Listen Here
By: Eli Garmon
The new school year brings a lot of new and interesting challenges but teachers and students alike agree that the switch from Blackboard to Canvas is not one of them.
The University of Findlay is now in the process of a campus wide transition from Blackboard to Canvas. This transition started in the spring semester of 2018 when Meriah Sage, theatre professor, was asked to be on a trial run of Canvas before it was decided to switch.
“It went great,” Sage said. “It was fabulous. I love Canvas, so it was easy for me to teach the students. The students actually used it in class and outside of class, so it functioned really well.”
Sage continued to explain that she had used Canvas before at another university. When she found out that Findlay was switching to Canvas, she was excited.
The students also love the switch. Becca Kowalski, UF senior Children’s Book Illustration major, said Canvas is much easier to use than Blackboard.
“I’d say Canvas is better,” Kowalski said. “It defiantly works better on the app on the phone. Blackboard always messed up and didn’t have a good layout. I think the layout is just really easy to follow which is good because I’m not good with computers.”
To Kowalski, Canvas seems to be very user friendly and structured better.
There are a lot of benefits that come with the switch to Canvas, but there are also some technical obstacles that need to be addressed. Sherri Tobias, UF adjunct professor, loved the aesthetics of Canvas but has some technical issues that came up.
“There’s a bit of a glitch it seems like at least when I use it in Firefox as apposed to Chrome with the integration between google apps that you are supposed that you are supposed to be able to integrate those in in to the pages,” Tobias said.
Although there may be some issue with Canvas, the university has a great tech team that will help you fix those problems. Sage explained what problems she had when first starting out on Canvas.
“The biggest challenged I faced as an instructor was the group quizzes and I tried to be resourceful and find it out myself and that was maybe the problem. But as soon as I went in to ask about it they answered my question within 10 seconds,” Sage said.
The University of Findlay has an online video tutorial that is provided through learnit.hoonuit.com. There you will find multiple different videos that teach you how to use Canvas as a teacher and a student.
