Northwest Arkansas Community College selects Canvas over Blackboard

Students walk across campus at Northwest Arkansas Community College in Bentonville in this file photo.
Students walk across campus at Northwest Arkansas Community College in Bentonville in this file photo.

BENTONVILLE -- Interaction between faculty and students may improve when Northwest Arkansas Community College switches learning management systems in the fall semester.

Learning management systems are software applications for the administration, documentation, tracking, reporting and delivery of educational courses, Kate Burkes, associate dean of distance learning and faculty development, said during the Board of Trustees meeting Monday.

Next Meeting

Northwest Arkansas Community College’s board will meet at 4:30 p.m. Sept. 4 in the third-floor board room in Burns Hall.

Source: Staff Report

The college will switch from Blackboard to Canvas by Instructure this fall.

"Next week we're at full implementation," Burkes said. "All the classes are on there."

The process to select the new system took three years. Burkes went over the college's history using learning management systems since it started offering online courses in 2000.

The college used Blackboard since 2009, Burkes said. Blackboard announced in 2015 it was moving to a new system, which promoted college officials to explore if there was a better system for the college.

The distance learning committee researched and created surveys to see what faculty and students want and need for a system. A task force created a rubric and host vendor demonstrations to explore systems. Blackboard Ultra and Canvas were piloted in some spring 2017 classes to evaluate effectiveness, Burkes reported.

Faculty and students agreed they preferred Canvas. It's easy-to-use. It provides students notifications through email and text message. Faculty can provide video and audio feedback to students, and students can comment on that feedback. Video-conferencing is built into the system, and it easily integrates into other tools, such as Google Docs and Office 365, Burkes said.

LaShall Bates, life science faculty member, taught using Canvas for three semesters during the piloting phase.

It creates more interaction between faculty and students and allows for material to be shared between classes more easily, she said.

"We had more students completing assignments than we did when using Blackboard," Bates said, explaining Canvas has an assignment calendar notifying students of immediate and upcoming work.

The system comes with an interactive phone application making it easier for students to work on assignments on mobile devices, she said.

Canvas training for faculty began in October. Nearly 480 were trained in more than 75 workshops and six self-paced online courses, Burkes said. There will be a student informational campaign and optional "boot camps" teaching Canvas this fall.

Board member Todd Schwartz asked if there was any improvement in grades for the classes using Canvas.

Burkes said it was too early to tell.

"Students who might tend to fade away, they were more engaged," she said.

Evelyn Jorgenson, college president, said the transition to the system has been so smooth because of Burkes and her team's work over three years to research what was needed and try it out before making the switch.

NW News on 08/14/2018

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