Campus-wide Survey regarding Canvas/Online Learning

[luke_caldwell]

We made the transition to Canvas last fall and we are looking to survey our students to see how we are doing and how we can still improve. It is a little more focused then the surveys that Instructure sends out quarterly but not as intense as some of the surveys I have seen about LMSs in general. Obviously each survey needs to be crafted with a purpose in place, which impacts every survey but I was wondering if any other admins would be willing to share any student survey templates that they might use to evaluate student's perspectives on current systems involving Canvas. This would help us see how others are gathering this information and could give us some direction. Why recreate the wheel if others, who are more gifted and talented, have previously created an efficient round one, right?

[kona]

 @luke_caldwell , attached is a survey we normally send out about once a year. We find the information very useful and it's also nice that we can track the results from year to year to see if things are improving (or not).

Also, since there isn't really a right or wrong answer for this, I'm going to change this over to a discussion.

Hope this helps and let me know if you have any questions!

[luke_caldwell]

 @kona ,

I used almost all of these questions. Thanks so much for sending it out. We only had about a 10% response rate for students, but I will take it. After our first full year of using Canvas, 94% students rated their Canvas experience with either Positive or Very Positive. Way to go Canvas!

[guilera]

We are considering Canvas and would like how your faculty and students are transitioning.

Sounds like you have a very favorable experience from the students - 94%

Do you have a faculty survey?

[kona]

 @guilera , I'm not sure about Luke, but we conduct a student and faculty survey once a year; we did it more often when we were piloting and the first year of using Canvas.

In Spring 2016 we had 96.9% of our faculty and 95.8% of students indicate they are having a positive to very positive experience with Canvas.

We've been using Canvas since 2012-2013 and faculty and students experience with Canvas started and have remained high the entire time.

Hope this helps!

[guilera]

Thanks – we considering moving from Bb and trying to be objective about each product in our preliminary investigation.

Is there anything students/ faculty wish they could do in Canvas?

[kona]

Well yes, no LMS is perfect! Yet, when we did all of our user testing Canvas came out as the clear winner in regards to the things it did have (and in some cases the extra features that we hadn't had before) being more important than features it didn't have. Here's a list I came up with for our faculty to help them understand the differences between Canvas and Angel (the LMS we were on before) - Angel to Canvas Comparison Sheet for Faculty

In addition, the decision was about more than just features. It also had to do with the stability of the LMS (Would it go down during crucial times of the semester?), the company itself (Did the company seem like one that actually cared about it's product and users? How is customer support?), and the LMS roadmap (Where is the company going with the LMS? How often do new features come out and get implemented? Are customers given the opportunity to provide their input into new features or features that need changed?).

When we looked at the big picture Canvas came out on top for these things and while not perfect, continues to more than meet our needs (and normally exceed them!).

Hope this helps!

[luke_caldwell]

I do not remember if  @kona ​ sent me a faculty copy or if I just adjusted the student survey for faculty? Regardless, here is what we used for the Faculty Survey.

If anyone else uses this for their institution or adapts it for their institution, please let me know!

The students transitioned better than the faculty, yet I think we could have provided more resources to them, especially the video guides that Canvas provides. Yet, many of our students do not actually look for support until they cannot find something so who knows how helpful those videos would have been for the masses.

We had a low number of faculty complete the survey and you can come to your own conclusions regarding who in fact completes the online survey offered through Canvas (probably not the professor who rarely signs into Canvas nor the one who is easily overwhelmed by technology) yet we needed to establish a baseline with gathering our data.

Hope this helps!