Getting Started With Canvas Session - Part 2

(delayed posting from Wednesday, 6/13) I'm going to use my upcoming Fall American Government class for this part of the getting started session, focusing on actually building a class.

In-line Previewer - when you upload a file, a preview of the file shows up on the screen, so students can see what the file says without having to download and open it.

Drag and Drop - you can just highlight files and drag them into the Canvas files area. You can do this in ANGEL too, but it seems much easier here.

Assignment building - If you create Assignment 1, you can just click on a "plus"symbol and it will automatically create Assignment 2, with the name. This makes it quick and easy to scaffold the course. One will, of course, need to go back and fill in the details. But this simplifies the process of creating the course structure, which should have good implications for course design and navigation.

Observation - a lot of the tools I'm seeing here are things we are used to having in ANGEL. However, the thing that is different here is they are much easier to access and use. It is important to remember, though, that Instructure is a fairly new company (founded in 2008) and there are some things that we are used to in ANGEL that they don't have yet. One thing that has come out is that they don't have the ability to add layers of security in testing, like you can do in ANGEL with the secure browser setting.

What is Instructure? - Canvas is an open source learning management tool.  Anyone can take it and adapt it for their own use, like Moodle.  Instructure is a company who has taken Canvas and customized it and hosts it, provides support, etc, for a fee.  The State is contracting with Instructure to use Canvas as its learning management tool.  We could just take the open version of Canvas and adapt it for our uses as a state and host it ourselves. However, this would involve hiring a team of people and buying a lot of servers.  The eLearning Council determined it was much wiser and more cost effective for us to contract with professionals rather than try to do it ourselves.

On the other hand, if, by some horrible chance, Instructure were to get bought out by some gigantic learning management company that shall not be named, we could stay with Canvas if we chose, and would not be forced to change, as is happening with the ANGEL buyout.