The University of South Florida Chooses Canvas by Instructure for Open Source LMS

The University of South Florida has switched to a new open-source learning management system, as opposed to the Blackboard (News - Alert) system the college used previously. The University, which has approximately 47,000 students across its three campuses in Tampa, St. Petersburg, Lakeland, and Sarasota-Manatee campuses, reportedly made the switch both to cut costs and to add features.

It was decided the school would not be upgrading to Blackboard’s version 9.1 when it became clear the upgrade would necessarily result in forced faculty layoffs to cover the cost. When the upgrade was ruled out, officials at The University of South Florida compared several options by running pilot programs before they chose Canvas by Instructure for its LMS.

Speaking on the choice, The University of South Florida’s system vice president of information technology and chief information officer Michael Pearce said “Canvas meets the demand from our students and faculty for a 21st century platform. We chose Canvas because it is flexible, cloud-based, and easy to use.”

Mark Walters, associate professor of journalism and media studies at the university further commented, saying “Canvas is a lot like using the Web. Students love it. It’s fast, flexible and intuitive. I can now concentrate on getting students the material they need, seamlessly and in virtually any format. Canvas’ reliability and ease of use actually make online teaching fun and exciting.”

Canvas’ array of features include a rich content editor, which allows professors to embed pictures, audio and video clips from anywhere on the Web, and exam creation choices which allow development from scratch or the use of a question bank.

Canvas comes with both video and live chat built directly into its LMS, as well as online groups which can be formed for any extracurricular groups, clubs or sports teams students are interested in.

Professors can enjoy Rubrics and SpeedGrader for grading their assignments, and with Canvas they have the choice to deliver notifications to students via SMS message, e-mail or Facebook (News - Alert).

Other features representatives at The University of South Florida said they enjoy most include Instructure’s video capabilities, performance evaluations, ePortfolio apps and SpeedGrader, activity reports, and of course plagiarism detection integration.

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