July 2 Announcement
The following is an email send to all Biola faculty on July 2, 2013
Subject: EXCITING NEWS: Biola is adopting the Canvas Learning Management System!
Date: Tue, Jul 2, 2013 at 3:19 PM
Over the next 12 months, Biola University is transitioning to Canvas Learning Management System (LMS) and away from Blackboard. Biola has been actively researching various options to meet the growing needs of the university, and during Interterm and Spring 2013 terms faculty from Talbot, the School of Education, and Crowell School of Business taught classes using Canvas. Faculty and students provided extremely favorable feedback with their Canvas experience. They commented that Canvas is easy to use, intuitive, more modern, visually appealing, more user friendly, and better organized. The university’s Accreditation Liaison Officer, library representatives, faculty from the School of Arts and Sciences and Apologetics, and the Deans have also been consulted and provided input regarding the Canvas system.
Features
- Canvas is not only easier to use, it includes premium features such as:
- Built-in video conferencing
- Mobile accessibility
- e-Portfolios
- Learning outcomes reporting
- Course analytics
Students will like the calendar which lists all their assignments by due date, color-coded for each of their classes on Canvas. Faculty will appreciate that if the date of an assignment is changed in one place, it automatically gets changed throughout the class content. In addition, the grade book is very simple to use, and assignment settings can easily be selected so that students can directly upload a file without having to go to a different place in the LMS to do so. Rubrics can easily be added for any assignment and display onscreen when doing grading. You can include written, audio, or visual comments for assignments as well. Dave Bourgeois, who participated in the recent pilot, said that using Canvas cuts in half the time to grade papers and is the best LMS he’s ever used (and he’s used Blackboard, Moodle, OpenClass and others). Unbelievably, with all these added features, Canvas is also less expensive than our current system.
Migration & Training
The Distance Learning team and IT staff will oversee the migration from Blackboard to Canvas. During the 2013-2014 academic year several thousand classes will be transitioned from Blackboard to Canvas. Full implementation of Canvas will take place by summer 2014 after which time Blackboard will no longer be available. There will be multiple opportunities for faculty and staff training during the next 12 months, and details of training options will follow shortly.
Ron Hannaford, Ph.D.
Director of Distance Learning
Patricia Pike, Ph.D.
Vice Provost of Academic Administration