EvCC Poised To Move to Canvas On July 1st

The first day of Summer Quarter, July 1, will mark the transition to the advanced and more user-friendly e-Learning system called Canvas that is slated to fill in the shoes of outgoing ANGEL at Everett Community College.

The new Canvas login looks has a more clean and professional look.

Canvas is more customizable for both the instructors and the students. Many instructors will set up their class pages a bit differently from ANGEL while the students would not have to log in to their Canvas accounts every now and then to check grades, announcements and notifications.

According to campus Interim Director of eLearning, Marie Rustemeyer, most of the Canvas features would be the same except the interface is more up-to-date. It would be more like what users are accustomed to on Facebook and more integration with social media services.

She said that now the students can set up a mail and notification-forwarding feature to receive messages on their email addresses or to their Facebook accounts from Canvas.

“They will receive mails and notifications when the instructors will make new announcements, set deadlines for assignments, open quizzes and online tests, grade them and things like that,” she said. “The intent is to get to users wherever they are.”

Newcomer will also support mobile apps integrated to Ipad, Iphone and Androids.
Calendar on Canvas will also be an interesting feature for students to work on. Rustemeyer said that now students don’t have to check calendars of each course separately for the due dates of assignments and tests because all the important dates of each course will be marked with different colors on the same calendar.

A look at the Canvas dashboard that students
 will be using starting summer quarter.

Lois Haight, an EvCC graduate from the Associate Arts & Science Department in 2010 and presently Library Student Worker at University of Washington School of Law, thinks that the overall layout of Canvas is more appealing as it seems less busy-looking than ANGEL.

“Instead of having several boxes or widgets of information on your home page, Canvas has a separate page for announcements, assignments, calendar, etc. All in all, Newcomer is not completely different from Angel; instead it is a cleaner, more efficient, and newer online learning system,” she said.

Students who are used to working on ANGEL may think dealing with Canvas is altogether unanticipated. Haight, who experienced both e-learning systems, thinks otherwise.

She said that transitioning to Canvas was not very challenging for her. Although it took her some time to learn all the little quirks and shortcuts, the learning process was not very demanding.

According to Haight, this online learning system is very notification friendly and alerts students as to whenever an announcement is made, when assignments are due, when assignments have been graded, and when new discussion post has been made.

“Also, the layout is cleaner and more customizable, allowing students to create their own Canvas experience. It offers students a nifty group function as well,” she said.

Students who are looking forward to working on Canvas from summer quarter can attend a three-day Canvas orientation session.

The dates and times for three sessions are following:

· Wednesday June 26, 2103 from 10:00 a.m. to 10:45 a.m. in GWH 162

· Tuesday July 2, 2013 from 2:00 to 2:45 p.m. in GWH 162

· Wednesday July 3, 2013 from 12:00 to 12:45 p.m. in GWH 162

Story by Adnan Ali