HMC has migrated from Sakai to Canvas. We have compiled a list of frequently asked questions (FAQs) that will help you find answers about the Canvas transition.
Sakai is no longer accessible to general users. However, Sakai administrators can access the Sakai Archive, which contains all data stored in Sakai up to June 30, 2025. This archive will remain available until July 1, 2026.
When we originally moved to Sakai in 2006, the 5Cs were on several different LMS systems. HMC was on Sakai, CMC was on WebCT, and Pomona was on Moodle. When the Academic Deans made the decision to choose Sakai, they said that making sure that all of the colleges were on one platform was very important to them. They did not want students to have to learn multiple LMS platforms. With the other Claremont Colleges already on Canvas, we don’t want students to have to learn both Sakai and Canvas.
Sakai has a very small market share (54 of 3550 institutions use it). One consequence of this is that vendors are a lot less familiar with Sakai when it comes to integrating their tools. We had issues with both Gradescope and Piazza integrations with our instance of Sakai.
Canvas will be administered by the Computing and Information Services team at HMC.
All HMC faculty are using Canvas in Fall 2025.
There are different user roles in Canvas: Student, Teacher, Teaching Assistant, Designer, Observer, Auditor, Tutor, Faculty Observer, and Librarian. Here is a detailed description of the Canvas roles at HMC.
Third-party tools are integrated with Canvas through the Learning Tool Interoperability (LTI) standard. HMC Canvas users can continue using tools like Gradescope, Piazza and Zoom.
We had worked with faculty and staff to copy content from Sakai Project Sites to Canvas or to move it to Google Drive. If you have any questions about your Sakai project site transition, please contact the ARCS team.