DU’s current learning management system, Blackboard, has been utilized by DU professors, faculty members and administrators for over ten years, but the switch to a more efficient and reliable system is in the works, according to Julanna Gilbert, DU’s executive director of the Office of Teaching and Learning.
Gilbert explained that a little over a year ago, the university organized a group of faculty members, technical staff and administrators to explore alternative routes to Blackboard. After a significant amount of time and research, the group found three other products that they felt could potentially work to replace the system entirely. Of those three, the group unanimously agreed on an innovative management system known as Canvas.

“It’s important that you periodically do a scan and find out if there is something better to use,” said Gilbert. “It was time to see what else was out there.”

Gilbert believes Canvas to be a much better system than Blackboard for a variety of reasons, including its Cloud-based format, which means it is not hosted at DU and does not use a DU server.

“It provides 24/7 help to both faculty and students,” said Gilbert, “and it’s hosted in a way that there’s better support and better security … if problems arise, it’s not just left to a couple technical staff people at DU to keep it up and running.”

Gilbert explained that Canvas is a lot friendlier to how people actually use the web, especially when it comes to the technical ease of interfacing with various social media applications, such as providing direct links to Facebook or YouTube. It would be under the students’ control as to how those links would work.

Another feature Blackboard lacks that Canvas provides is a customary notification service, through which students are able to individually go in and choose the way they receive notifications from their professors on the site, whether it is directly to their cell phones via text message or to a specific email address that could potentially differ from their DU account, according to Gilbert.

“We’re not just going to move frivolously from Blackboard to some new system,” said Gilbert. “It has to be a well thought-out and well-considered move.”

According to Gilbert, the administration decided to take a deeper look at Canvas last fall, holding information sessions for faculty from all over campus to come see what the new system had to offer. They invited professors to participate in a pilot project that would involve them offering their courses through Canvas over winter and spring quarter to find out how it works.

The project ended up consisting of 50 faculty members who were willing to transfer their course content from Blackboard to Canvas, an endeavor that included over 2,000 DU students, ranging from undergraduate to PhD. All parties involved are surveyed at the end of each course to gauge overall satisfaction with the system.

“I have been very happy with using Canvas,” said Kellie Keeling, assistant Business Information and Analytics professor from the Daniels College of Business, who taught Business Forecasting and Visualization with Canvas during winter quarter. She is now using Canvas for her Complex Data Analytics course this spring quarter.

“I feel that Blackboard has gotten ‘clunky’ to use,” said Keeling. “It seems like every action that you want to take involves clicking multiple menu options. I also feel constricted by its framework when I try to design a course. I never get the look that I want in setting up how the students will access the material.”

According to Keeling, she has only heard positive feedback from her students with regards to the switch from Blackboard to Canvas, aside for the initial navigation issues, which she felt were to be expected.
“When I want to perform an action [on Canvas], it is very easy to find what to click,” said Keeling. “I also like that there are many ways to view the material in the site … once I got comfortable with the initial design issues, then running the system the remainder of the course was very easy.”

While the pilot project is still underway and the university has not made a final decision, Gilbert says the results are looking good and that the people involved now prefer using Canvas to Blackboard.
“We’re not sure about the decision yet, but it does look promising,” said Gilbert, who notes that the pilot project group is going to reconvene in just a few short weeks to formulate a decision.

If and when the administration decides to make the official switch to a different system, there will be a year-long, overlapping grace period, during which Canvas training workshops for faculty will be provided. Blackboard would still be accessible during that time to ease the massive transition, according to Gilbert.