Canvas Conference: InstructureCon 2013

This last week I had the opportunity to attend Instructure's annual conference which focuses on it's flagship product, Canvas.  Founded in 2008, Instructure launched Canvas in 2011, and in that same year hosted its first annual conference.  The attendance at the first conference was meager, but in 2012 the attendance numbers grew to 600 attendees.  This year marked the third annual conference, with 1,200 attendees and a giant inflatable panda mascot flocking to the resorts of Park City.  Including staff and volunteers, some 1,500 people gathered to present and attend sessions.  After-hour festivities were themed based on the 1980's and included a conference carnival, visits from the Ghostbusters, a DeLorean (yes I had to google the spelling), and concerts from an 80's cover band and MC Hammer himself.

The festivities were grand (and the 80's florescence was blinding), but the real value of the conference was obviously in the sessions.  Here are a few conference takeaways which I found rather valuable:

Implementation strategies

• San Jose State University recently migrated to Canvas.  Their first concern in the evaluation process was regarding login protocol and authentication.  They were able to utilize their PeopleSoft credentials within Canvas while also creating alternative guest login credentials for guest lecturers and visiting professors.
• An important aspect of the LMS migration (i.e. change management) process is generating excitement.  It is important to make sure that the migration process is an active one with kickoff events, guest speakers, onsite training, perhaps booths around central areas on campus, and social media outlets (e.g. Facebook pages and custom hashtags).  Perhaps you could even hire clowns and lease a DeLorean (my own ideas).  
• The most important aspect of the process is to work together as a team.  Applying this to the TCS Education System, this change management initiative should have top down buy in from system and campus executives, as well as marketing, instructional design, and administrative support.  

Public assignments, private assessments

• Student blogs and twitter feeds are a fantastic way for students to complete certain assignments.  Traditionally Google Reader has been a good source for RSS aggregation, but with the discontinuation of this product Feedly has become the key player.  RSS Mix is a great tool to bring into Canvas, as you can integrate student blog posts via iFrame.
• A fantastic feature in Canvas is that students can submit assignments via URL.  Students simply submit the URL and the blog embeds in the main window of the Canvas speed grader.  Students can also submit twitter feeds/tweets, VoiceThreads, YouTube videos, Prezi, etc.
• There is a peer review option in Canvas.  Students can submit their blogs through URL submission, and then the peer review feature in Canvas will assign two random students to grade that submission.  
• The results of this creative Web 2.0 integration for assignments was an increase in student grades, higher instructor feedback scores, and overall better class performance.  

Mobile presence in the classroom

• We can use technology and effective course design in order utilize mobile learning in order to approximate a 1:1 course instructor-student ratio (approaching Bloom's two sigma paradigm).  Canvas mobile app 2.0 is reaching the market in July.  In many cases, it is important to allow mobile devices in the classroom.  Policies that ban the use of mobile devices in the classroom have been shown to be ineffective.  81% of instructors feel as though tablets enhance learning (I don't have a source for that statement, though it seems to come from a paper called: Pedagogy! iPadology! Netbookology! Learning with Mobile Devices).  
• One of the advantages for tablets and smartphones in the classroom is that the technology is brought to the students instead of having the students searching out instructional technology.  In order for mobile instructional technology to be effective, it is important that course and instructional designers load the course/content in mobile browsers, iOS apps, and Android apps.  Elements of course content will jump out at you when you access courses in mobile devices.  
• With all that said, digital devices are not as effective or critical as the presence of a dedicated curriculum program.  We must always focus much more on learner-centric pedagogy than technology.

Using Canvas for collaborative course creation

• TCS Education System currently uses Basecamp as its primary project management software.  eCornell, the for profit center that acts as the primary eLearning partner for Cornell University, uses AtTask, but they recently began utilizing course shells within Canvas to coordinate the efforts of everyone involved with the course design and development process.  They enroll professors and subject matter experts, video producers and technologists, quality assurance personnel, graphic designers and artists, instructional designers, copy editors, students, and all others involved in the course development process into master courses.  The roles vary based on the personnel responsibilities with the projects.  The master course is used as a working repository of video, graphics, course content, QA materials, etc.  
• Assignments and project milestones are set up as "quizzes" within the course.  People can take the quiz in order to report their statuses.  Canvas also allows the course instructor (aka project lead) to set up reminders in the form of pending or imminent quiz notifications.  The quiz interface is also ideal of polls.  
• Discussion boards are a good way to set up project correspondence instead of using email.  It is important that each project member has notifications set up.  eCornell also utilizes assignments as and gradebook reminders as a way to collect materials from people.  Quizzes and assignments have point values, and the project manager award "badges" - an adoption from the popular gamification concept.  Surprisingly, this really motivates project members.  Absolutely brilliant, in my mind.
• eCornell relies heavily on templates - course templates, and even page templates.  Instructional designers will work with boilerplate text.

The price of admission to InstructureCon is paid in bamboo shoots