Video: University of Iceland Case Study
The University of Iceland is a public university, founded in nineteen eleven. Now we have, around fifteen thousand students in five schools, twenty six faculties. It's a broad university with a lot of disciplines. And, I would, yeah, I would say the best word to describe the culture is it's very diverse in in many senses. Here at the University of Iceland, we just finished our second full year of using Canvas. And, the implementation of Canvas was really affected by the pandemic, both because we had issues with just implementing it, teaching people how to use it.
We couldn't have them on-site, so we had to teach, the teachers how to use Canvas online. And, but on the other hand, also our teachers were forced to move into the world of e learning really fast. So the pandemic kind of helped us in a way, but in the same time, it posed some challenges for us to overcome. At the beginning of the implementation process here at the University of Iceland, we decided to get some consulting from Instructure about the change, process, how to manage the change. And we had a team with us from, Instructure that came here on-site and, basically started asking some really demanding questions, about how we wanted to manage the change.
But the basic question was always, why are you changing? So we invested a lot of time, a lot of effort into traveling around the campus and explaining to the users here why we were making the change, why it was important to have one system for all students, along with introducing the timeline of the change and how to get trained in using it and so on. But I think the biggest lesson we learned was to explain to users why we were moving, to Canvas. And as I said, we are just finishing our second year of using of, Canvas, and we are now looking into the future, how we can improve and the student experience, the teacher, experience, and so on. When I came here in the university, we were using an intra system called Ugla, the owl. And that was like the a clunky system, I have to say.
And I partook in the shift, the camera shift. And of course, you get nervous at the start, but, the University of Iceland did a great job, I have to say, to implement the system. Since I started to use canvas, I think it's quite a good system. It's clear, graphic, even if I'm getting a little bit old, I'm still young enough to understand these things, because I've also used systems that look like the cockpit in a NASA shuttle or something like that. And that's not a good thing.
One of the benefits of using Canvas is that it's rather easy to integrate tools. Like, we have already integrated Panopto that is, used for recording lectures in our lecture halls. We also needed a very powerful tool for peer reviewing, and, we found a tool called Feedback Fruits. And, the integration there was really smooth, and it really smoothly opens up within Canvas. So in fact, the students or the teacher really don't notice that they are using an LTI, a tool from another source within Canvas.
And that helps us to enrich and make the tool even more powerful, make our LMS more powerful. My favorite tools in Canvas is, you know, I just use it a lot to send out emails, student feedback, and then there are tools there that, you know, I kind of know what to do. But if I don't have to use them, I don't. But I have them, you know, ready if I have to. So I I I also try not to make things too difficult for me.
The top notch thing is, of course, the grading to grade a course is what runs the course, you could say. And the SpeedGrader system is top notch. I've used SpeedGrader, feedback wise by using the video feedback, which I was simply told by the Canvas, staff here at the university that that was the thing to do. I didn't think about anything else. I can see now that you can do a very simple feedback.
You can write the feedback. You can have an audio, but you also have a video feedback. I asked my colleague, how does this work? They told me that the video feedback is a very useful tool, especially if you have a bad report. Then, the student has a teacher on the other end, a caring teacher, which his only concern is to, you know, help the student along. And this somehow diffuses, the danger of cold email feedback, where you can read things into the email that maybe weren't there.
One smiley maybe doesn't make make make the difference. But when you see a facial expression, a caring teacher, a teacher who is doing like this and then he's smiling and try to change this around then then we then we have a success. That's the thing. And this I heard from a colleague that, this is a very useful tool if you have a bad report. I've also when I've talked to my students about the video feedback, they are very, you know, they're super happy about it.
They've they've come up to me and say, I like the video feedback. That's something I like. Especially, I I do a lot of courses that are essay based. I maybe have three or four short essays so you can see, a progress through the essays. And they're getting this constant, humane feedback.
So that's that's what I like. And now I'm speaking like I invented the machine. But, you know, this is just great. Great tool for education, I have to say. Canon studio was an addition to cameras that we bought right at the beginning.
We have had here for quite a while another system that, teachers use when they are recording lectures in the in the lecture halls. But we wanted a tool that would allow teachers to pre record videos and and content for the students, as a part of a shift from having lectures and using the time with student for lectures, into more kind of like a flipped teaching approach where you could produce videos and explain things, and then they use the time with students for group work or discussions and so on. So, we saw potential in studio with the kind of simple editing and the simple and user friendly recording. And it integrates so well within Canvas that we wanted to present it to our teachers as well. As addition to recording a lecture in the lecture hall, you could use Studio to produce prerecorded material.
We have been using Impact here at the university for a year and a half now. We first saw it at, Carnascan in Barcelona in two thousand and eighteen. And what we see as the biggest benefit of it well, there are several benefits, but one of them is the possibility to be proactive in support to because we get a lot of emails from teachers and students about things that they don't understand and so on. So you can place messages at the right time, at the right place within Canvas with a link to a support article. That's very important.
Another thing is that we can analyze the usage of, certain features of Canvas. And if we see that there's a feature we would like to, get more adoption with, we can run a campaign. You know, so when a teacher is doing something, he gets a message, hey, have you seen that you can do this and all that? We used it essentially to increase, feedback to students. It just happened to be that we were also increasing the usage of SpeedGrader, which is probably our favorite tool within Canvas, but because it's fancy, because it's very practical and facilitates feedback back to students very much. And we saw an increase of about forty percent in the usage of, of SpeedGrader.
Not just in, using SpeedGrader, but to actually give feedback to students, which is very important. And a part of our strategy for the quality of learning is that students get more feedback on their work that they are submitting. And we were very happy to see that. And it showed us that if you plan and you create a strategy and you know what you want to increase, impact can be very useful for that. The biggest change we've seen since we started using Canvas is, of course, that now we have one system for, all students.
We are moving towards a more, strategic plan for, online learning, and Canvas, facilitates that in in a way that we have all the tools at hand that we need. But our next steps and our next goal is to improve the usage of cameras. In terms of the student engagement, generally, I've just heard that they like the system and this is a system they understand. And I know that they think this is modern. They know the the difference between clunky systems and good approachable systems.
With the older systems, you could hear a lot of complaining, and I never hear anything like that. This is, like, just a normal thing for them. So for me, overall, Canvas has been just a great asset for me as a teacher and for the university, and this has just, you know, given away to more flow. And the system as such, it's just well written, understandable, just approachable for, teachers. Also, the the people who fear technology, this is The canvas is kind to you.
We couldn't have them on-site, so we had to teach, the teachers how to use Canvas online. And, but on the other hand, also our teachers were forced to move into the world of e learning really fast. So the pandemic kind of helped us in a way, but in the same time, it posed some challenges for us to overcome. At the beginning of the implementation process here at the University of Iceland, we decided to get some consulting from Instructure about the change, process, how to manage the change. And we had a team with us from, Instructure that came here on-site and, basically started asking some really demanding questions, about how we wanted to manage the change.
But the basic question was always, why are you changing? So we invested a lot of time, a lot of effort into traveling around the campus and explaining to the users here why we were making the change, why it was important to have one system for all students, along with introducing the timeline of the change and how to get trained in using it and so on. But I think the biggest lesson we learned was to explain to users why we were moving, to Canvas. And as I said, we are just finishing our second year of using of, Canvas, and we are now looking into the future, how we can improve and the student experience, the teacher, experience, and so on. When I came here in the university, we were using an intra system called Ugla, the owl. And that was like the a clunky system, I have to say.
And I partook in the shift, the camera shift. And of course, you get nervous at the start, but, the University of Iceland did a great job, I have to say, to implement the system. Since I started to use canvas, I think it's quite a good system. It's clear, graphic, even if I'm getting a little bit old, I'm still young enough to understand these things, because I've also used systems that look like the cockpit in a NASA shuttle or something like that. And that's not a good thing.
One of the benefits of using Canvas is that it's rather easy to integrate tools. Like, we have already integrated Panopto that is, used for recording lectures in our lecture halls. We also needed a very powerful tool for peer reviewing, and, we found a tool called Feedback Fruits. And, the integration there was really smooth, and it really smoothly opens up within Canvas. So in fact, the students or the teacher really don't notice that they are using an LTI, a tool from another source within Canvas.
And that helps us to enrich and make the tool even more powerful, make our LMS more powerful. My favorite tools in Canvas is, you know, I just use it a lot to send out emails, student feedback, and then there are tools there that, you know, I kind of know what to do. But if I don't have to use them, I don't. But I have them, you know, ready if I have to. So I I I also try not to make things too difficult for me.
The top notch thing is, of course, the grading to grade a course is what runs the course, you could say. And the SpeedGrader system is top notch. I've used SpeedGrader, feedback wise by using the video feedback, which I was simply told by the Canvas, staff here at the university that that was the thing to do. I didn't think about anything else. I can see now that you can do a very simple feedback.
You can write the feedback. You can have an audio, but you also have a video feedback. I asked my colleague, how does this work? They told me that the video feedback is a very useful tool, especially if you have a bad report. Then, the student has a teacher on the other end, a caring teacher, which his only concern is to, you know, help the student along. And this somehow diffuses, the danger of cold email feedback, where you can read things into the email that maybe weren't there.
One smiley maybe doesn't make make make the difference. But when you see a facial expression, a caring teacher, a teacher who is doing like this and then he's smiling and try to change this around then then we then we have a success. That's the thing. And this I heard from a colleague that, this is a very useful tool if you have a bad report. I've also when I've talked to my students about the video feedback, they are very, you know, they're super happy about it.
They've they've come up to me and say, I like the video feedback. That's something I like. Especially, I I do a lot of courses that are essay based. I maybe have three or four short essays so you can see, a progress through the essays. And they're getting this constant, humane feedback.
So that's that's what I like. And now I'm speaking like I invented the machine. But, you know, this is just great. Great tool for education, I have to say. Canon studio was an addition to cameras that we bought right at the beginning.
We have had here for quite a while another system that, teachers use when they are recording lectures in the in the lecture halls. But we wanted a tool that would allow teachers to pre record videos and and content for the students, as a part of a shift from having lectures and using the time with student for lectures, into more kind of like a flipped teaching approach where you could produce videos and explain things, and then they use the time with students for group work or discussions and so on. So, we saw potential in studio with the kind of simple editing and the simple and user friendly recording. And it integrates so well within Canvas that we wanted to present it to our teachers as well. As addition to recording a lecture in the lecture hall, you could use Studio to produce prerecorded material.
We have been using Impact here at the university for a year and a half now. We first saw it at, Carnascan in Barcelona in two thousand and eighteen. And what we see as the biggest benefit of it well, there are several benefits, but one of them is the possibility to be proactive in support to because we get a lot of emails from teachers and students about things that they don't understand and so on. So you can place messages at the right time, at the right place within Canvas with a link to a support article. That's very important.
Another thing is that we can analyze the usage of, certain features of Canvas. And if we see that there's a feature we would like to, get more adoption with, we can run a campaign. You know, so when a teacher is doing something, he gets a message, hey, have you seen that you can do this and all that? We used it essentially to increase, feedback to students. It just happened to be that we were also increasing the usage of SpeedGrader, which is probably our favorite tool within Canvas, but because it's fancy, because it's very practical and facilitates feedback back to students very much. And we saw an increase of about forty percent in the usage of, of SpeedGrader.
Not just in, using SpeedGrader, but to actually give feedback to students, which is very important. And a part of our strategy for the quality of learning is that students get more feedback on their work that they are submitting. And we were very happy to see that. And it showed us that if you plan and you create a strategy and you know what you want to increase, impact can be very useful for that. The biggest change we've seen since we started using Canvas is, of course, that now we have one system for, all students.
We are moving towards a more, strategic plan for, online learning, and Canvas, facilitates that in in a way that we have all the tools at hand that we need. But our next steps and our next goal is to improve the usage of cameras. In terms of the student engagement, generally, I've just heard that they like the system and this is a system they understand. And I know that they think this is modern. They know the the difference between clunky systems and good approachable systems.
With the older systems, you could hear a lot of complaining, and I never hear anything like that. This is, like, just a normal thing for them. So for me, overall, Canvas has been just a great asset for me as a teacher and for the university, and this has just, you know, given away to more flow. And the system as such, it's just well written, understandable, just approachable for, teachers. Also, the the people who fear technology, this is The canvas is kind to you.