Canvas is the official learning management system (LMS) of the University of North Texas at Dallas. It is used for course activities and communication in online, hybrid, or traditional face-to-face courses and non-course activities such as clubs, organizations, programs, and departments.
The Learning Management System (LMS) industry is projected to produce 22.4 billion dollars in annual revenue by 2023. As can be expected, there are many organizations offering products in this high-stakes educational technology field.
All LMS platforms will share some common functionality and will also have additional functionality that can be programmed or purchased. Think of these as the "bells and whistles" or the "extras". Some LMS platforms consider a function to be part of a basic package while other LMS platforms may consider it to be an add-on to be purchased.
Some of the major LMS platforms currently in use in higher education in the United states are: Canvas (approximately 33% of market), Blackboard (approximately 28% of market), Moodle (approximately 17% of market), and D2L Brightspace (approximately 11% of market). The remaining 11% of the market is comprised of other LMS platforms such as Sakai, Schoology, and numerous others.
Multiple factors are used by institutions when selecting an LMS including: functionality, ease of use by faculty and students, access to training resources, uptime, support, pricing, and others.
Canvas is the official learning management system (LMS) of the University of North Texas at Dallas and is used as the service for the delivery of online and hybrid courses. Canvas also provides numerous benefits for face-to-face classes.
Instructors of face-to-face classes can utilize Canvas a central location for their digital resources. An instructor can also use the Assignments Tool in Canvas to collect assignments for their course and utilize the Canvas gradebook.
Canvas can also be used as a central location for communication both to and from the instructor. Announcements and reminders can be easily posted with notifications going out to students on their electronic devices.
As disruptions to the traditional face-to-face learning environment have emerged, having a system to transition to quickly that students are already familiar with helps to ensure a smooth transition. If you are already using Canvas in your face-to-face course for presentation of resources, then your students are already familiar with how you manage your course in Canvas and a transition to remove delivery should be much smoother.
Exams can be created in Canvas with numerous options. The exams can be provided to students as a traditional exam or as a guided review with feedback.
Using a tool like Respondus Campus-Wide allows for publisher-created exams to be easily deployed in Canvas. This can include large exams, smaller assessments, and pre-reading/post-reading assessments.
For more technologically-comfortable faculty, if all presentations are recorded and digital materials posted, an entire class session could be posted online for students to access at any time. This can help students who either missed class for various reasons or students who need a "re-teach" of the material one more time.
To get started, you will need the following:
Canvas is a Learning Management System (LMS) that allows you, as the teacher, go direct and managed the learning of students. Students also have the opportunity to leverage many of the tools inside of Canvas to work collaboratively with their peers.
Information, materials, and resources can be organized in any manner of ways in Canvas to suite the various needs of instructors. Canvas Modules allows for instructors to have the flexibility needed to create the course they need and the consistency of design and layout students need to be successful.
Rubrics provide students with a tangible matrix of expectations for the scoring of an assignment. Canvas Rubrics allow for instructors to be able to assign points in a rubric with the click of a mouse and return them to the students easily. This streamlines the grading time of the instructor and assists the students in seeing where points were earned and lost to ensure their success.
Auto-graded assessments are a powerful tool for assessing knowledge, but they are also a powerful teaching tool. Canvas Quizzes can be used as both a traditional single-attempt exam delivery tool or as a multi-attempt student-directed self-assessment for reviews, pre-tests, or other auto-feedback learning system.
Canvas Quizzes can be further secured by use of Respondus Lockdown Browser and Respondus Monitor.
While it is true that all course materials and resources are in a course on "Day 1", students do not have to be given access to all of the course materials and resources on "Day 1". Canvas Requirements and Prerequisites along with Canvas Modules allows for the instructor to control the flow of students through a course.
The University of North Texas at Dallas Office of Distance Learning & Instructional Technology has several resource materials on-hand for Canvas. Some of these resources are printable and some are video-based.