CARMEN: Enhancements expected

Rarely do students and faculty think about what’s under the hood of our Carmen learning management system, but the Office of Teaching & Learning anticipates significant improvements to Carmen just around the corner.

The College of Veterinary Medicine has four courses piloting a potential new system called Canvas. Our current tool is called D2L. Canvas is a highly intuitive, user-friendly application that was recommended to the university by a selection committee last year.

In Autumn 2015, the first students and instructors to pilot Canvas preferred it over D2L (93% of faculty and 70% of students). This semester four veterinary medicine courses are piloting Canvas. They include:

  • Dr. Julie Byron’s Introduction to Small Animal Techniques Laboratories
  • Dr. Jason Stull’s Biosecurity and Environmental Health graduate course
  • Dr. Eric Miller’s Clinical Veterinary Ophthalmology elective
  • Dr. Katy Proudfoot’s Animal Welfare core course

In addition, Dr. Jonathan Yardley is using Canvas to develop and administer pre- and post-assessments for a clinical rotation.

This makes the college one of the largest pilot members at the university this semester both in terms of student headcount and diversity of courses represented. The response from both veterinary medicine faculty and students has been immensely positive.

Focus groups conducted at the end of Dr. Proudfoot’s seven-week course showed students preferred Canvas to D2L hands down. They were especially pleased with a new course landing (home) page the Office of Teaching & Learning developed that allows students to immediately see topics covered and photographs of their instructional team (with email links embedded). Direct links to course materials through topics on the landing page make content easier to find. “We wish every professor would set up the same way,” one focus group noted (with 24 groups citing ease of navigation as a plus).

The students also reported a better experience accessing grades and making sense of their scores. 16 groups indicated they liked the ability to “calculate grades as you go” or anticipate future grades based on the ability to fill in a projected score on a future exam or activity.

The pilot faculty organized their materials based on learning modules that represented topics, themes, or weeks, and 16 focus groups saw that as a strong design. Other benefits included better communication tools, a highly effective calendar that syncs with mobile devices, the Canvas mobile application, and a task list or to-do bar.

As for Dr. Proudfoot’s experience with Canvas: “Canvas allowed me to do more with my course than D2L,” she commented. “I especially liked the ‘speed grader’ feature that allowed me to quickly grade over 150 student assignments successively, and all of the multimedia options available to create assignments or provide feedback to students using audio, video, or embedded Youtube videos. “

Dr. Miller reported, “The pilot has been seamless for my course, and I think almost every aspect of Canvas is fairly intuitive. I really like the quiz grading features, and I find the course to be much less cumbersome than (D2L).”

According to Dr. Stull, “As an instructor I have found Canvas to have a more streamlined look and approach to course support than (D2L). To date, the students have been positive in their experiences with Canvas.”

And Dr. Byron noted, “The biggest thing for my class was the schedule/calendar feature, and the way videos played. So much better!”

The university’s Office of Distance Education and eLearning group headed by Valerie Rake, associate director, has provided invaluable support for the pilot.

If you are interested in learning more about Canvas, feel free to contact Melinda Rhodes-DiSalvo, who is the college’s representative on the university’s LMS Advisory Committee evaluating the process this spring — or visit with pilot faculty.

You may also request a “sandbox” course or a place to experiment with Canvas by visiting, https://resourcecenter.odee.osu.edu/form/3476. You will be informed once the sandbox is ready, and we can help you figure out how to get around in it.

Regardless of whether D2L or Canvas is the tool, the way we refer to Ohio State’s system as Carmen is here to stay. In the near future, we anticipate more news from the university about improvements and upgrades.

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