All faculty are invited to apply to participate in a pilot of the Canvas by Instructure learning management system (LMS) this Spring semester. The application deadline for the pilot is Wednesday, October 14, by 12:00 noon.
Like Blackboard, the Canvas LMS gives instructors ways to provide content online and facilitate interaction between instructors, student and learning groups. ITS is seeking a variety of courses in terms of course size, course type, and features employed, and will also help instructors set up their course in Canvas. Not all courses submitted for the pilot will be selected due to a limited number of student seats available on the pilot system.
UNL recently joined Unizin, an eleven member consortium of universities driving solutions for collaborative digital education. UNL's participation in Unizin was highlighted in Chancellor Harvey Perlman's State of the University address in September.
The group’s members represent over 700,000 students, including the University of Michigan, Indiana University and the University of Florida. Unizin’s goals are to empower educational institutions and faculty by collaboratively steering the direction for learning management systems, digital repositories and analytics for easier cross-institutional cooperation.
“The University of Nebraska-Lincoln is pleased to be a founding member in Unizin,” said Ronnie Green, interim senior vice chancellor for Academic Affairs. “As a founding member of Unizin, UNL will provide leadership in and help shape the future of learning analytics and the development, distribution and sharing of digital content in a way that is consistent with our mission and values.”
“We are extremely excited to welcome to Unizin another world-class institution in the University of Nebraska-Lincoln,” said Robin Littleworth, chief operations officer at Unizin. “Unizin is working hard to shape the future of higher education, and it is great to bolster the consortium with this leading university.”
Unizin will assist the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with a pilot of Canvas, a commercial learning management system that is favored by the consortium. A limited pilot is taking place this fall at UNL. Faculty are invited to participate in a wider pilot for the 2016 Spring semester.
"There was great interest in Canvas during learning management showcases held at UNL," says Heath Tuttle, director of academic technologies, information technology services. "This pilot will give our faculty a more in-depth useability experience with Canvas."
UNL has been using the Blackboard learning management system since 1999.
For more information about Unizin and participating in the Spring Canvas pilot:
http://go.unl.edu/canvaspilot
Written by Jon Wilson