Evaluating Canvas as a Proper LMS tool
Students and professors at Oregon State University use Canvas everyday to keep everyone informed, grade and post assignments, and turn in homework. It eliminates the need for professors to have individual ways of organizing their classes, and does a good job and unifying the college workload. The importance of Canvas increases exponentially to e-campus students. Everything about their classes exist entirely on Canvas for most classes. Nadire Cavus, author of “Assessing the Success Rate of Students Using a Learning Management System Together with a Collaborative Tool in Web-Based Teaching of Programming Languages.” at the Journal of Educational Computing Research writes in their study compares student’s success to LMS (learning management system) tools, like Canvas, and online-based teaching. The results of the study were that there was a higher success rate when online students used a program like Canvas.
However, does Canvas perform the best it can for the students and teachers? According to Kritz Shonfield, a writer for European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning, Distance and E-Learning academic journal compared the efficacy of online classes with a LMS tool, like Canvas, and a in-person, face to face class style. The results indicated that the online class that has good teaching and a properly managed and organized LMS tool can foster learning. Canvas needs to become more organized in order to be an effective online learning tool. As with any study tool, organization is key. A streamlined, effective way to find the information needed is important for students both on and off campus.
Canvas’ organization revolves around the idea of modules, a way to group assignments, readings, etc. into groups commonly organized by time. A good example of module organization is WR214. Each week is listed out with clear expectations on what to do, contains an announcement from the professor, along with a wrap-up announcement to make sure each student gets everything they need to do gets done. This has improved my overall sense of the class and definitely has impacted my grade and feel for the class in a negative way. On the other hand, a poor example would be the PH21X series. Its Canvas page is organized very poorly. Some modules are organized by lecture time, while some are for the class as a whole. My experience with this series was a struggle to learn how to access the information at the beginning and was difficult to master. Salim Said Al-Kindi is a writer for the International Journal of Knowledge Content Development & Technology. He tracked online learning with mobile devices and saw that LMS tools lacked behind Wikipedia, Facebook, and Youtube to learn the information. This presents a point in which we can improve upon Canvas. A place where information from the class can be accessed just as quickly as looking it up on Wikipedia. This is important to accomplish because this will ensure the correctness of the information. This will also improve the quality of Canvas’ organization. Having the ability to access information quickly will allow professors to design their modules in a better way.
Another addition to make Canvas better would be personalization to existing tools implemented in Canvas. Ahmad Qasim AlHamad in their article, “Identifying Students’ Trends toward Personalizing Learning Management System (LMS) at Zarqa University (Extended).” explores the idea of personalizing LMS tools to better education in an online setting. Personalization includes seeing tools the students want to see and hiding the tools students do not want to see. Having systems where users can pick and choose would help all kinds of learners. For example, visual learners would opt to see lecture slides and other similar material. Changing canvas in this way would make it a more unique experience for its users.
