The Canvas Enhancements & Inclusive Teaching Enhancements 2 Project, which started in June 2022, has successfully concluded. The project set out to improve the digital teaching and learning experience for both students and staff through strategic enhancements of digital technologies and the further promotion of inclusive teaching practices. Over thirty benefits were delivered in three primary areas:
Canvas Foundations
Improving the architecture, tools and processes used by the team responsible for maintaining the wider Canvas virtual learning environment ecosystem. Deliverables included:
- Automatic deployment improvement
- Operational reports for CAD and CTL
- Review and address Canvas backlog
- Transition development team processes to the Amazon Web Services cloud
- External review of AWS processes
- AWS technical design improvements
- Better deployment of LTI and Proxy tool
- Login page environment isolation and deployment automation
- Reduce process overlap between subaccount provisioning and manage courses
- Address CAD sentry alerts
Canvas Enhancements
Targeted improvements within Canvas for stakeholders, commencing with a review of existing data, a consultation with students and staff, and numerous technical ‘back-end’ improvements in Canvas, to improve the overall user experience. Deliverables included:
- Migrate Oxford terms calendar to account level
- Canvas survey tool report
- Azure AD authentication in Canvas
- Review data integration process
- Course role rollover enhancements
- Sign-up tool enhancements
- GET tool improvements
- Enabling more than 10 calendars
- Merge GIT repositories
- Sync user provisioning process timing
Inclusive Teaching Enhancements
Providing Digital Education Assistants (Learning Technologists) to support academic divisions, staff and student consultation, and the implementation of specific enhancements. Deliverables included:
- Dedicated support for improvements to the use of Canvas and associated digital education technologies in Departments
- Promotion of use of digital education tools to support flexible and inclusive teaching
- Canvas page design enhancements
- Review Digital Education student survey results
- Student pronunciation tool in Canvas
- Student pronouns visibility in Canvas
- Consultation with staff and students
- Market tools / platforms investigation
- Assistive Technology Guidance Officer support
Beyond the Project
As the project concludes, a new phase of continuous improvement of Canvas has begun under the VLE Continuous Improvement team. If you have any questions or require further information, please email them at: vleciteam@it.ox.ac.uk.
Information about the various resources available to support inclusive teaching and learning at Oxford is available from the Centre for Teaching and Learning website.
