To 8am-call, UGOffs, GOffs, UGAdmins, GAdmins, May 4, 2020

Re: Canvas available across MIT in time for the Fall semester; summer job opportunities for students

Dear Colleagues,

[Please make sure this reaches all faculty and staff within your units who play an academic leadership role.]

I’m pleased to report that we will be making the Canvas Learning Management System (LMS) available across MIT - every department, every school, anyone who wants to use it for teaching - in time for the fall semester.

To put this announcement in context, most MIT instructors currently use Stellar and LMOD as their learning management system. Stellar was innovative 20 years ago and it has served MIT well. When Stellar and LMOD were developed, the overarching approach in systems/application design was largely monolithic. Today’s educational technology strategies depend on the power and flexibility that comes from integrating a dynamic mix of technologies such as Zoom, Gradescope, Piazza, Residential MITx, CAT-SOOP and more into a seamless learner experience, and this requires a modern LMS at its core. As MIT’s needs continue to evolve and we need to incorporate new technologies, the use of a platform like Canvas opens possibilities for leveraging a rich technology ecosystem of products/platforms to meet future needs.

Indeed, last academic year an ad hoc faculty committee chaired by Gareth McKinley carried out a lengthy needs assessment that started a process that would have brought a modern LMS to all of MIT over the coming year or two. A modern LMS allows instructors and students to engage in ways that are difficult, or impossible, in Stellar. Examples range from instructors embedding videos; to students accessing content via phones and tablets; to synching with calendars; to natural ways of creating engaging and interactive content; to grading student work within the LMS; to setting up student teams, collaborative work and student content sharing.

Remote teaching changes the role of the LMS in a fundamental way, since it – and the tools integrated with it – becomes the principal means by which instructors and students engage and interact with each other. Looking ahead to the Fall semester, in any scenario now under discussion we will have some variant of remote teaching for some fraction of what we do. And, with time to prepare, we aspire to provide a learning and teaching experience for our students and faculty that is in keeping with our standards of excellence. This means that we need a modern LMS now, not a year or two from now.

We are fortunate that MIT Sloan and IS&T have led the way. After a lengthy assessment, MIT Sloan introduced Canvas two years ago, and IS&T has worked with MIT Sloan to build the necessary integrations with MIT’s core systems such as MITSIS. Global Languages has also been piloting Canvas in their classes. In recent weeks we have more than once heard from colleagues who see something that Sloan or GL instructors are doing who wish they could do the same. It is because of the prior work of IS&T, MIT Sloan and GL that we are able to introduce Canvas across all of MIT over the course of the coming summer.

With many thanks to Mark Silis and IS&T, I am pleased to report that MIT now has a campus-wide site license for Canvas.

I am also pleased to report that, as recommended by the McKinley committee last year, we are forming an LMS group to lead the implementation and subsequent development of our new Canvas LMS across MIT. It will be directed by Sheryl Barnes from the Office of Open Learning, who has been one of the pillars of our effort to support, catalyze and applaud the work that all of you have been doing in the transition to remote teaching. The group will consist of 4-5 people coming from either IS&T or Open Learning who will be working hard on this starting immediately.

And, many thanks to Gareth McKinley who will chair a new LMS Advisory Committee that will build upon the work of his committee from last year, bringing a broad perspective to bear in advising Sheryl and me as we go forward.

Now, how can we – a broad ‘we’ referring to every instructor who may be interested in using Canvas – have Canvas pages for Fall courses in place in time? Our plan is to hire approximately 60 MIT students over the summer, a mix of undergraduates and graduate students. The summer job opportunity for each of them will be embedded within within a department or program: their day-to-day supervision will come from within a department, perhaps from an academic administrator. Their essential responsibilities will include migrating content from Stellar to Canvas and configuring Canvas pages to the satisfaction of the faculty or instructor teaching a subject in the Fall. Whoever supervises the student will need to plan which courses they work on when, and assist them in engaging with faculty and instructors.

Our hope is that these students will assist faculty and instructors to use Canvas effectively, help them to create engaging and effective learning experiences, thus indirectly helping their peers. Sheryl and her core team will train and support the students, including teaching them how to use Canvas effectively, and will build a cross-MIT community among these students spending a summer as learning technologists, making the MIT experience better for everyone this Fall. Our goal is to ensure that any instructor who wants to use Canvas for their teaching will be able to do so, and will be able to do so effectively as of this Fall if they work with and learn from one of the students above at some point over the summer. Note, though, that Stellar/LMOD will remain available for anyone who prefers to continue using it.

The job postings for these learning technologist positions can be found online and also downloaded (undergraduates posting and graduate students posting). We urge you to spread the word to students whom you think would do this work well, and whom you think are motivated to spend their summer helping MIT and their peers in this way.

We would in particular ask you to bring this job opportunity to the attention of students who need summer jobs.

We ask department/program leadership to identify the person who will supervise the day-to-day work of the student(s) working in your department or program; that person should contact Sheryl Barnes. In addition, if you know of students who apply for these jobs whom you would be pleased to have working in your own department, please let Sheryl know.

Please focus, right now, on spreading the word about these job opportunities to students, and identifying the person or people in your department who will supervise the student(s) working in your own department. (Also, if there are staff in your department who wish to join the students as they learn how to use Canvas early this summer, please let Sherylknow.) The time for those of you who would like to get a Canvas site and start playing with it yourself is several weeks away.

Let me close by thanking Mark Silis and IS&T again. Without Mark’s leadership and their initiative, this would not be possible. Just as without their leadership in March, just think where we would be now. Working together with them, with many of you, and with the students whom we will hire, we can make the MIT teaching and learning experience better, for the Fall and beyond, in any scenario. Best regards,

Krishna

Krishna Rajagopal

William A. M. Burden Professor of Physics Dean for Digital Learning MIT

krishna@mit.edu