All around America, the Learning Management System “Canvas” is a college norm. Canvas is an online academic website dedicated to making it easier for students to find assignments and contact professors.
As part of the district’s Administrative Modernization Project, Baltimore City Public Schools required that Canvas is now the primary platform for teachers and students across city high schools and is “designed to make learning more connected—for students, teachers, and families,” according to information posted by City Schools.
This is a massive change for schools in the city including Baltimore School for the Arts (BSA). The transition has been tough on both students and staff.
Few teachers at BSA had previous experience with Canvas, causing them to need large amounts of time focusing on how to use the platform. This has become especially difficult at BSA since it has run on Google Classroom for the past several years; some classes are still using that platform. Part-time staff in art departments also cannot currently access the platform, so students are navigating multiple platforms throughout their day.
I sat down with teacher Anne Laro, who has had previous experience with Canvas, to talk about the impact Canvas has had on BSA so far. Below is an edited version of the interview.
Creech: What is your experience with Canvas?
Laro: [My experience with Canvas is that] I am the chair of the music department at Notre Dame of Maryland University. And I teach three music history courses for them. I’m guessing two years ago now they made the decision to move to Canvas. Almost rather abruptly too. We had about a month or two’s notice to get ready. All of their courses are on Canvas. I teach three upper level and lower level music history classes, so I am teaching via that platform. I would consider myself above average knowledge and able to navigate well.
How would you say Canvas at BSA has affected your ability to teach or continue working?
I think that with any transition it’s hard. Nobody likes change. Everyone was really used to the way Google Classroom worked. Transitions are tough, especially without a lot of notice or time to plan. I do think that in the long term, when teachers and students are more comfortable and fluent it will work out really well. Especially for the students, because most universities, if not all, are now using Canvas. So for you guys to have those skills and become, by the time you graduate, pretty fluent when navigating Canvas, you will be a step ahead of college freshmen who are coming from wherever and not using Canvas. As unpleasant as it is to switch now, in the long run it’s going to be a good thing for everybody.
Do you have any solutions or suggestions on how to make the transition easier or how BSA can navigate Canvas better?
Time would’ve been better in the beginning. …this is not anything BSA should’ve done, this is a district thing that should’ve been done—to potentially roll it out six months or a year in advance, and give teachers professional development and training… And the same for [the students], I think if the teachers feel more confident they would’ve been able to support the students in the transition. Give it time, bear with it. It will get easier and you will come to appreciate it.
After my interview with Laro concluded, I met with a teacher who had no prior experience with Canvas to see both sides of the story. World History teacher Megan Bremer, who had no prior Canvas experience, not only brought up the district’s quick change but a new problem Canvas created. Below is an edited version of the interview:
Creech: How is Canvas affecting your class or the way you have to teach?
Bremer: I was hoping that it would help us to stay organized but I think that it has added a lot of chaos to the start of the school year for all of my classes. It has taken more time away from instruction to talk about, go through, or teach the technical pieces of it. A pro and a con, I think that it has caused some people to miss some instructional activities because they couldn’t find it or it took them so long to find that we had already moved on to the next thing. But over the last couple weeks I think that it has been really good for having some more in depth discussions, using the discussion feature.
Do you have any solutions or suggestions on how to make the transition easier or how BSA can navigate Canvas better?
I think the biggest factor is just taking more time. With any roll out of new technology the worst of it is becoming familiar with it. When we’re not familiar with technology we tend to hate it. It gets in the way, it makes everyone grumpy. … I also think one piece of concern to me that we need to fix, and I plan on contacting North Avenue about it, is that Canvas uses deadnames for people. There’s not a way for teachers to update the names and so that exposes people when using group settings on Canvas, like the small group discussions.
What’s been your fix to that problem so far?
I have been talking to kids individually and my current fix is to put them in a group discussion with me. That’s not a great fix though, essentially isolation.
After interviewing two different teachers on their views of Canvas and the change it is bringing to BSA, it’s easy to say that there will be many bumps during this transition. There are still many things that both students and staff need to get used to, and with time they will. Canvas is just another change that BSA will learn and overcome.
To contact this writer, email Muse Newspaper at musebsa@bsfa.org.
This story was written in partnership with The Banner Youth News Lab.
Featured image by Instructure.
