NET+ Canvas Newsletter

January 2021

In this version of the NET+ Canvas Newsletter, learn about the latest updates from Instructure about Canvas, comments and feedback from the Canvas Advisory Board, as well as best practices in Canvas use around the Internet2 Community.

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Instructure Updates

Updates from Instructure regarding Canvas product offerings. 

The Daly Dispatch: December 2020 Edition

Get the monthly update here for all things Canvas from Instructure CEO, Steve Daly.

An Education Proposal to the Biden-Harris Administration


Click here to view a letter from Instructure and key education partners outlining critical education initiatives.


Canvas Catalog 101


Click here for an intro to the solution that helps users organize, promote, discover, and enroll in courses.

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Canvas Advisory Board Updates

Upcoming Meeting: February 10, 2021


The next Canvas Advisory Board meeting will be on February 10, 2021. The meeting agenda items include:

  • Collaborative discussion on strategy and processes for pain points and unmet needs
  • Begin development of Customer Success culture



A complete listing of all Canvas Advisory Board meeting agendas can be found here.


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January Meeting Recap


The agendas for all our 2021 meetings have been published, including our February meeting.  Please note, these are working documents and subject to change so please check back for any updates.

For January, we had a packed agenda. Our time was split between discussing and refining goals and reviewing updates proposed for ongoing work regarding pain points and unmet needs.

Our goals for the 2021 year can be found here. These goals were individually discussed and perfected to make sure they are actionable and reasonable.

Should you have any questions or want further information around the work being done by the NET+ Canvas Service Advisory Board or a copy of the Partner Program Report, please don’t hesitate to visit us at https://spaces.at.internet2.edu/x/7BOJCQ or contact us at netplus@internet2.edu and we will be happy to respond.

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NET+ Canvas Program Update


Temporary Business Model and Pricing Update

We have been working with Instructure over the past several months on a temporary program to bring some relief to struggling institutional budgets due to the pandemic.  Thus, I am happy to announce a program that is effective immediately and will conclude June 30th, 2021.

The program allows for pricing discounts for institutions that are going to begin a new Term.  If an institution is able to commit to a longer Term length, then they will be able to take advantage of such discounting.  If you have any questions about this, please feel free to email us at netplus@internet2.edu and we can share the specifics.


Service Advisory Board Goals for 2021


These are the goals that the advisory board is looking to perfect at the January 2021 meeting: 

Goal #1

Develop with Melissa a customer success culture that:

  • identifies service and support best practices and next steps
  • benchmarks Instructure's service and support appropriately for universities
  • aligns Instructure's  service and support to best help universities achieve their  strategic goals for teaching and learning


Goal #2

Develop with Shaun the I2-Instructure relationship for insight on future product development or acquisition.including cadence, structure, and practice for exchanging ideas.

  • Deliverable: cadence, structure, and practice for 3 “exchange” activities on things that Jared or other product owners are thinking about. 
  • Deliverable: at least 3 “exchange” activities completed for feedback and iteration.
  • Deliverable: one of these “exchange” activities is to initiate a Contributing Team for Canvas Data/Live Events


Goal #3

Continue to develop and refine a strategy and process for I2 and R1 Peer universities to provide Instructure with actionable information on pain points and unmet needs.  The strategy and process should be synced with Instructure's product development cycle and allow Instructure to clearly communicate status and progress back to the universities.


Goal #4

Design and plan a data sharing program for NET+ Canvas participants in order to further research in areas of student success, intervention, and best practices.


 




Around the Community

Commentary from I2 Canvas users: advice, best practices, feedback.

 


R1 Peers


The Canvas Peers Research Universities Group (or R1 Peers Group) brings together representatives from large public and private research universities to share best practices around using Canvas and the surrounding ed tech ecosystem to support teaching and learning. They also collaborate closely with Instructure (Canvas vendor) and sit on the Internet2 NET+ Canvas Service Advisory Board to improve the Canvas platform and user experience for research universities. This group represents more than 250 members from 45 institutions of higher education and research across the United States, and around the world.

For context, recently the R1 Peers Group has collaborated in the following areas:

  • Tier 1 support
  • Archiving
  • 3rd party integrations
  • Pain points
  • Data privacy


LRS Standards SIG


The Learning Records Store (LRS) Special Interest Group (SIG) assembles use cases for an LRS, creates an LRS reference architecture, and develops implementation/engineering best practices. The SIG promotes open standards that enable data from a variety of teaching and learning tools to be included in the LRS.

This group is chaired by the University of Washington and meets monthly on the fourth Wednesday of the month.  For more information or to join this group, please reach out to Matthew Buss (mbuss@internet2.edu).  Thank you.

Most Recent LRS SIG Meeting Agenda

Brown University - Diving Into the Deep End: How We Built a Digital Education Dashboard Using Cloud Technologies and Agile Methodology. Our new CIO charged us with building a data lake infrastructure in the cloud to deliver learning analytics using agile methodology. The platform and the approach were completely new to us! Our data sources were Canvas LMS, Banner ODS, and our faculty appointments data mart. Our tool kit included Talend, Google BigQuery, Docker, and Tableau. We’ll show the good, the bad, and the ugly. Mostly the good!


January LRS SIG Meeting Agenda

1/27/2021

  •  University of Michigan will offer a MyLA update and present on  associated research publications. 

Future Meeting Agendas

2/24/2021

  •  UC San Diego will describe their employee activity hub



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