Is your institution using the new UI?

[asatkins]

We're considering moving to the new UI over Christmas break to minimize disruption for our students. I have a few crowd source questions

Is your school using the new UI? If so, for how long have you had it turned on?

Can anyone share any pros/cons that have come up in your institution's discussion of this?

We've had it turned off so we're not sure how stable it is at this point.

If it was your choice, would you have moved over when you did? How about now?

[bgibson]

• You might turn it on in your "test" environment and see if faculty find the changes manageable there.
• Depending upon how soon the training videos reflect the new UI, and how dependent your users might be on learning how to use Canvas via the videos, you might want to wait until Summer.
• Few were familiar with the old UI, so changing at the start to the New UI made sense for us.
• We've had it turned on for a while, with few users, but it does appear to be stable.
• Once you know the basics of navigating Canvas, where the buttons have moved to is probably minor.

[asatkins]

Hi Bill, thanks for your reply.

Our faculty don't use our test environments, unfortunately. It's sort of pulling teeth to even get some of the content chairs to use it My biggest concern is student experience, and students aren't able to log into the test environments. I guess we can masquerade as them, but we can't always predict the way our students might interact with a new system.

The training videos are a good thought. We do use those in our orientation courses.

For new students, like you say, it's less of an issue because they don't know any different. My bigger concern is the 5,000 some students/parents/teachers who are already active. We're incredibly deeply integrated because we're online-only so all of those obscure features that Canvas might not have moved over yet will hurt us. I guess I'm hoping to find another school who is using a lot of those features and can give me a heads up, lol.

I'm glad to hear that it's feeling stable, the old UI has felt a little unstable recently with the module prereqs acting up, so at least things seem to be looking right in the new UI

Thanks again for taking the time to share your thoughts!

[kona]

 @asatkins ​, if you haven't already, I'd check out the User Group: New UI​ in the Community. It's got some resources and questions/discussions that might help!

[asatkins]

Thanks Kona, I will wander around there. For the most part that seems to be discussion of pretty specific UI issues/questions, I'm looking for a little more of a conclusion than a dictionary Have you seen any discussions that are big picture?

[kona]

You might get a better response to your question if you share it in the User Group: New UI​ area because pretty much everyone over there is using or getting ready to use the new UI.

[asatkins]

Good thought

[asatkins]

Yep, I officially do not see how to share it to that group. I see all the mentions, but I am not seeing it. I think I've even done it before on the K-12 group... but I don't remember how to do it.

[kona]

You should have a "Share" link on the upper right side of the page for this Discussion. If you click on it you should be able to type in "New UI" and have the "User Group: New UI" group show up. If you can't get it to work let me know and I can share it for you!

[asatkins]

There we go. I thought I was able to do it before from the group page, I must have dreamed that Thanks Kona!

[BKINNEY]

Short answer, no, we're not using it. I realize you were hoping for responses from those who were, but no one from that camp seems to be here. Whatever the reason for that, I too would like to hear from some early adopters. We currently have no plan to migrate until we have to. Historically, big changes like this cause considerable disruption and user dismay, at least at first. The good news is that we have two LMS's and those who have elected to use Canvas tend to be the more tech saavy among our faculty. I suspect they will adapt reasonably well. I'm hoping that we will be at least breaking the news about the upcoming change sooner rather than later, but there are others in our camp that feel differently about it, or, at least they did the last time I brought up the subject. Time to try again, perhaps.

I myself have spent a fair amount of time in our test and beta instances with the new UI turned on. I have come to like it. Moving menus from the top of the screen to the side makes a lot of sense given the shape of modern monitors.

[asatkins]

Hi Becky,

Thanks for your response, 'no' is helpful too My biggest concern with dragging our feet is that we did that with draft mode (our designers HATED draft mode) and at the end before it was forced on it felt like people who were not using it were getting less and less support for issues that were specific to the old way. I don't want to do that again, but I'm still not hearing very many people who have existing Canvas users and have had success moving over, so I'm not entirely convinced yet, lol.

Thank you for your comment

[BKINNEY]

I'm editing this post because I just realized that Amanda is not a Canvas employee!

I feel your pain. In a perfect world, there would be some early adopters who could provide you with feedback, but what's in it for them? If it were possible to turn on the new UI on a course-by-course basis, and then turn it back off if it causes problems, I'm sure we'd be able to scrape up some users, but to impose a big and possibly buggy change on all our users is not something we can consider doing globally.

Perhaps Instructure should be trying to sell us on the upside of the new UI. As I said, I have come to like it, and I hear what you are saying about better support for new UI users than for those who are having problems with a lame-duck version. BUT, for day-to-day use, what would you say are the three biggest advantages of being in the new UI? I honestly can't list any at all, apart from regaining some space in the vertical direction. People are not going to be motivated by a change in appearance, even if they find the new one more attractive (which many will not). It would be nice to know that the new UI works better in some way.

[Robbie_Grant]

 @asatkins ​,

We are also not currently using the new UI.  There are some issues with the custom javascripts that we use to deliver special menus in our sub-accounts and we are waiting until Summer 2016 to go to the new UI.

Robbie

[asatkins]

Does Canvas know about them/have a plan to fix them? We have a few of those as well, but we're considering letting some of them go because of the pain it's been to maintain them.

Thanks for chiming in!

[Robbie_Grant]

 @asatkins ​,

Yes, they are aware of the issues and are addressing them at this time.

Robbie

[SHEBENE]

We too are waiting for June to turn ours on and let the summer session be the proving grounds for us. We have a large district and won't be able to thoroughly train all the teachers for the change so we'll be relying on a global announcement with a link to the community for more info. Additionally, all this year I've been showing it during my sub account admin trainings, webinars, and mini-conferences. We have it turned on all the time in beta and I encourage people to go check it out. It's the last bit I do during trainings before fielding questions. We're hoping some of the branding and JS issues get smoothed before we go all in too as we have a bit of customization going on in there.

I'm hoping we can customize it to put the global nav back up top as I really don't like it on the left. Just imagine on the squarish 17" monitors most of our school labs have, scrolling down an inch and a half, the course nav is collapsed, no right sidebar in sight, ahhhh, just glorious content as far as the eye can see.... Now if we could only get the content to always be glorious.

[brueckert]

Hi Amanda,

We started using the new UI this August. Originally, we thought we would vet it with faculty and switch part way through the year, but after thinking of the disruption that would cause we decided it would be better to dive in. Our rationale was that the change is coming regardless, so let's just do it and tell everyone that this is the future of Canvas. That being said, we don't have much in the way of custom JS content that would have the potential to break like some others in the thread here. I was able to sell to to our faculty pretty easily as the new dashboard is very attractive and definitely a "click saver," and I certainly have people who provide plenty of feedback about the number of clicks it takes to get from point A to point B.

To be honest, I don't think I've received one bit of negative feedback. We've been Canvas users for a good five years or so and I think people were getting a little tired of the old look and feel. Many have shared how they love the direct links to content and assignment pages on the dashboard, as well as the global navigation on the left hand side of the page.

Maybe I'm an oddity, but I think the switch to the new UI was a very positive move for our school.

[BKINNEY]

Brian,

That's great news. Thanks for posting.

[anthonem]

Would any other early adopters of the new UI like to chime in?

We've been told from our CSM that roughly a third of institutions have switched to the new UI.

We are planning for a switch over Winter Quarter because that is the only time that none of our schools/colleges are in session (we run on both quarter AND semester schedules). Our CSM said she thought another bunch of institutions will be moving over winter break as well.

Any more reports from the field?

[erinhmcmillan]

If it helps at all, all the Canvas documentation and videos (as fast as we can put them out) will be switching to the new UI in January.

Erin

[KristinL]

The high school (grades 9-12) where I teach switched to the new UI in August. The thought was that we'd make the change prior to the semester start. We were able to lead our technology sessions for staff in the new UI, and that helped significantly. We also thought that since the resources in the Community were going to reflect the new UI, it would be best that our interface matched the resources available online.

I think your idea of changing during a break (holiday or semester) would make sense. However, make sure that you announce that changes will happen. That way, you can do some troubleshooting/Q&A before the new UI appears for users. We have a group of "Canvas Leaders" in our building, and we encouraged this group to investigate the new UI in our beta space before we turned on the UI for all of our users. That way, we had a support team in place for all of the inquiries at the beginning of the term.

Much like Brian, I have heard very little against the new UI - from teachers or students. At the beginning, the biggest adjustment our Canvas Leaders heard about was the location of the menus. Otherwise, the questions we had were on par with those we received with the old UI. With any technology, things evolve!

We haven't thought twice about our early opt-in with the new UI, and I believe that we would make the same decision about our timeline if we had the opportunity for a 'do over'.

 @asatkins ​, if you would like to talk more about our rollout of the new UI, let me know! I'd be happy to collaborate.

[jazemlya]

Currently we have not turned on the new UI.  We have the new UI penciled in to be turned on Dec 28th as that is the day after final grades are due for every campus at the university.  However at this time i could see that date get pushed back.  Currently we have the new UI on in Canvas test and we still have some issues with custom javascript at the root account level not being passed down to sub accounts that will have their own branding setup.  We have a ticket in with Canvas on this and i believe it only affects test and beta, not prod.  However we wont push the new UI on before confirming in test or Beta that everything will work the way we need it to for sub accounts.

However overall i like the new UI and think it is a definite step up from the old UI.  We just have a need that not all institutions may have with sub branding for certain schools, online and cert courses that we must know are 100% tested and ready before we can make the move.

[BethCrook]

We turned on the new UI in August just at the start of the school year.   Everyone has been very positive about the new look.  The one person who doesn't like it has switched their view to the Dashboard list with the toggle switch. 

Here's what I found to be the most needed training:

*  The new ways to navigate

*  How to access All Courses and star those courses they want on their Dashboard. 

In particular, since 98% of our users are using 13" laptops:

*  They can't easily get to the Help icon at the bottom of the global navigation menu

*  Course Navigation menu is hidden and they have to get used to clicking on the 3 line icon near the course name to reveal that menu.

Definitely set up your branding, etc in the Beta or Test site first.  Then replicate it on the production site when you are ready to go.

We are glad we made the switch and agree that it's inevitable, the change will occur, regardless of when.  So no reason for us to prolong it and make it harder on users because they spend extra time getting comfortable with the old UI.  Good luck!

[Stef_retired]

Hi  @BethCrook ​, you're not alone in your observation about the location of the Help button. You might want to add your feedback along with a description of your specific use case to this feature idea, currently open for voting:

[joseph_allen]

I would think since the new UI is in 'beta', Canvas would be continually tweaking it to see how it works best and meets most people's needs. That said, since its not a mature, established feature, it should not require a feature enhancement.   Anything 'below the fold' really may as well not even be there as users are not likely to see it.

[Stef_retired]

 @joseph_allen , perhaps--but clearly, Instructure is not seeing it as such, so you might want to add your feedback on that matter to the above-linked feature idea.

[ghill]

My school district (Nelson County Virginia) is piloting a Chromebook initiative this school year at our Middle School with all 7th and 8th grade students receiving Chromebooks. I was put in charge of the districts Canvas adoption which we decided to roll out along with the Chromebooks. I turned the new UI on almost immediately and the only issue that I had was was that the training videos did not match with what teachers were seeing but they adapted easily to this. I asked for feedback from my teacher advisory committee and they unanimously prefered the look and layout of the new UI.

[irishb]

Hi  @asatkins ​!

We switched to the new UI back in September (2015), shortly before our Fall quarter started and Faculty were back on contract.

In general, so far so good

- it appears many of our faculty haven't been bothered by or noticed the UI change,

though a few issues some faculty have remarked on and/or I've seen first-hand:

• "Account" and "Help" in the left bar get cut-off from view sometimes, even when in full-screen on a laptop (have seen this occur more with Mac than Windows).
• The "disappearance" of the course menu and users not being familiar with the burger icon.
• Not seeing there are two views available for the Dashboard so not seeing differences between the Dashboard and Courses (in the left bar) resulting in "why have both?" question.

On the student front, my co-worker,  @houstond  has noted:

"So far students have been pleased to see their mobile (without an app) experience improve. We've seen positive reactions from tablet users and those on mobile devices that are not able to have the Canvas App in their app store (windows phones.) All around a great change."

(from: Re: We are going to switch to the new UI on friday. How screwed are we?)

Hope that's of help. : )

Best wishes,

Bridget

Curricular Technology Support Specialist

The Evergreen State College

Olympia, Washington

[irishb]

I should add, as  @bgibson ​ mentioned,

"Few were familiar with the old UI,

so changing at the start to the New UI made sense for us."

- we also wanted to take advantage timing-wise

as a number of our faculty had not yet transitioned

from the previous LMS we'd been using 2006-2015.

[asatkins]

Thanks all, this has been really helpful, please keep chiming in as you move (if you've decided to) or if you already have (or have decided not to!). I provided a recommendation to do so based on this feedback, but our administration has decided to wait for the summer to provide as little disruption as possible. I'll be keeping an eye on this thread though, so please feel free to keep sharing!

[gordon]

Amanda,  We are putting off om the New UI until the end of the year.  We just started using Canvas in the Fall and will need to change over all of our training materials for a new school year.  leaving Moodle to come here, not our choice, has already created 5,000+ users to hate us.  We would like the targets to disappear off of our backs before we upset them one more time.

[awilliams]

gordon

Just keep in mind that it has been announced that the New UI will be turned on for everyone July 9th, 2016.

[harker]

We turned ours on during the Holiday break. Now it is our 2nd day of the Spring semester and we have not seen any mobs.

A good promotion seems to have helped us. We have created a few videos and included them in our short messages to students and faculty.

Since we don't have a lot of custom additions, it was fairly easy. We do miss our KennethWare tools though.

I will admit we did find a hack to have our Canvas tutorial courses listed on the right column in a handy drop down menu. Something we couldn't do in the last UI.

Time will tell if there will be any issues.

[asatkins]

Yes, please keep us updated!

I'm really hoping Canvas will put out a "New UI vs Old UI" 30-90 second promo we can post, but anything that helped make your transition easier we're interested in knowing!

[stephanie_johns]

I am interested in the reaction of students at institutions that have switched over. We have a lot of students used to the old UI.