The Board of Trustees’ recent approval of a $2.35 million, five-year plan sets in motion a series of next steps. The result will be the full adoption of Canvas as a replacement for ReggieNet in the fall of 2023.
“Students, faculty, and staff were universal in their preference of Canvas as Illinois State’s next learning management system,” said Dr. Rosie Hauck, who co-chaired the first phase of the Next LMS project this spring. That initiative, which brought together a large group representing constituents across campus, featured an in-depth study of potential systems and a survey which garnered more than 1,200 responses from students and teachers alike. It resulted in a recommendation to the Office of the Provost and the Office of Technology Solutions to retire the open-source-based ReggieNet in favor of Canvas.
“In some ways, our work this spring was just in preparation for the big race,” said Hauck, who also serves in Technology Solutions as the executive director for the Office of Advanced Technology Support for Faculty. “After we made the recommendation, our support staff moved up to the starting line. Now that we’ve received Board approval, the race can get started.”
New opportunities
As the old saying goes, that race is not a sprint, but a marathon.
This fall, technology support staff and instructional developers will begin the long process of both connecting Canvas to Illinois State’s existing digital ecosystem and making key decisions, with the input of instructors and students, about how the new system will ultimately look and feel.
“A change like this represents an exciting and important opportunity,” noted Dr. Anthony Piña, who joined Illinois State in June as the University’s new chief online learning officer. Piña, whose long career includes extensive experience in developing online courses and entire online degree programs, is also the director of online education at the recently re-envisioned Center for Integrated Professional Development, formerly known as CTLT. He will also assume co-leadership duties with Hauck on the Next LMS project going forward.
“This sort of transformation isn’t just on an institutional level,” Piña said. “It will affect both instructors and students on an individual level. But it’s also a fresh start. That’s a rare and wonderful opportunity. So, we’ll work to create a set of tools that all instructors can utilize, and in the process, provide students with the more consistent digital learning experience they’ve so vocally advocated for. The great news is that we’ve gathered a lot of data about both preferences and research-supported practices in recent years, and there are also a lot of examples from other institutions to draw upon.”
Timeline
Current plans call for intense development to take place this fall, with faculty given the ability to preview the new environment before the end of the semester. A limited pilot program will allow a small pool of instructors and students to use the new system for spring and summer 2023 courses.
“We’ve already heard from many instructors eager to dive into Canvas,” said Hauck, describing feedback received though the NextLMS.IllinoisState.edu website. “We want to balance that enthusiasm while ensuring students have a consistent learning experience. We want to test the new system, but we also want to avoid having large numbers of students who are forced to negotiate between two different learning environments. So, we’ll be taking a close look, with the help of our advisory group, on the criteria for participation in the pilot program.”
Concurrent with the pilot phase, staff members under Piña’s direction will create help resources and professional development for faculty.
“One of the great advantages is that Canvas enjoys a much, much larger user-base over Sakai, the software behind ReggieNet,” Piña explains. “That means there’s already a huge quantity of experience-based resources out there that we can use. So, of course, we’ll offer customized workshops and consultations specifically for Illinois State instructors, but we’ll also be curating the vast library of community resources available to Canvas users.”
The development of those resources includes not only instructional support through the Center for Integrated Professional Development, but technical support for all members of the University community through the Technology Support Center.
“The TSC is in a great position to support this change,” said Carla Birckelbaw, who leads the unit as director of client services. “In January, we transitioned to the new Help.IllinoisState.edu website, which allows us to create resources which are easier to find, easier to read, and play very well on students’ mobile devices. Between our new system and the additional support that we’re contracting through Instructure (the company which makes Canvas), help for everyone will be just a few keystrokes away.”
Students, faculty, and staff can connect with the Technology Support Center by phone, through the web, and through live chat.
Transitioning from ReggieNet to Canvas
“From the very beginning of this process,” Hauck reflected, “our number-one directive, and our number-one goal, has been to make this transition as easy and sensible as possible.”
Piña added, “What instructors have invested in ReggieNet over the last decade represents a tremendous amount of work. No one should worry about losing that. We’re committed to making sure all of that knowledge, labor, and care lives on in the new system.”
To that end, another major leg of the race this fall is refining methods for exporting data from ReggieNet to Canvas. Canvas includes features to allow courses to be transitioned automatically. It’s an iterative process; support staff will begin testing the importation process, adjusting and refining it, and repeating until satisfactory results are achieved. They’ll work with third-party vendors to insure the best outcomes.
Ultimately, the plan is to make a few semesters worth of their course materials available to all instructors in the spring of 2023, so they can configure summer or fall courses using past ones as a starting point, just like instructors do now in ReggieNet. Faculty who teach a specific class less frequently will be able to request a special import of their older courses into Canvas. And plans call for keeping ReggieNet available in “read-only” mode in the fall of 2023, so instructors can retrieve older data on their own.
“Of course, an exact 1:1 conversion between a class in ReggieNet to Canvas isn’t always possible,” Hauck explained. “There will be some course sites in ReggieNet, especially asynchronous online course which are so intricate, so robust, that they’ll need what we’re calling a “white glove” service. In those cases, we’ll leverage our support staff to help faculty manually configure the data into a new version of the course in Canvas. How that works is something we’re also developing this fall.”
Questions?
Instructors and students can expect many more updates before the finish line is in sight in the fall of 2023.
In the meantime, all members are welcomed to ask questions about the transition to Canvas through NextLMS.IllinoisState.edu. Instructors can use that website to volunteer for the pilot program in the spring of 2023.
