I could write about a great many things today – the World War III Ukraine is fighting for NATO, the circus of U.S. politics, another dry theoretical piece, some great PC gaming I’ve been doing, or how cool Strange New Worlds remains.
But I’m in the mood to talk about Canvas.
For many years, the University of Houston-Downtown has used Blackboard as its CMS to deliver online courses, much like desperate individuals often sign a dark pact with demons for temporary relief. I made a separate peace with BB many years ago, agreeing only to visit certain less distasteful circles of its clunky hellscape, and clinging to the fairly certain hope that they would not follow me as unforgivable sins into any hypothetical afterlife or my mythical permanent record.
This summer I opted my summer courses into a pilot program for Canvas, UHD’s choice for a Blackboard replacement. I was on the Academic Technology Committee that had some input into this choice, and I punted at the time. My opinion was, and still remains, that offering the faculty a choice of what CMS they might want is not as important as giving them adequate training and support in what ends up being used. In that sense, the CMS is a lot like the university’s calendar (I was on that committee, too, and took the same stance).
Experienced cynicism generated this response; the usual reason the faculty are “consulted” on such decisions is to give some lip service to “shared governance,” to bless the eventual bad result, and to spread any blame (there are exceptions to this general rule, but not many). The stated reason for a CMS switch was the BB did not meet federal accessibility guidelines; deeply ironic, since the faculty has been castigated for several years to do a better job of accessibility in BB. Accessibility is generally a good idea, but just like assessment, its cheerleaders often take on a cultist aspect.
Actually, let me take that back. Assessment is a straight-up cult.
Credit is due, however. I’d like to give Canvas a solid B+ so far. I’m almost two weeks in the June semester and it’s a definite improvement.
The most dramatic advance is its phone app. Unlike BB’s bug-laden mess, I can actually do some light grading and maintenance on my phone. Nothing serious – the major work is still done on desktop, but I can spread the workload around more.
Canvas also automates several pesky tasks that BB could only do with workarounds. It can automatically apply late penalties, for example, and perform more complex grade calculations that I used to do on the side. Its discussion board front-end is not a horror story told to frighten young UI designers. Support is plentiful and the eventual solutions to minor issues rarely require opening up the hood.
Most importantly, however, Canvas feels stable. So far, it does not generate strange errors, delete my work, or trouble the students with baffling messages.
I am reminded of the paradigm shift of going from Windows 98 to 2000, where all the promises of usability and stability that Gates and his minions had promised but never quite delivered suddenly became real.
I realized quite recently that until a few weeks ago, I had never owned both a new washer and dryer. Both, or at least one, were always crunky cast-offs, purchased from a moving sale, a scratch-and-dent, or handed down. It is odd, refreshing, even civilized, to wash a load and dry it with little doubt as to if the cycle will complete, or the clothes will actually be dry.
Canvas elicits that pleasant feeling – a quiet satisfaction that a longstanding and difficult problem has finally resolved, and entropy, the final enemy, has been defeated for now. I hope this little victory lasts for a long time.