Westmont College
Academic Technology Faculty Pilot Project
LMS Pilot Project - Canvas by Instructure
GOAL: Find an LMS product that is an agile and mobile enabled best practices fit for Westmont college faculty and students.
PROJECT RESEARCH QUESTION: What action can I take to discover the impact of a mobile enabled LMS on academic collaboration between faculty and students?
PURPOSE: The purpose of this action research project is to discover the impact of an agile and mobile enabled learning management system (LMS) on academic collaboration between faculty and students in a group of college courses.
SPECIFIC RESEARCH QUESTION: If I set up a Canvas LMS account for a group of faculty for use with their classes, how would this impact academic collaboration between these faculty and their students?
ACTION: Nine professors and their students were set up with Canvas LMS for their Fall courses. Training sessions for the professors were set up with the reps from the Canvas offices. In addition, a discussion thread was set up for these professors to discuss the questions that came up and to work together to share solutions.
The departments involved in this pilot project were Psychology, English, Physics, Computer Science, Math and Philosophy. The participants in this pilot project had either expressed an interest in this specific product or had approached the OAT with an interest in academic innovation.
EVALUATION: Data from two online surveys (one from faculty and one from students) were collected, compared and analyzed. In addition, the same users were polled about their experience with the use of the current LMS, Eureka (Moodle).
Read Faculty Pilot Project feedback.
The students in this research were polled at the beginning of the semester after they had used this tool for five weeks. Read the poll responses. Initial feedback from students was positive. Faculty involved in this research project were also asked to give their initial feedback on this tool. Read the poll responses.
The students in this research were polled at the end of this semester to contrast and compare their use of this academic technology with their initial responses. Read the poll responses.
The students in this research were polled at the end of this semester to contrast and compare their use of this academic technology with their initial responses. Read the poll responses.
Two basic observations from the comparison of the students' initial response to Canvas and their end of semester view are that, 1. a greater number of users found the tool easy to navigate and 2. a greater number of users found this to be a helpful tool for their learning in these courses.
The polling of the current LMS (Moodle) users (view poll results - faculty and students) showed a common theme of interest in finding a better solution for an LMS platform. The table below shows the faculty response to one of the questions. These responses were out of a total of 97 full time faculty. 42.5% of responding faculty indicated that a change in LMS would be welcome.
The polling of the current LMS (Moodle) users (view poll results - faculty and students) showed a common theme of interest in finding a better solution for an LMS platform. The table below shows the faculty response to one of the questions. These responses were out of a total of 97 full time faculty. 42.5% of responding faculty indicated that a change in LMS would be welcome.
Student responses to this poll were out of a total 1200 students. The table below shows their response to one of the poll questions. Student responses show a disconnect with the current LMS tool with the combined interest in change (13.51%) with those who do not even use the LMS (26.49%).
PROJECT REVIEW: Canvas by Instructure offers a web interface as well as mobile app for use on phones or tablets. Pricing is $10,000 for a semester with up to 500 users for a pilot project. For a full roll out to our campus the cost would be $34,000 per year ($28/student) plus a $8,000 one time set up. The monies paid in pilot term fees can be applied toward the initial yearly fee.
Users in this pilot project have found this academic tool to be easy to navigate with more useful features than the current Moodle product being used. A main issue that users report with Eureka (Moodle) is that the grade book feature is difficult to use and most just resort to another product to do their course grading. In Canvas, the grade book feature was found to be superior in comparison to Eureka (Moodle) and easy to use.
Canvas has an excellent support/help line that enables multiple users with their specific concerns to be addressed and mitigated in a timely manner. Eureka/Moodle does not currently have this same level of support. While Eureka/Moodle is open source and basically "free" to use, additional support needed to run this effectively would need to be added at additional cost.
Users in this pilot project have found this academic tool to be easy to navigate with more useful features than the current Moodle product being used. A main issue that users report with Eureka (Moodle) is that the grade book feature is difficult to use and most just resort to another product to do their course grading. In Canvas, the grade book feature was found to be superior in comparison to Eureka (Moodle) and easy to use.
Canvas has an excellent support/help line that enables multiple users with their specific concerns to be addressed and mitigated in a timely manner. Eureka/Moodle does not currently have this same level of support. While Eureka/Moodle is open source and basically "free" to use, additional support needed to run this effectively would need to be added at additional cost.