The Canvas University of Auckland team recently met with Avi Hanner the Customer success Manager for Canvas.
The meeting helped clarify Canvas’s current priorities and direction, as well as providing an opportunity for the UoA team to clarify current Canvas issues and priorities for the university, moving forward.
Big data
Big data and Analytics are a high priority for the Canvas development team. Data and Analytics are currently a hot topic in higher education literature. Canvas is exploring amongst other things, how to create more interactive (as opposed to static) content in the Canvas analytics to allow instructors to more fully understand students’ learning in the online Canvas environment.
The use of Big Data and Analytics in the tertiary sector provides potential opportunities to improve and develop student success, and retention and to create value added services and support for students. It also raises some big questions around implementation, and the legal and ethical use of data, as well as the quality and effectiveness of data available.
Read more about Big Data and analytics trends in the Higher Education sector:
- Analytics in Higher education /Universities UK
- The Babel Problem with Big Data in Higher Ed [blog post]
Quizzes.Next
As many of you will be aware, Canvas has developed a new version of Quizzes – Quizzes.next. This will eventually replace the existing Quizzes in Canvas. Quizzes.next has some interesting features e.g., the ability to use hotspots in questions. However it does not yet have functionality parity with the original version and will not be turned on at account level for the University of Auckland until this is achieved.
We will be working with Canvas to identify areas for improvement in Quizzes.Next and will keep the Canvas community updated through the blog, targeted emails and the fortnightly newsletter.
To subscribe to the newsletter please contact Tricia Bingham (t.bingham@auckland.ac.nz)
Find out more about the current parity status of quizzes and Quizzes.Next on the Canvas Community:
APAC focus
Canvas previously had a North American and an International focus but has now moved to be more regionally directed.
This means there is an APAC (Australasian Pacific) group which will allow for regional community development and communication as well as a prioritisation of issues of particular relevance to APAC.
The University of Auckland Canvas team, led by Gemma Sinclair, has also initiated regular meetings with Canvas staff to ensure our unique and specific University of Auckland voice is heard and acknowledged in the Canvas arena.