Liverpool John Moores University Case Study

Liverpool John Moores University is a modern post ‘92 university rooted in the Liverpool City Region but with a global presence. Professor Mark Power, Vice-Chancellor and Chief Executive, describes the institution as " transforming lives and futures, by placing students at the heart of everything we do. " Driven by their student-centric focus, LJMU moved to Canvas with the aim of delivering a more personalised experience for teachers and students.

Prior to choosing Canvas, LJMU encountered a range of issues with their on-premise VLE that made it difficult to deliver the service they desired for staff and students. As is typical with an on-premise solution, LJMU were reliant on IT staff to provide database support whilst the Learning Technology Team provided technical and pedagogic support. The two biggest issues LJMU faced were managing the upgrade cycles and the need for bespoke tools.

For institutions that have moved to Cloud solutions, the idea of lengthy downtime is a thing of the past and struggling with this was a key driver for LJMU choosing Canvas, a cloud-native platform. The upgrade cycles left LJMU without a system for two weeks per year which was a particular struggle for the university as they run non-standard programmes over the summer. This meant that there wasn’t a good time to have a shutdown and teaching and learning would always be affected. In addition to planned downtime, LJMU also struggled with 2-3 days of unexpected downtime which left teachers and students without access to critical learning materials and assessments.

LJMU built a business case to change their VLE to a Cloud solution and began the process by holding focus groups with academics and programme leaders to develop requirements. Canvas outperformed its competitors and situated itself as the leading viable learning management system. The key to their success in transitioning from their existing VLE to Canvas was keeping academics engaged throughout the process, involving them in the procurement and asking for feedback in reviewing tools. Once Canvas was selected, the TEL team offered support and provided mandatory training for staff, successfully training over 1000 staff. Teachers were given the flexibility to use Canvas in the way that was most helpful for them which has resulted in a good level of usage across the board.

LJMU have leveraged Canvas’ open API and built their own LTIs which have been easy to integrate into Canvas. This has allowed them to develop the specific tools they need while ensuring staff and students don’t have to leave the Canvas platform to access them.

Key Information - Prior to using Canvas, LJMU stored key information about each course on a pdf. This included details of the aims of the course, hours involved, learning outcomes, assessments, and reading lists. Now this information has been transferred to an LTI and because Canvas allows the upload of their own javascript files, LJMU has been able to manipulate the Course menu and add Key Information as an option within every Course menu.

Feedback Dashboard - LJMU worked with Academic Staff and JMSU (John Moores Student Union) to create a system within Canvas that aggregates an individual student’s electronic feedback into a single Feedback Dashboard. Tutors can then use this to discuss, with the student, how they might use this feedback to help them improve their future submissions. A key benefit of this tool is that it acts as an early warning sign for students that are struggling, giving tutors the ability to identify and address this with the student.

My Canvas admin - this tool has been added to all staff profiles and allows them to manage enrolments, export critical assessment data and create Canvas journals for their students. As this correlates with the API, staff can create filters on all the courses they are assigned to, add external examiners and extract data into CSV files.

Canvas is central to LJMU’s teaching and learning and there are key tools favoured by staff and students:

Assessing students - The assessment tool is the most frequently used tool and has been very successful among academics. Students find it easy to upload assessments whether on a desktop or via a mobile device and academics enjoy being able to grade these within Canvas.

Reviewing assignments - Academics appreciate the deep integration that Canvas has with the Turnitin framework. Staff are also starting to use the rubrics tool which sets out the assignment requirements, so students know what they need to do to be successful in the assignment. It’s also beneficial for teachers to see as they mark assignments.

Providing feedback - Staff particularly find the annotations feature useful and find it easy to provide feedback to students. Feedback can be delivered in a number of ways, tailoring and personalising the experience for both staff and students. LJMU have recently released the emoji’s feature which they hope will be particularly beneficial for neurodiverse students.

Canvas is deeply embedded within LJMU’s technology ecosystem and was key to staff and students being able to continue teaching and learning remotely during the pandemic. Teaching remains largely in-person at the university but Canvas gives students the ability to move seamlessly between the on-campus environment and their virtual space.