversations”
Student to content – go beyond passive absorption by acting on material – reflective writing, case studies

36. Student to Student

37. Student to Content
Interactive syllabus
Ppts
External web sites

38. Student to Instructor

39. Accessibility

40. Artistry

41. What does it mean? Increase in LMS Use Increase in LMS Use for 
Faculty satisfaction with teaching online
Increase in LMS Use 
Blackboard: 50% > Canvas: 96%
Increase in LMS Use for
Communication & Collaboration 
Blackboard: 55% > Canvas: 82%

42. Masterpieces signed by…
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