SEMO goes to the Canvas

The days are long gone when in order to complete an assignment, a student physically had to hand in work to a teacher.

There were no other options.

The rapid advance of technology has now changed the educational landscape by moving much schoolwork online.

For roughly three decades, work for Southeast Missouri State University has been submitted through learning management systems, or LMS, which require an internet connection linked to a laptop or desktop computer -- even a cellphone will do. Southeast recently made a switch to a new system.

OIS

Beginning in the 1990s, Southeast used Online Instructor Suite (OIS), a homegrown system developed by two Southeast alumni to allow students to take quizzes and tests, write online forum posts, check grades and upload assignments to a dropbox.

OIS was found to be a bit cumbersome because faculty had to build web pages and change their classes from semester to semester.

Southeast began to phase out OIS in the spring semester 2012 and by January 2014, the university had fully turned to a new LMS.

Moodle

A program developed in Australia, the Moodle LMS was adaptable to smartphones, was simpler to use for Southeast faculty and students and worked with Apple products -- something OIS did not permit easily.

Grades were instantly accessible to students once they were posted by an instructor and Moodle created an integrated online calendar.

Canvas

Southeast, citing reliability problems in the six years using Moodle, officially switched to the Canvas LMS during the current Spring 2021 semester.

"We did a very deep evaluation of different LMS programs," said Floyd D. Davenport, Southeast's assistant vice president for internet technology, who added the university "piloted" a large group of courses in the Fall 2020 semester.

"Canvas has no hardware cost, and we don't have to pay to store information because everything is in the cloud," said Doug Koch, Southeast's vice provost and dean of graduate studies.

Unlike the case with Moodle, if the university's network goes down now, students can still get to Canvas because it is a cloud-based system.

Koch said a nine-person LMS implementation team meets weekly with a Canvas representative to ease the transition for the campus community.

Davenport said Canvas, which Southeast pays for on a subscription basis, will allow instructors to incorporate video into their courses more easily.

"This is a huge benefit to have (video) during a pandemic," he said, noting the present situation in which some students are still seeing their education delivered remotely.

Kathy Harper, Southeast's director of university communications, said there are 503 fully online or web-campus sections being taught this semester -- an uptick from 446 in Spring 2020.

Harper used Canvas during her student years at the University of Florida and is an advocate for the new LMS.

"The fact that (Canvas) has a mobile app is great -- and I expect that will be popular with (Southeast) students," she said.

The two largest school districts in Cape Girardeau County, Jackson and Cape Girardeau, are also sold on Canvas.

Jackson schools already use Canvas for grades five through 12.

The Cape Girardeau schools are beta-testing the LMS this spring and expect to "go live" with Canvas this coming fall.

Note: The reporter on this story is a part-time Southeast Missouri State University instructor.