1: Operational Issues

A) An understanding of the constraints and benefits of different technology

The Rollout of the Canvas VLE (School of Education at the University of Birmingham)

Over the summer of 2013, the University of Birmingham launched its new virtual learning environment, Canvas by Instructure. For the first year of its implementation Canvas would be available alongside the existing VLE, WebCT, to allow users some flexibility in when and how they transferred to the new system.

I made the decision to migrate from WebCT to Canvas immediately for the School of Education (my sphere of responsibility). This decision was a difficult one for a number of reasons:

The timescales for rollout of Canvas were very short; in fact the live version of Canvas was only available six weeks before the start of term.
The large amount of content, activity and assessment reliant on the VLE across the School, with several distance learning programmes completely dependant on the VLE for delivery of the programmes.
There was WebCT functionality (e.g selective release, learning modules, and student journals) that had become integral to programme delivery but that had no obvious Canvas equivalent.
There were a multitude of approaches to using the VLE across the School, rather than a one-size fits all approach, which added to the complexity of transferring to a new system.
I had concerns over the stability and functionality of online submission and marking tools in Canvas; at that time Canvas did not include a plug-in for the full Turnitin suite of tools, which we had been using through WebCT.

This meant the transfer would be a very large undertaking with substantial risk attached. However, after extensive testing of Canvas and a thorough comparison of the two systems, I made the decision to move the entirety of School content to Canvas for the academic year 2013/14 (i.e. as soon as possible), for the following reasons:

To align with overall College strategy; this would allow a unified approach, pooling of resources, and streamlining of training and support.
To avoid a number of ongoing WebCT issues, including downtime and compatibility issues with new versions of browsers and plug-ins.
To harness Canvas' flexibility, functionality and ease of use, which I anticipated would be warmly welcomed within the School..

The particular features of Canvas that I found most represented a fundamental improvement on WebCT were

Ease of use; Canvas has a much more modern, simple and intuitive interface than WebCT, for students and instructors alike.
Instructure’s agile development cycle that releases updates and bug fixes at least once a month.
Flexibility and openness; courses can be made public, direct links can be made to any part of a Canvas course etc.
The rich content editor’s integrated multimedia features to record video and audio within the VLE
Web 2.0 features such as connections to Facebook, Twitter and Google Docs.

In summary, I felt that Canvas was a big step forward and that it was better to embrace the new VLE as soon as possible rather than stick with an outdated legacy system for another year. Although there was of course some uncertainty about how smooth the Canvas rollout would be, and a likelihood of some teething problems, I felt it was preferable to deal with these teething problems head on as soon as possible rather than continue to deal with the ongoing problems caused by WebCT, effectively a legacy system.

Another option could have been to transfer just some content to Canvas, and support both systems together. While this would have given us a bit of a safety net and allowed us more time to transfer to Canvas, the resource implications of supporting two systems together were prohibitive. It would also have meant we had to deal with two sets of problems, and also sent out negative messages about our confidence in Canvas. Further, it would have required a whole new set of decisions about what programmes to transfer and why, and potentially caused much resentment from colleagues who felt the decision made for their programme was unfair.

On reflection the decision I made was absolutely the right one, as Canvas was very well received by staff and students alike. Teething problems were few and manageable, and though there were many adjustments to make in a short space of time I was able to obtain the buy-in of academic and administrative colleagues to make these adjustments and ensure a smooth rollout. This buy-in greatly helped by the goodwill generated by the obvious improvements offered by Canvas

I would have liked more time to implement the migration; the timescales were always going to be very tight from when we had access to Canvas, and there were further delays throughout the summer of 2013. However, I learned that where technology is crucial to the student experience, and where the reasons behind change are clearly stated and the positives emphasised, colleagues are likely to engage with me as a learning technologist and embrace new ways of working. When this happens a lot is possible in a short space of time.

This experience also strengthened my belief that, where a new piece of available technology is demonstrably better (i.e. more fit for purpose) than what is currently being used then, given certain caveats around support, stability and resources, it is better to move to the new technology sooner rather than later.

B) Technical knowledge and ability in the use of learning technology

I have over ten years experience in supporting the use of a virtual learning environment in an academic environment. The VLE I currently use is Blackboard (branded as Learning Central in Cardiff University) but, as mentioned previously, I also have substantial experience of Canvas by Instructure, and before that WebCT. This includes using a wide range of standard VLE tools in all three systems, including discussion boards, chat rooms, assessment (quiz) tools, assignment submission and marking tools, content delivery tools, file management, and all aspects of student and course management. From this knowledge I have authored a wealth of training and support materials over a number of years, for example an Online Induction Module in Canvas which I built and which, among other things, gives an introduction to the use of Canvas.

There are times when the available VLE does not provide all the functionality required and I utilise a range of other skills, for example in web design and content management. For example, for our distance learning courses in the School of Education we needed attractive and accessible web pages, so for this we created HTML and CSS templates. The screenshot below demonstrates one of the page templates I designed and built myself, using Adobe Dreamweaver and Fireworks software.

Video and audio are powerful and increasingly prominent tools in teaching and learning, and from a position of effectively zero knowledge in this area I have made a point, in my current and previous role, of increasing my skills to useful levels, while also being pragmatic about what can be achieved within the time and resources available. This YouTube Video, a record of a podcast project I was involved in, is the first video I produced myself, scripting, filming and then editing in Adobe Premiere Plus. While I hope that I have honed my camera skills and editing ability over the years, I have also learned that slick and sophisticated multimedia work is the product of not only lots of experience and practice but also, for each project, significant amounts of time and access to high quality equipment. I therefore try and analyse the requirements of each multimedia project carefully and use the appropriate tools, choosing from a range of software, including Audacity, Windows Movie Maker, Microsoft Photo Story and Adobe Presenter. The power of many of these tools is in their availability and ease of use, which allows me to use them not only for creating content, but to empower academic colleagues to create their own content.

In the same vein I have used and supported a range of software for screencasting, from the freely available CamStudio, to the more powerful Techsmith Camtasia, an example of which can be seen in this 'Introduction to the CPEL Programmes' screencast that I created for new starters. Using this kind of technology allows the creation of multimedia content on a much larger scale and with much less resource, and I also make use of Panopto lecture and personal capture software in my current role; the deployment of this is supported and hosted by the University and is a really powerful tool to help embed video and audio into our students' learning experience.

C) Supporting the deployment of learning technologies.

The Rollout of the Canvas VLE (School of Education at the University of Birmingham)

As previously mentioned the rollout of the Canvas VLE in the School of Education presented a number of challenges, including very short timescales, the need to change processes to fit the new tools, and, significantly, the range and diversity of programmes within the School. To anticipate these challenges and engage School senior management with the project, I spent a lot of time planning the migration to Canvas, for example producing a briefing paper for the School Executive Management Committee.

It was clear that a one-size-fits all approach would not be appropriate, given the diverse requirements of different parts of the School, and this was something that I had learned during a previous project to rollout online submission and marking across the School. With that in mind I adopted the same approach as to the previous project, namely dividing the rollout into a number of distinct yet related sub-projects that grouped together programmes with similar characteristics (and similar approaches to using the VLE).

We also produced templates to ensure the consistency and quality of Canvas 'courses' - I used an amended version of the College template for standard campus courses and created bespoke templates for other groups of courses. This gave us the following structures across four sub-projects:

Undergraduate - each module would have its own Canvas course, and use the 'Campus' Template.
PGT Campus - each module would have its own Canvas course, and use the 'Campus' Template.
DISN Distance Learning - each programme would have its own Canvas course, and use the 'Distance Learning' Template. The DISN Distance Learning sub-project plan provides an example of the planning process involved in this sub-project.
ITE Secondary - each subject (Maths, English etc) of the ITE Secondary Programme would have its own Canvas course, and use the 'ITE Secondary' Template

As well as the structure of provision on Canvas, the sub-projects differed in terms of training and support requirements for both students and administrative staff and each sub-project had it's own training plan.

Furthermore, while more standardized across the sub-projects, academic training and support needed to be as flexible, useful and timely as possible, to ensure all staff could access it when needed and in a range of different ways. With this in mind we ran 27 introductory training sessions at different times and spread across four months in order to cater for as many academic colleagues as possible at the stage of teaching preparation that would suit them.

I supplemented formal training with an appointment booking system for one-to-one support, and though this was not extensively taken up was nevertheless useful and well-received. It also helped in terms of managing expectations and also with organising team workload.

I also provided a number of online resources for staff, including:

College staff help site, which I designed, co-edited, and created much of the content for.
School Canvas Showcase site, which was an introduction to Canvas for School staff (available before the above support site) and which I designed and built.
DISN Regional Tutor Training site, which was an online training course for a specific subset of distance learning staff who didn't have access to face-to-face training. Again, I designed and built this resource with some input from colleagues.

Overall, our training and support programme (see attached 'Canvas-SoE-Training-Overview') was very well received and meant that confidence in Canvas (and in the support mechanisms) led to less issues and uncertainty than could be expected with a new system and, remarkably, less than previously experienced with the embedded WebCT VLE. Given the short timescales I think comprehensive training was essential to the success of the roll-out, and that the balance between formal and informal support mechanisms also worked very well; the appointment booking system in particularly helped us to include informal one-to-one training within the programme without being overwhelmed by ad-hoc requests.

This all helped make the School of Education Canvas Rollout a significant success. My main regret was that I didn't have more time to investigate the full range of Canvas functionality in advance and thus explore with academic colleagues some of the new possibilities afforded. This was due to processes and timescales beyond my control but may still have meant missed opportunities in some areas; the focus for most programmes needed to be on transferring (and adjusting) current practice to a new system rather than a wholesale rethink of what practice should be. Overall all however the important thing was to embed a VLE that worked and with minimum disruption; as it happened the functionality and flexibility of the new system helped enthuse colleagues sufficiently that, despite a lack of preparation time, the new system had a very positive impact and created an appetite for further innovation and enhancement.