Canvas is Coming to Clark!
In April 2022, based on the community feedback, in-depth technical evaluation and a 320-point rubric, ITS determined that adopting Canvas as Clark’s new LMS is the appropriate path forward.
The Canvas platform is a modern, innovative, and well-established LMS that fulfills all the major themes identified by participating faculty, students, and staff as important to Clark, including:
- Strongly teaching and learning centered
- User-friendly; including modern aesthetics, organized interface, customizable experience, predictable to navigate, accessible, mobile friendly
- Flexible; easy for those who want the basics, but sophisticated for those with specific needs, and scalable for Clark’s future growth
- Strong support network for community members
- Cloud-hosted; secure and reliable; easy integration with existing tools
Click here to learn lots more about this exciting move to Canvas.
Evaluation and Selection Process
Why is Clark moving away from Moodle?
Clark University has been using Moodle as a Learning Management System (LMS) since 2008. An open-source application, hosted by ITS on campus, Moodle is used by approximately 90% of standard courses each semester.
A required upgrade to Moodle 4 in 2023 would present major interface changes, entail significant acclimatization by the community, require external services to complete in a timely manner, and force a move from self-hosted to cloud-hosted. With that on the horizon, combined with increasing comments from the community, the 2021/2022 academic year was an appropriate time to evaluate Moodle’s place on campus. ITS convened an advisory group – the LMS Evaluation Committee, and invited the Academic Technology Committee to help advise and guide the process.
How did the evaluation of Moodle work?
The evaluation process took place during Fall 2021, and encouraged all community members to share their feedback about Moodle and their specific needs from an LMS, via surveys, general and departmental focus groups, and one-on-one conversations. This evaluation of Moodle (and the spring evaluation of candidates) was promoted via the ITS newsletter, Moodle announcements, digital signage, and targeted outreach by ITS staff and committee members.
On conclusion of the feedback period, ITS identified some major themes in the needs for an LMS and a more detailed 320 item rubric. The evaluation of Moodle on these themes and rubric (Moodle scored 53% total, meeting 69% of “very important” criteria) indicated that Clark should evaluate if other market options could better support Clark’s current and future needs.
Click here to view the rubric used to evaluate Moodle and the candidate LMS
How did Clark choose Canvas?
ITS performed initial evaluations of the three major LMS systems on the market (Canvas by Instructure, Blackboard Ultra by Blackboard and D2L by Brightspace). After these explorations it was determined that Canvas and Blackboard were the two candidates that should be evaluated by the Clark community.
The candidate evaluation process took place in spring 2022 and included candidate demonstrations, open access to candidate systems for explorations and subsequent surveys. Additionally, ITS did significant evaluation of each candidate against the rubric with Canvas scoring 88%, meeting 91% of “very important” criteria, and Blackboard scoring 86%, with 88% of “very important” criteria.
Click here to view the rubric used to evaluate Moodle and the candidate LMS
In April 2022, based on the community feedback, in-depth technical evaluation, and evaluation of the rubric, ITS determined that adopting Canvas as Clark’s new LMS is the appropriate path forward. The Canvas platform supports Clark’s improvement for an LMS on all of the major themes:
- Strongly teaching and learning centered
- User-friendly; includes modern aesthetics, organized interface, customizable experience, predictable to navigate, accessible, mobile friendly
- Flexible; easy for those who want the basics, but sophisticated for those with specific needs, and scalable for Clark’s future growth
- Strong support network for community members
- Cloud-hosted; secure and reliable; easy integration with existing tools
The adoption of Canvas will allow our LMS to support institutional initiatives including:
- more innovative teaching and learning for academic excellence; easier for faculty to include engaging and collaborative technology
- enhanced technology-based campus experience for both curricular and non-curricular use
- higher standards of accessibility
- better support for students with minimal resources; Canvas is very mobile friendly
- the ability to support increased institutional momentum towards growth and outward engagement including grants, community-based outreach, online graduate programs, etc.
Who was involved in the evaluation and selection process?
ITS worked throughout the academic year to invite all community members to be a part of the evaluation and selection process. This was via surveys, general and departmental focus groups, and one-on-one conversations promoted via the ITS newsletter, Moodle announcements, digital signage, and targeted outreach by ITS staff, and other stakeholders.
Additionally ITS convened an advisory group – the LMS Evaluation Committee, and invited the Academic Technology Committee to help advise and guide the process.
Steering Committee
The following faculty, staff and students have been generous enough to serve as the LMS Evaluation Steering Committee through the end of Spring 2022.
- Kat Andler: Associate Teaching Professor, Becker School of Design and Technology at Clark
- Krithika Arunthuthiyar: Co-President Graduate Student Council
- Lisa DeMings: Director of Enterprise Applications
- Michael Krikonis: Academic Technologist
- Siu Ming Luie: Associate Dean, School of Professional Studies
- Jen Plante: Associate Dean of Academic Services
- Teresa Quinn: Entrepreneurship and Innovation Program Manager, School of Management
- Laurie Ross: Associate Dean & Director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning
- Sam Spearing: Treasurer of SPOC
Academic Technology Committee (AY21/22)
- Philip Bergmann: Chair & Associate Professor, Biology
- Joe Kalinowski: CIO and VP for Technology
- Hugh Manon: Associate Professor/Director, Screen Studies
- Ezra Cove: Professor of Practice, Becker School of Design and Technology
- Mark Davidson: Professor, Geography
- Betsy Huang: Associate Provost, and Dean of the College
- Laura Robinson: University Librarian
- Joanne Dolan: Director of Academic Technology and Client Support Services
Below, see more details of the evaluation and selection process.
As the next phase in evaluating candidates for Clark’s LMS, we’d like to invite members of the Clark community to experience Blackboard and Canvas first-hand. We know that seeing a polished presentation from a vendor is very different from learning and using a system. By having our volunteer faculty, staff and students logging into a test environment and viewing and interacting with the tools, we can learn more about a candidate’s suitability for Clark.
If you would like to experience Blackboard and/or Canvas first-hand, click here to register your interest (now closed). Once we receive your request we will email you within 5 business days with more information about how to log into the test environment.
Watch Candidate Demonstration Recordings
Based on the feedback gathered in Fall 2021, and on internal research done by ITS and supported by the LMS evaluation committee, Clark invited two Learning Management System providers to offer demonstrations to our campus community in March 2022. The recordings are linked below.
Blackboard Learn
Blackboard Learn is an LMS offered by the company Blackboard. Its current iteration is called Blackboard Learn Ultra and is usually cloud-hosted. Blackboard Learn (Ultra and previous iterations) have a 21% share of US and Canadian higher education institutions. Click here for more information on Blackboard Learn
- Student-focused demonstration
- Faculty/Staff-focused demonstration
Canvas
Canvas is an LMS offered by the company Instructure. It is usually cloud-hosted. It is the currently the market leader in the higher education market with a share of 34% of US and Canadian institutions. Click here for more information on Canvas
- Student-focused demonstration
- Click here to access the Canvas Student-focused recording (Clark credentials required)
- Faculty/Staff-focused demonstration
- Click here to access the Canvas Faculty/Staff-focused recording (Clark credentials required)
Share your Experience of Moodle
We want to know what you think about Moodle, and how it supports (or doesn’t support) your teaching, learning and work at Clark University. Whether you use Moodle every day, once or twice a semester, or even if you’ve made the decision not to use Moodle, your experience matters, and we’d love to hear more.
Survey
Click below to participate in a very quick survey about your experiences with Moodle. The survey has 6 questions and you can answer one, some, or all. This is the quickest and easiest way for your opinions to help Clark evaluate Moodle – whether you use it every day, once or twice a semester or even, never at all.
Focus Groups
We know that groups use Moodle in different ways. ITS is offering to come and talk to your group (faculty cohorts, departmental meetings, student organizations, etc.) about their use of Moodle and their hopes for an LMS in the future.
If you would like to organize an ITS representative to visit with your group and discuss Moodle, please contact Joanne Dolan at jodolan@clarku.edu
Individual
We know that some people prefer one-on-one conversations. If you have opinions about Moodle, and the future of an LMS on the Clark campus, and none of the other options work for you, we’re happy to chat individually – by phone, by Zoom or in person.
If you’d like to chat more, please contact Joanne Dolan at jodolan@clarku.edu
The following faculty, staff and students have been generous enough to serve as the LMS Evaluation Steering Committee through the end of Spring 2022.
- Kat Andler: Associate Teaching Professor, Becker School of Design and Technology at Clark
- Krithika Arunthuthiyar: Co-President Graduate Student Council
- Lisa DeMings: Director of Enterprise Applications
- Michael Krikonis: Academic Technologist
- Siu Ming Luie: Associate Dean, School of Professional Studies
- Jen Plante: Associate Dean of Academic Services
- Teresa Quinn: Entrepreneurship and Innovation Program Manager, School of Management
- Laurie Ross: Associate Dean & Director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning
- Sam Spearing: Treasurer of SPOC