NET+ Canvas Newsletter

February 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. 


Stimulus Funds for Higher Education


Higher Education has experienced unprecedented disruption from COVID-19. A full-fledged LMS offers a solid digital foundation for learning. Learn more here.



Case Study: Dunwoody College of Technology

Click here to learn how Canvas has cut grading time for Dunwoody educators by 66% and created consistency in curricula.


The Instructure Vision for Higher Education



Click here to join Jared Stein, Instructure’s VP of Higher Education Strategy, as he discusses the challenges facing higher education during these tumultuous times.


Click here for all things Higher Education by Instructure.

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Canvas Advisory Board Updates

Upcoming Meeting: March 10, 2021


The next Canvas Advisory Board meeting will be on March 10, 2021. The March agenda will be finalized on February 25th, but current meeting agenda items include:

  • We will revisit the results of last year's future-oriented prioritization process led by Jared



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


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February 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 February, we had a packed agenda of only three items. However, these were all very in depth discussions where we collaborated with Instructure. We worked with Melissa on outlining work being done at the CSM level, as well as general support and success models for the future.  This was tied back to our goals we worked on last month.

Second we worked with Jared on the future of synchronous teaching and learning.  These discussions were around supporting efforts of the community and how Instructure could play a role.  A follow-up meeting was identified to finalize these thoughts.

Third was an update from Shaun on the coordination of pain points and how to track these over time, get updates, and prioritize what the community needs.

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 Instructure 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 

Decision: Quarterly check-in, beginning in February, with a focus on how we measure success for Instructure's customer success culture. 

Goal #2

Develop a foundational construct with Instructure that outs in place a predictable process for the board to advise and offer insights on future product development or acquisition including cadence, structure, and practice for exchanging ideas.

  • Deliverable: 3 “exchange” activities using/iterating this process on things that Jared, Shaun, or product owners are thinking about during 2021 
  • Deliverable: one of these “exchange” activities is to initiate a Contributing Team for Canvas Data/Live Events


Goal #3

Continue to develop and refine, with Shaun, 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

Decision: Instructure cannot reasonably do the actual data sharing piece at this point, and universities are likely not ready to use/share de-identified data.  And, we're all waiting to see what Unizin is doing in this space.  So, we've decided to refocus on (a) what questions we want to answer with Canvas data, and (2) the best way we might answer those questions with the data.  We'll tackle this topic in March with Oxana's replacement. 1/27 update: We may also want to explore a de-identified data sharing program thorough I2.





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 - 1/27/2021

  • An emerging layer of data services (mainly data marts) to drive reporting and other end-user experiences, and
  • Explorations of using UDP-sourced data to train ML models (mainly around course grade and enrollment prediction using tools like AutoML


Future Meeting Agendas



2/24/2021

  • Amin Qazi and the UCSD posse on their Employee Activity Hub (Employee Records Store)


3/24/2021

  • Our colleagues from Brown will lead a discussion of practice/policy for course tools data retention and access (and more)




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