Students and faculty will embark on a new journey in online education next fall with the unveiling of a new learning management system – Canvas.

It’s been a decade since Park University has changed its learning management system. For 10 years Park has been operating under Pearson’s e-college and e-companion learning studio.

Over the past year, Park University’s LMS task force researched new learning systems. The task force consisted of about 20 people – faculty and staff from all across the University and even a few students contributed to the decision-making.

Jerry Jorgenson, provost and senior vice president; David Monchusie, chief information officer; Dorla Watkins, vice president for finance and administration; Adam Potthast, assistant professor of philosophy; Chuck Kater, associate vice president for distance learning; and Gregory Rose, director of online operations, are just a few who were involved in this new development.

“Over the course of the whole Fall 2013 semester, we looked at what we wanted in a learning management system and then looked at what other systems provided,” Potthast said.

Rose was a member of the sub-committee within this task force. The committee was in charge of coming up with an extensive checklist of requirements before going to the vendors. Once the LMS task force narrowed down the contenders, proposals were sent and a handful of providers were considered.

Pearson, Desire to Learn, Canvas, and Blackboard were the final providers under consideration.

“We debated things and pushed some out to a smaller group of students in May (2014) and after we saw some of the sample courses and the different platforms we met again over the summer and decided to unanimously recommend to executive staff that we switch to Canvas,” Potthast said.

Coordinator for Student Engagement Ben Zibers lent a helping hand to the cause.

“Ben arranged for a student LMS comparison test,” Rose said. “So, we had approximately six to 10 students sit through each one of the finalists. We copied courses from e-college to each vendor…so we could open up the e-college course and we could open up the exact same course in all the various platforms. And they all rated Canvas the highest.”

After Canvas was chosen, officials then began working on a transition plan. Park will remain under Pearson throughout the remainder of 2014 while a few courses will be “piloted” in Canvas during this academic year.

By August 2015, Park courses will officially utilize Canvas.

“It’s the responsible way to do it so you have time to train everybody and introduce everybody to the new way of doing things and also to watch out for any bugs that might come up and try to squash them,” Potthast said.

Although Canvas is a different platform from what faculty and students may be used to, all the expected components are still there. There is a grade book, a document sharing section and discussion boards to name a few.

However, according to Potthast, these features will be much easier to use in Canvas. New features include configuration of notifications, audio and video posts and comments, a more intuitive grade book for faculty and it is mobile and tablet friendly.

“It is going to be very strongly mobile-friendly and the students of today and the future are very mobile connected and they will appreciate the power and functionality,” said Rose. “And, I think Canvas was one of the strongest in that area so that’s one of the reasons they ended up winning.”

The LMS task force was looking at “features and robustness” as a key element in a LMS, Rose said.

“Price was never an option,” he said. “We wanted to find the right product at the right fit and then price was not a consideration because that’s what seemed to make sense at the time.”

Rose said it is difficult to calculate the total savings of this switch, however, savings are expected with the new platform. Park’s contract with Pearson ends in July.

“We’re excited about Canvas,” he said. “We think it’s the best of the breed as we say in the business.”

Anyone can test out the new system by going to canvas.instructure.com. You can set up your own course and design it yourself as if you were the instructor or practice in the sample course provided.

University of Texas at Austin, Brown University, Indiana University, Webster University and Missouri Science and Technology are just a few institutions using Canvas today.