OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY
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Reporting period October 2018 – September 2019
The Learn@OregonState Advisory Committee guides the design, implementation and development of the Learn@OregonState ecosystem in alignment with OSU’s strategic goals as defined by the IT Instructional Governance Committee. Members serve on the Unizin Teaching and Learning Group and bring OSU’s needs and goals to the Unizin development process. The committee’s charter is to review, evaluate and prioritize proposed changes to the Learn@OregonState platform. Evaluation criteria are based on impact to learners, instructors and data, as well as potential legal, technical, FERPA and disability access issues.
The Learn@OregonState Advisory Committee works in partnership with a standing team called the Learn@OregonState Task Force. This team works directly with tools in the platform; they meet bi-weekly throughout the year to review new features, upgrades, integrations, user communication and support, vendor relationships and product management, and ongoing evaluation and assessment of current and new learning tools.
College of Business was the first user of a new instance of Canvas and a product called Catalog that’s used as a marketplace for users to browse, purchase, and enroll in noncredit training and professional development. Some OSU students may use the platform for non-credit badges/training. Engineering, Education and Pharmacy also began using the platform in 2019.
In summer 2019 the Learning Platform Services team rolled out a tool in Canvas that allows instructors teaching multiple sections of the same course to merge them into a single Canvas site. Faculty can manage assignments, grading, and TA access by section. It also allows faculty to create one site that contains all of their campus-based students and also preserve a dedicated site for Ecampus students.
Bridge was implemented in April 2018 to deliver required training to approximately 8,500 OSU employees. Since the original critical trainings were introduced, several campus units have posted trainings in Bridge, including OSU Libraries, Environmental Health and Safety, Counseling and Psychological Services and Public Health. OSU students were added to Bridge in September 2019; they can access a variety of self-paced trainings, including laboratory safety.
The number of courses completed by OSU staff in Bridge went from 54K in 2018 to 120K in 2019. In 2018 there were 13 active courses for OSU employees; by the end of 2019 we had 74 courses for employees and 6 courses for students.
Gradescope usage has grown significantly since it was integrated with Canvas in October 2018. There were just under 7,000 active students in Fall 2018, compared with more than 10,000 in Fall 2019. Students submitted just over 52,000 Gradescope assignments in Fall 2018; this grew to nearly 161,000 submissions in Fall 2019.
The Solutions Architecture task force and the Learn@OregonState advisory committee have reviewed and approved the following tools and updates in Canvas
Canvas introduced the “New Gradebook,” which offers new functionality to filter and arrange columns, apply late policies, and more. After thorough testing by Academic Technology and Ecampus staff, it was applied as the default at the beginning of summer term.
The advisory committee provided feedback and suggestions on guidelines for what types of announcements should be displayed to students and/or faculty on the Canvas dashboard. Recommendations focused on items that are relevant to Canvas usage (as opposed to general OSU information), and are not specific to a certain location (e.g., Corvallis campus).
OSU faculty and the Canvas Community at large voiced concerns about the default Green/Yellow/Orange/Red coloring applied to rubrics especially since many rubric ratings that are less than a perfect score on a given rubric criterion result in an orange or red color. These colors signaled negative performance, and did not offer sufficient contrast for visual accessibility.
The Learn@OregonState task force recommended a two-color palette for rubrics and for the Learning Mastery Gradebook (green for exceeds and mastery, and orange for near, below and well below mastery). The approved colors were implemented in December 2018.
“Analytics Beta” offers a more comprehensive look at all grades in Canvas course sites, with options to filter, download, and message students. The improved feature was made available to faculty in October 2018, and became the default analytics tool in Canvas in winter 2019.
Instructure has been developing a new quizzing platform called New Quizzes. They are available now in Studio sites for to faculty who want to try them out. Eventually the original Quizzes tool will be retired and we’ll need to migrate our legacy quizzes over. Timing is TBD. In the meantime, OSU has evaluated New Quizzes and determined there are some key features/capabilities not yet available, but that will be needed before we use New Quizzes in real courses. A number of other peer institutions are also holding off on full implementations, pending delivery of required functionality.
| Name | Affiliation |
|---|---|
| Lynn Greenough (chair) | Academic Technology - UIT |
| Alex Axelsson | Disability Access Services |
| Mike Bailey | Computer Science - Faculty Senate representative |
| Tasha Biesinger | Academic Technology - UIT |
| Stefanie Buck | Open Oregon State |
| Raffaele de Amicis | Electrical Engineering & Computer Science Faculty |
| Jon Dorbolo | Academic Technology - UIT |
| Lindy Foster | Academic Technology - UIT |
| Mike Jefferis | Associate Registrar |
| Alix Gitelman | Undergraduate Education |
| David Goodrum | Academic Technology - UIT |
| Cub Kahn | Center for Teaching and Learning |
| Brian Lindsley | Research Analyst - Extended Campus |
| Tamara Mitchell | College of Science |
| Jane Nichols | Libraries |
| Robin Pappas | IT Innovation - UIT |
| Tabitha Pitzer | Associated Students of Oregon State University |
| Rene Reitsma | College of Business Faculty |
| Karen Watte | Course Development and Training - Ecampus |
| Kara Witzke | OSU-Cascades |
The Solutions Architecture task force reviews and approves the majority of proposed updates to Canvas. The following table illustrates the criteria that generally determine whether a request falls within the purview of the task force, or whether it should be reviewed by the larger advisory committee:
| Criteria for Task Force decision (i.e., authority to act on request, and report results to Learn@OS Advisory Committee) | Criteria for escalating to Learn@OS Advisory Committee for review and disposition |
|---|---|
| Canvas feature (developed by Instructure) that is Optional (either for a defined time or on-going) | Tool/feature not intended for all Learn@OS users |
| OSU has existing contract with 3rd party provider | Requires review of academic or other policies |
| No contractual or functional impact if used/accessed by non-ONID users | OSU development resources needed (beyond LMS admin capacity) |
| Publisher with LTI integration | License or resources supplied by department outside of Information Services |
| Technical requirements won’t exceed capacity of LMS admins’ routine work | Significant impact to Learn@OS users (training, functionality, technical support. . . ) |
| Product manager identified (if 3rd party system) |
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