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Thank you for coming.
And I'm actually in this role today
because I'm serving as a proxy for Bob Hansen, who
is the chair of the ATCC, or Academic and Technology
Computing Committee here on campus.
He planned to be out of town today, fortuitously.
Anyway, I'm going to talk for about five minutes,
show you several slides for those of you
who may be either unaware or only tangentially aware
of the process that we are working with currently.
I'm going to show you a short video.
And then we're going to have several panelists come up here
to talk a little bit about their experience
with the current pilot.
But anyway, so as you can see and, as Pattie suggested,
we are undergoing an LMS or Learning Management System
examination at present.
All of us, of course, are intimately
aware of Blackboard, which is the current LMS.
We've apparently had it here at UNCG for 10 years,
somebody had to remind me of that.
Although many people, I understand, have used
it for longer at other institutions.
There was actually a survey that I also had to be reminded of,
even though I had participated in it, about a year ago.
Where we were asked to give feedback about our experience
with Blackboard.
And for the most part, it was fairly negative.
Or maybe I should say very negative.
Some of the comments made by faculty
were things like Blackboard is very slow,
it requires a lot of clicking to get things done.
Several people described it as bloated, outmoded.
The downtime that we are so fond of at the end of semesters
was described by people as stressful and truly
inconvenient.
The documentation, in many cases,
was not particularly good.
And it was difficult to use in online format.
So there was a lot of concern about the use of Blackboard
here on campus.
And the other thing that was going on simultaneously
is that there weren't a lot of choices
when we adopted Blackboard 10 years ago.
But there are many choices now.
And so the ATCC and some other groups on campus
were asked to look at, is Blackboard still
the best product for us?
Are there better products?
And should we consider making a change?
So for about the last year, there's been a lot of activity.
In this very room, we had a number
of vendors come and present to us on a range of I
think about six different products that are out there.
A lot of faculty have chimed in both regarding their experience
at other institutions as well as resulting from the vendor
visits and so on and so forth.
And so as a result of a lot of this discussion,
we arrive at today.
We whittled the field down to three choices
that I'm going to show you in just a moment.
And that we're going to be talking about this afternoon.
And there have been discussion groups, there have been surveys
and on and on.
And so we arrive at today with three different systems
that are currently being examined.
Blackboard, of course, is being examined by a lot of us
on a daily basis.
But two new products are being examined
by smaller groups of faculty.
One called Canvas and another called Desire2Learn,
which many of you may have heard referred to as D2L.
I heard it referred to earlier this afternoon at another forum
that I was in as R2D2, and a number of other things.
But D2L is really the acronym.
So just to give you some sense of what is going on,
D2L is being used in 23 courses across the university in most
of the units.
It's being used by 14 instructors
with some 300 students involved.
Canvas is being used more extensively by 39 courses, 33
different instructors and about 1,000 different students.
There are currently ongoing and there
will be additional opportunities to give feedback.
And hopefully we'll get some of that feedback
and some questions from you all today.
As I said, we're going to have a panel up here in a little bit.
We of course are going to hear from the students
and are hearing from the students
how they feel about-- oops.
It's a Mac, I don't know Macs.
Uhm--
You're good, keep going.
Am I going the right-- yeah.
Good job, there you go.
Ah, phew.
Anyway.
So there will be an opportunity for you all and our colleagues
across campus to continue to give us
feedback about whether we should continue to use Blackboard
or whether we want to consider moving to a different platform.
Fortunately I'm not going to subject you
to 70 minutes of videotape.
But if you want to subject yourself to that
there is a website, lms.uncg.edu,
where you can see testimonials from our colleagues-- some
of whom are going to talk in a much briefer fashion
this afternoon-- where you can see videos.
But I want to take about five minutes
to show you some snippets of some feedback that
has been gathered from our colleagues.
So again, these were very brief snippets
from 70 minutes of tape.
And if you want to watch the entire interviews with each
of these individuals, I would invite
you to go to that website, lms.uncg.edu.
You might have to hit the arrow at the bottom,
or it might be stuck in [INAUDIBLE].
In case you don't have time to look at 70 minutes of video,
we do have a number of folks here today who I am initially
going to ask some specific questions of.
And then we'll open the floor for your questions.
So if I could have these folks join me up here in front.
And you've seen several of them already.
Actually I think you may have seen all of them, pretty much.
And while you're getting settled,
I really want to thank you all for taking time out
of very busy schedules this afternoon to come and add
to the discussion of this very important topic.
I have basically four questions that I'm going to ask you all.
I think they were delivered to you this morning so that you
could think about them, if you had the opportunity.
And we'll probably start out a little bit-- you know,
starting at this end and going down the table with you
all adding anything new or different that you might have.
I suspect that as we move through the questions,
hopefully we'll get a little less regimented.
But we'll kind of see how it goes, so.
There's a wireless mic up there, so just share your [INAUDIBLE].
So you all can just pass it back and forth, yeah.
Or talk loudly, if you're like me.
Well, you're right on the mic, though.
Thank you.
OK.
So if you would say who you are, your names are up there
but not everybody may know who you are.
If you would say who you are and which LMS you've been testing.
And basically what are some of the features you've used,
and what's been your basic experience with it?
OK.
I'm James Benshoff from Counseling
and Educational Development.
And I'm using Canvas this semester.
I've been using Blackboard for I guess
the ten years it's been here.
It seems like for forever.
And I was excited to try something different.
The first thing I'd say about it is the user friendliness of it,
that I was a little bit wondering
why I had bothered to volunteer for this over the holidays,
when I was getting ready to get ready for spring.
And it's like great, I've made my life harder
by agreeing to do this.
But the reason why is I like trying new things.
And so what I found was that immediately everything
was dumped into Canvas the same way it would be dumped
into Blackboard from one semester
to another, same course.
And I found that I was up and running and in 10 minutes,
basically.
Starting to move things around, starting
to edit materials, delete things,
update things, that sort of thing.
So my initial impression was very favorable
because I didn't have to struggle
to do the things I wanted to do.
And I'm the kind of person that never
looks at the manual, does not ask for help.
Unless I really get stuck, I like to get in there
and start working.
And then get help with it as I need it.
I've needed very little help with Blackboard-- oh,
I mean, sorry, with Canvas this semester.
Student response has been very good.
But my students, I'm working with a post-masters certificate
course.
And so they don't necessarily have
Blackboard to compare it to.
It was all new to them.
But they had less problems with it
than they typically have with Blackboard.
I forgot to ask this part, you were teaching face to face,
or online?
All online.
OK.
Yeah, so if you would also as we go down the line,
Dan and so on, if you would also say
is it face to face, online, if it's
relevant synchronous, asynchronous.
I interrupted you.
Anything else, James?
No, I think that's good for now.
OK.
Well, I'm Dan Perlman and I'm in Human Development and Family
Studies.
I teach a fourth year face to face
course that is writing intensive.
It's a course in which students have
a number of small assignments to do
on a more or less weekly basis.
They work in groups.
And so those are all kinds of things that I have them doing.
So in terms of the features of this program I'm using,
D2L, and in terms of the features of it,
when you go to D2L there's what's called a content system.
It's basically a table of contents.
And I do organize it week by week.
I find that a very effective thing.
One of the things that I really like about D2L
is when you come into D2L the default set up
is you see a calendar.
So students are immediately told when
they enter the program what's due at a particular period
of time.
I use the assessment system, I use quizzes, I use a drop box,
I use surveys.
Those have all worked quite well for me.
It's pretty easy for me in D2L, easier
than I remember it being in Blackboard,
to give students emails from the grading system.
And that's something that I like.
One of the things about D2L is that they
talk about how you can do the same sorts of basic things
from different positions in the program.
So once you learn how to do something in one place,
it's kind of like you've learned it
for more or less the entire program.
And that seems to be good.
There's just something about the feel of it
that seems to appeal to me.
Another thing, a little bit like James has talked about,
is that my students have adapted to it very well.
And one of the things that I did is
that I looked through a number of universities
that have tried to make decisions
like we're facing at this particular moment.
And I looked at an evaluation, I believe it was by South Dakota.
And they evaluated D2L.
And one of the things that they found
was that student response to it was really quite positive.
So those are all things that I would say are positive.
I would say that the D2L telephone help
system has been very good.
Other people have commented favorably
about D2L's tutorials, they do have videos.
And for some reason or another, I think it's my fault perhaps,
but for some reason or other I haven't gotten into their help
system online as well as I might have.
But it's there.
Thanks, Dan.
Dan answered all the questions I have, by the way.
Way to go, James.
Kathryn?
I'm Kathryn Aldridge.
I'm also in HDFS, but I'm in BK.
So I'm with the little people, and he gets them
when they grow up.
And I stuck with Blackboard.
And I want to talk about the features in Blackboard
that I find to be helpful and beneficial in my role.
Which is alignment of courses so that students
that are in distance ed programs versus main campus
programs versus synchronous classes
get the same assignments, the same opportunities,
everything is exactly the same.
What we didn't want, because I am the director of one
of the online degree completion programs,
and what we didn't want was students in face
to face classes having certain assignments and then
the students in online classes not having
the exact same assignment because we couldn't figure out
a way to do it.
And so that's sort of where I have fallen on this.
And I use probably-- I don't know,
Jane and Pam could tell you-- 90%, 95% of the features.
Because I reached a level of determination
that was kind of annoying.
And so I have been able to let my asynchronous students
participate in book club.
I have been able to set up virtual classrooms
and things of that nature.
I've been able to have them do reflective journals and blogs.
And I have been able to give Pam sleep at night by not violating
copyright rules with movies and things
that I had been showing in class that I am now showing online.
And I'm not wearing an orange outfit with little jellies.
For that I used Swank Digital Campus, and embedded lesson
plans into documentaries and movies and things
that I've shown the class.
And he was talking about evaluation.
You know, I use the system to grade
and to give feedback all in one step.
I email through it all the time.
I can't think of any other things
that they've discussed that I need to parallel.
But in a nutshell, I have a great deal
of success with Blackboard.
And I teach face to face, online asynchronously
and online synchronously.
And I frequently teach multiple sections of one course.
The one they've got me featured here
for I teach asynchronously and face to face.
And then I have another one that I teach face to face
and synchronously on Collaborate.
And then I have a third one where there's an internship
and we even manage that with live observations and things
of that nature.
So I kind of-- I cast a wide net.
Thanks.
Oh, you have your own.
He's got his own.
My name is Matt Libera.
I'm the ITC for the School of Music, Theatre, and Dance.
And my role in this, I actually also teach courses
as part of my job.
I'm teaching two first year courses that are essentially
computer skills courses.
I, for some reason unbeknownst to me at this moment,
chose to do one of my courses in Canvas
and the other one in Desire2Learn as well as I'm
currently taking a course in Blackboard.
And part of my daily duties are supporting faculty,
so support of faculty using Blackboard.
And I'm also kind of a lead for the other faculty in Music,
Theatre, and Dance who are piloting.
So as my esteemed colleague Wade said at a recent meeting,
I am my own control group.
So I'll tell you my experience with this,
it's been kind of exhausting.
But it's been good, because I feel
like I've gotten a pretty good handle on the general feel
for all of the different LMSes that we're piloting.
And as a pseudo-software developer, web developer kind
of person, there's been a few things from my perspective
that I've noticed off the bat.
And I think you heard me say in so many words in this video
that we just watched that I feel like Blackboard has gotten
to the point where yeah, it offers a lot of features.
But it's a little bit-- it's gotten a little bit too
big for its britches, I guess, to speak metaphorically.
So while it does a lot of things,
there's a lot of disjointedness in different parts
of the application.
And it's just gotten to be a little bit slow.
And they really haven't taken the time
to do what they really need to do
with it, which is to tear it down.
And just kind of start back with a more solid foundation
that's more suited to the web experience
these days, with mobile especially.
Desire2Learn and Canvas both offer an improvement
on that model, I think, in terms of their-- just
the way that they've kind of streamlined themselves.
If I had to rank them in terms of how well streamlined they
are in terms of speed, in terms of clickability,
I think Canvas is far and away the most streamlined,
most future web friendly, mobile friendly, followed
by Desire2Learn.
And then Blackboard bringing up the back of that train.
So I'll talk a little bit about what I do in my courses.
So my course is a face to face course.
Again, it's basically a computer skills course.
I do things a little bit differently
than I think a lot of folks do.
So what I'll do is I teach students very specific computer
applications that have to do with music.
So I get first year students coming into my course,
and I teach them how to use let's
say Microsoft Word to make a concert program,
how to use music notation software.
I teach them how to do basic audio and video editing, skills
they need not only for their careers
but for their next few years of study at UNCG.
So what I've found is more effective
in my courses is to do kind of almost a hybrid or online style
delivery in this face to face setting.
So I spend time and record videos,
record screencasts for my students.
On OK, here's how to do task x and
y on this particular application.
And then I deliver them modularly.
So the content organization in Canvas and D2L
is very conducive to this delivery model.
So I sit here and put all my stuff in my topic.
I say, OK, I'm going to organize my content
by program and by specific skill.
So Microsoft Word, here's how to do indentation and spacing.
And I will release this material all together on one date.
And say hey, it's all due on a date in the future, usually
a few weeks to a month ahead of time.
And students progress through it sequentially,
so they can't move on until they have
completed the previous task.
So both Canvas and Desire2Learn handle this beautifully
in terms of saying OK, the students have
to have controlled access.
You can't proceed to step two until you've finished step one.
And they both handle the kind of video embedding and online file
submission that I need for my course.
So at a very basic level, I'd say those two systems are more
suited to the particular delivery
that I'm utilizing in my courses right now.
Is anything else that--
That'll do it for now.
We've got more questions, so--
That's what I thought, so.
Let's hear from Wade.
Hi, I'm Wade Maki, and I'm coming off
of a 15 year abusive relationship with Blackboard.
But really, Blackboard, I've been using it a long time.
It does what I need it to do.
I most recently used it to teach my fully online winter
session course.
It works, I'm familiar with it.
It's kind of hard to learn, but once you learn it, there it is.
I've also this semester been using
Canvas for my face to face class.
And as it turns out, my courses were too complicated
to simply copy into the system.
It broke everything.
So I've been having to rebuild them from scratch.
And I will say Canvas makes it very easy to rebuild things
from scratch.
So I could really use either system.
I haven't had a problem with it.
I've done quizzes, I've had group assignments,
individual assignments, writing assignments through Canvas.
I've created and posted content and videos.
Everything I need to do at a basic level
has been done easily and conveniently.
And the learning curve is not as deep as Blackboard,
even though with Blackboard I don't even
have to think about it.
I know how to do it.
Canvas, I had to do a little thinking.
Student response so far has been great,
because it's been nothing.
And what that means, of course, is that they're not confused,
they're not lost.
It's working for them.
They've managed to take quizzes, find content
in a very convenient way.
So I have not had a problem.
Where I'm at is I could use either system.
But I'm a little more adaptable, I
think, than some of the other faculty, maybe.
Thank you.
Scott?
Yes, I'm Scott Howerton from the School of Education, Teacher
Ed.
And I used Blackboard this semester,
and I used Desire2Learn.
My courses are a little different
in that they are one hour courses,
and it's strictly a module.
So I've been using Blackboard.
And like Wade, I understand how to use it.
And I'm pretty good at it.
And also tried Desire2Learn for the other module.
The one thing that you don't get a lot of data back from
is that the module is already created.
It basically runs on its own.
So the students just need to be able to access the module.
It's how we developed the assignments
through either Desire2Learn or Blackboard
that makes a difference.
And from both courses, Desire2Learn
it's in my opinion and the students' opinion pretty
similar to Blackboard as far as accessing
information and posting work.
But it's a little more intuitive on the Desire2Learn side,
less clicks, easier to access and download things.
As far as setting up the modules for both management systems--
like I said, I've been doing Blackboard
for a while, first time for Desire2Learn.
And it was pretty intuitive on my side
as far as dragging and dropping and clicking,
and things like that.
Whereas there's a lot of clicks and you
really need to know the system with Blackboard.
I feel pretty confident in both grade books.
But like I said, it was pretty easy to pick up
the grade book in Desire2Learn.
What I really liked the most about Desire2Learn from my end
was students used the discussion board
quite a lot with these one hour modules.
And it's easy to access all of their work just with one click.
Rather than with Blackboard, you used
to have to go through the performance dashboard
to see their progress and things like that.
Whereas if you have your students posting a lot
and discussing, whether it's in groups or whatever,
it's really easy to access all of the things
that they're posting.
With these one hour modules, sometimes they're
posting six to seven times a week
because the course goes so quickly.
And it's easy to lose what they've
posted because the thread has become so long.
But that's basically it.
From my perspective, not a huge difference in the two.
Desire2Learn is more intuitive and it's quicker,
but I can use both of them.
Thanks.
And Ian.
Hi, I'm Ian Beatty from Physics and Astronomy.
And remember those old ads, five out of six dentists
recommend sugar-free gum?
Probably six out of seven faculty
recommend leaving Blackboard.
I would be the seventh.
I'm a physics education researcher by specialty,
and I tend to push the envelope in terms of unorthodox teaching
approaches and grading schemes and things like that.
And I hate blackboard.
I really hate Blackboard.
But it does what I need.
I was very excited about Canvas, it looked very simple.
And way back in the sandbox back in November, I think,
I discovered it just didn't do what I needed it to do.
It wasn't ready for prime time yet.
There were a lot of assumptions built in,
like grades will be percentage-based,
and it will be a flat average of all the grades.
Not a lot of room for nuance or complication.
So I agreed to pilot Desire2Learn,
which seemed a lot more flexible.
And I started creating my course in January.
And I gave up.
It was harder, not easier, than Blackboard
to set up my course, and very counterintuitive,
and with much frustration in trying to figure out
how to do what I needed to do.
And disbelief that it took that many clicks
to do what I wanted.
So I'm stuck with Blackboard.
The place that makes the biggest difference
is the grade book, as far as I can find.
There are many assumptions about how we should be grading,
what constitutes a grade, how do you combine grades.
Some systems make more assumptions than others
in order to make things simple.
I make heavy use of Blackboard's ability
to create multiple categories of grade, multiple views
with different kinds of grades showing, to aggregate grades
across units or kinds of assignment
and then combine those in various ways [INAUDIBLE].
Neither of the two systems have that level of sophistication.
I'm hoping they will someday.
Great, thank you.
Rather than going down the line for this next question--
because some of you have mentioned
aspects of these things anyway.
And in the interest of time so that we
have some time for the audience out there
to ask their questions, I'm going
to ask that if, when I give you this question, if someone has
something different than we've already heard please share it.
So that we can move on.
So the second question is what are
the advantages and or challenges that you
see if we were to remain with Blackboard.
And I think we've just heard much of those from Ian
about the advantages.
So do any of the others of you have other comments that you'd
like to share about what if we stayed with Blackboard?
If we stay with Blackboard, I don't really
have a direct concern.
Except that we may be missing out
on something that might be better,
but we can always adopt it later.
What I do know, if we stay with Blackboard
we avoid the mess of having to move everything over.
And from my experience, and not everybody had it,
my courses were a little more complicated.
And they would not copy over one to one.
I don't know if that's such a huge downside to staying other
than perhaps not jumping on the next big thing.
James, you were going to say something too, I think.
I was just going to say that actually, I
agree with what Wade said.
And my experience in Canvas, the need
that I have that's more glitzy, to use
Ian's word from the video, is the ability
to do synchronous meetings online.
And that's how my class is built with that, and then
the usual asynchronous discussion boards
and those kinds of things.
And what I found was that conferences,
which is what Canvas has for online meetings and that sort
of thing worked OK.
And I used it for maybe three class meetings.
By that time they had integrated--
Blackboard Collaborate is now integrated into Canvas.
And I was able to go right back to the more familiar
environment that could do more things.
So that to me was sort of having the best of both worlds.
Great.
Dan, you were going to add something?
For me one of the big things is that whenever
people have to go through change,
this is a big university.
And I'm sure that there are going
to be faculty who just feel more comfortable with where
they are.
They're going to feel that they've
got to learn a lot of new stuff.
And there's going to be some resistance,
it's going to take a little more demand on faculty.
So this is not to say that I'm a big strong advocate of staying
with Blackboard.
But I feel that in order to justify moving,
we really need to say we're getting something more.
Because there's a lot of faculty time, et cetera,
that will be involved in making this change.
Great.
Anyone else?
Real quick, just talking about from my perspective
as both a teacher and a support person here.
I have a couple of main focuses when I'm dealing with an LMS.
Is it easy to figure out, is it fast,
and does it let me not have to go through
and duplicate a lot of work?
And the big concern that I have in Blackboard
is that all three of those things
are more or less noes for me and for a lot of the faculty that I
support.
Case in point is I teach a lot of-- the technology courses
that I teach are required for all freshmen
to come through as music majors.
So I teach four or five sections of it, sometimes.
And in Blackboard it's not practical to have a combo
course, because all their due dates are different.
So I'm finding myself duplicating a lot of my content
through four or five different courses.
And for example in Canvas, Canvas
has a great feature that lets you
have multiple sections in the same course,
assign different due dates and you just
have to post stuff once.
So just as an example, I kind of think
that Blackboard-- where my concern if we stay is we're
stuck with the unintuitive, slow and repetitive.
And my comment's a little bit of a question.
Is it close enough?
OK.
Yes.
I not only teach using Blackboard,
I advise using Blackboard.
And so it's beneficial to me to be
able to have a strong organization.
And I'm sure this has been somehow investigated,
but I haven't heard anybody give feedback
about the organization feature of it.
And I just want to bring that up as a point.
Which is that I am able to have a very strong organization
for my distance students where I can
post all kinds of information and links and things
that they need.
Because they generally do not come here for orientation.
And I advise on it.
And it works very well, they understand, they're pleased.
And I mean, I have a lot of students.
And so I just want to bring that up as maybe a question.
I'm assuming these others have organization capability?
[INAUDIBLE]
You want to go ahead and answer that now?
Say that again?
Do you want to answer that?
Sure.
Because to me that would be a loss is kind of my point.
So from Blackboard's perspective,
an organization is basically a course shell.
They relabel instructor as leader, student as participant.
So Canvas at least does have organizations
with fewer features, I think.
But if that doesn't meet your needs,
I know at least in Canvas-- well,
in D2L as well-- we can create a course shell for you
and label it as an organization.
So I don't foresee any issues.
D2L, if someone could speak to that
who might have looked at it in a little more detail.
I don't know if James-- have you looked at the orgs
in D2L on the whole?
My understanding is that you just create a course
and call it an org.
An org, yeah.
I don't remember any organizations.
They have a Wiggio tool that is a third party tool integrated
with D2L that enables students to self-create groups.
Which would meet some of our needs for that.
But similar with Canvas then we could create courses
and call them organizations.
Thanks, Amanda.
I had a couple of other questions,
but I'm trying to be cognizant of the time.
And I notice that we have about 15 more minutes.
And I want to make sure that we give you all the opportunity
to ask questions of the panel and of the tech support
folks down here as well.
So what questions, comments, concerns do you all have?
I have one comment.
And I--
Can--
I piloted Canvas.
And I found Canvas to be fabulous.
What I love most about Canvas was as an ITC
when my faculty that were using Canvas,
I showed them one time how to do something,
they never came back.
In Blackboard I have to create screen recordings and websites
and step by step documentation just because after I've
done a one on one tutorial, they can't remember sixteen steps.
Nothing is sixteen steps in Canvas.
Just to repeat that for posterity, what April is saying
for those of you who also were too far away,
she's comparing Canvas and Blackboard.
The simplicity of Canvas in terms of the quicker learning
curve, fewer steps and so on that she's
experienced with her faculty.
No one has other concerns, I can ask my other questions.
Yeah.
Aaron?
Can you come up?
I can do this.
We've talked a lot about the Blackboard system.
Does Blackboard plan-- does anyone know if Blackboard's
planning a major update to their current software,
their current platform?
Or is it going to be Blackboard, Blackboard, the same one
that we always know and love?
Blackboard is always planning to upgrade.
Seriously.
Todd, or--
Planning but they're not doing?
Is that what you're trying to say?
I was sort of being facetious, but--
So one of the big differences that hasn't been addressed
is sort of I think one of the reasons
why Canvas stands apart in a lot of people's
minds versus Blackboard and even D2L
is that Blackboard and D2L are older products, right?
I mean, they've been around for a long time.
And Blackboard has sort of done its thing via acquisition.
So they had their core product that
was designed to run on servers.
And it's designed to come down for major upgrades
and then come back up.
You all have experienced those downtimes around the Christmas
and the summer term breaks there.
One of the differences-- and D2L is the same.
So one of the differences with Canvas
is it was built to be web native.
And what that means is it was built
to be sort of iterative upgrades.
So with Canvas you don't experience a whole system
downtime to make an upgrade and then come back up.
Think more in terms of what your experience has
been with Google Apps.
You'll have a feature that will go away for a few hours
and then it'll come back.
And it will be updated.
So that's sort of the main difference between Canvas
as opposed to the other two.
Now that being said, both D2L and Blackboard
have recognized that that's the way of the future.
And that's what a lot more of their clients are wanting,
is that sort of seamless interactive upgrade,
more web native, more mobile friendly.
That's one of the reasons why Canvas
is able to be a little bit more mobile native than D2L
and Blackboard.
So to answer your question, yes they are long term planning.
But at this point their best projections,
both D2L and Blackboard have been
along the lines of two years before they're
able to get there.
Rebecca?
I just wondered how many people would
need to be transferred over, and how many of them
would care about those features--
About downtime.
--within the next two years.
I think that without knowing the answer to that question
it's hard to know whether [INAUDIBLE].
Rebecca is asking how many people
would need to be transferred over.
And how many people would care about some of the features.
Like mobile apps.
And help me if I'm misinterpreting your question.
But if we were to choose to go to one of the other platforms,
everyone would ultimately need to be transferred over.
We are in year three of a five year contract with Blackboard.
And my understanding-- and Todd, you
could help if this is not correct--
is that if we chose to go with one of the other two
LMS's we would have two years to make that transition.
So it wouldn't be like you would leave tomorrow and come back
on Monday.
And go oh my gosh, what is this?
Yeah.
I guess I was really asking whether it
would be more efficient just to wait for two years.
Because there aren't that many people
who would use the features that are
available in a web native program at this point.
You know, wait for Blackboard to catch up
with that could be more efficient.
Do you see what I'm saying?
If they meet it-- I'm sorry.
I mean, if everyone--
If they meet it to your--
--was dying to have apps, it would be time to change.
But if people are not going to get up to that until Blackboard
is up to speed, then maybe waiting is better.
Yeah.
I hear what you're saying.
The question has always been having
worked with a company-- I'll just
take, like, Google for now.
They project all the time.
And sometimes they make their windows and sometimes they
don't.
So maybe we'll see D2L make a two year window.
Maybe we'll see Blackboard.
But maybe they won't.
We don't know.
So that's the danger in waiting.
I will say as far as people wanting
the apps and the features and that kind of thing,
I think where we will feel the pain is the continued downtime.
I mean, that's been a true sore spot.
But, you know, obviously something to consider.
And I would reiterate that.
I mean, I've sat on ATCC for I don't
know, six years or so now.
And we have discussions every semester
about when are we going to take it down.
And when is it going to go up.
And then you hear the chorus of oh my gosh, I needed it then.
Blackboard went down for a few days the first year
that the Provost Office shifted to putting the portfolios
online for people coming up for PMT.
And all of the sudden Deans couldn't put their letters
up there.
That's not trivial.
So that going up and down is a real issue with Blackboard.
Yeah, Patty?
It seems like to me that the downtimes at least now
are organized at a time that there is not that much effect.
Now, I know initially when we went down it was problematic.
There may not have been anyone in your school--
what's happening more now, and you guys in the front row-- you
guys in the front row can help me.
But it's my understanding that there's more and more
nontraditional semesters.
And I think the Bryan School, somebody from the Bryan school
help me, I think the Bryan school
is one of the big ones who particularly in the summer when
it goes down-- is that right, April?
That they really have issues.
DCL now has winter sessions, and--
Nevermind.
Yeah.
Cathy?
For many years we've pushed library electronic reserves
through Blackboard, which is really
convenient for the students because it's
all there in one place.
Not that we don't love them coming to the library web page,
but it's more convenient for them.
And I wondered if this was tested
with any of the other systems, being
able-- these are things that are usually scanned from our print
materials and then put online through Blackboard, articles
and chapters.
Cathy's asking about library materials being pushed out
from the library onto Blackboard.
These are reserve materials--
Reserve.
[INAUDIBLE] the faculty.
Can you all respond to that?
Well, we haven't necessarily tested that.
Because part of the e-reserves functionality that we currently
have in Blackboard is a custom built-- or actually,
we discontinued the use of that.
So basically specifically e-reserves I'll say no.
But e-reserves are basically PDFs
stored in a file structure in Blackboard.
So my guess is that it would be a possibility.
I know we've talked with Kathy Griffith--
Kathy Griffith, yeah.
She's out of town, so she--
And I worked closely with Amy with e-reserves
to let them know this is coming.
So I know they know this is coming down the pipe.
And we've had conversations with them in regards to this.
So even if the e-reserves were stored not in the LMS,
they could definitely be linked to within the LMS.
Dan, were you going to say something?
I'm not quite sure I do it exactly the way
you're suggesting.
But in my course, I don't use a textbook.
So all of the readings are on my course website in D2L.
It's very simple.
And now you guys have these-- I don't know what you call them,
but these special links.
So that I put in the URL and then they go get them.
And a lot of your materials have that already.
And then it works just fine in D2L.
Great.
OK.
Tim, you had a question?
Yeah, PNT for SOE.
And that was a real bummer when it was down,
but that's nothing compared to the problem that we
have over and over again.
Which is when uptime, getting the new version back up,
occurs the week before class.
No, that is true.
Is there any way to fix this in the world, please?
Well that really is one of the issues
with the other platforms, is sort
of the google-ization of an LMS.
That at least in Canvas, Canvas is the only one
that does not have the downtime.
It's just like Google Mail where you come in in the morning
and go oh, that looks different.
Jane?
Can I just speak just a minute to mobile?
I was talking to a doctorate student the other day
who was working with [INAUDIBLE], who's
studying athletes.
And they were delivering a survey to athletes.
And they said, you better make it mobile friendly
or these students are never gonna do that survey.
And look, we need to be thinking about students here.
They want to be able to do their stuff on this.
How do they read on that, is what I wonder.
[INAUDIBLE]
That's a very good question.
But I think this is something we need to think about,
needing to reach our students.
They're buying tablets, they're buying smartphones.
They're not buying big laptops necessarily, particularly when
they're faced with Windows 8.
The other thing is that for some years faculty
have been dying to be able to grade assignments
offline, something that both D2L and Canvas are offering now.
There's an app, you can download it to your tablet
and you can grade offline.
Hit sync, and back up it goes.
So there are reasons to think about mobile.
I think we better be careful not thinking about it.
And Blackboard-- I'm agnostic here.
I'm going to support whatever comes down the pipe.
But Blackboard has been very namby-pamby about its mobile.
It bought something, it's crap.
Excuse my French, but it is.
It's just lousy.
We have just a few minutes before I'm
going to get the hook.
But I want to come back to the panel
and ask that question, not necessarily about mobile.
A couple of you talked about student feedback
that you've received about the LMS that you're piloting.
Anybody want to add anything in terms
of what your students have said about their experience so far?
Kathryn?
At the end of the semester we get the student course
and instructor feedback, for good or for bad.
And often the comments are on there
about how organized the course was,
and how easy it was to understand.
And I'm not entirely sure I completely
understand exactly the difference
about the mobile devices and whatever.
And as hard as it is to believe, I
had students who attend a synchronous course on Thursday
nights with me on iPads and their phone and everything
else.
The only thing they report that they can't do to me
is like do a document, save it, and then whatever
from their phone.
But they can from other mobile devices.
So I am not actually encountering a challenge
with my students being able to use mobile devices
and participate.
But you all may be talking about a different level of this.
And here again, I'm the one that stayed and kept
on digging and finding new features on Blackboard.
But I get good reports about organization now.
I always do weekly folders.
But I also have to tell you that Catherine told us
earlier this afternoon that at the other end of the spectrum
she has students who do not have computers.
So it's really the gamut.
But you see that there's a Collaborate app, and it's good.
Right, OK.
Yeah.
OK, that's not the Blackboard mobile.
There's a Collaborate app and it works beautifully.
Yeah, it's true.
That's why they can do that.
She's right.
I do have students who don't own a computer,
can't afford one, and go to public libraries
or do everything that they do on their work site.
So I've kind of got a wide range.
I have a lot of students in poverty.
Other panelists, comments from students?
I wanted to reiterate something that I think Wade said,
was that I have gotten virtually no questions about Canvas.
And even not that many from D2L.
I got a couple.
But that's for me the biggest feedback
that I have gotten so far, is that I
haven't heard anybody asking about how to use it.
So I'll leave it at that.
And the mobile point is not about accessing video chat
or content.
It's about taking quizzes.
And even in Blackboard I have yet
to be able to find a way to get Blackboard Mobile to allow
my students to take a quiz, even if it's multiple choice.
And with Canvas on the first day I
gave them just a three question quiz.
And someone pulled out their phone in class and just did it.
And that's what we're, I think, seeing.
James, you we're going to say something.
I was just going to say kind of related
to this, that the way it was set up
was that if students had problems with Canvas,
they called Canvas support directly.
And a couple of students had some difficulties getting in
and that sort of thing.
And they called, and somebody answered immediately.
And gave them a simple answer to solve the problem.
And the problem was fixed.
And that's not always the case with tech support.
All right.
All right.
I have one more slide in case you have other comments.
I know a couple of you had your hands up,
and we've about run out of time.
Again I want to refer you to the website
if you want to look at any of the longer
videos and the other materials up there.
And I'm assuming that eventually if you really
want to hear this again it'll be up there.
And then if you have any feedback
there's an email up there that you can reference to send us
the feedback that you have, either
about what you've heard today, questions that you have,
and so on.
Thank you all.
I'm going to step aside and go to a sax meeting
while Mike comes up here for the second half of the forum.