San Juan College with Canvas LMS and Impact

San Juan College (SJC) is a public community college in Farmington, New Mexico. SJC has been an Impact by Instructure customer since 2020. Their main goals were to get an in-depth view of what was going on in their Canvas LMS in order to develop an effective strategy to increase adoption and build confidence in the tools. When the COVID-19 pandemic moved teaching and learning online, SJC also needed to ensure that their users were receiving relevant and timely information, accessing resources on how to use all EdTech tools, and were able to reach the appropriate support escalation route when appropriate.

San Juan College (SJC) has been an Impact by Instructure customer since 2020. Their main goal was to get an in-depth view of how faculty and students were using their Canvas LMS in order to develop an effective strategy to increase adoption. When the COVID-19 pandemic moved teaching and learning entirely online, SJC needed to ensure that their users were receiving relevant and timely information, accessing resources on how to use all EdTech tools, and were able to reach the appropriate support escalation routes.

In 2020, SJC started using Impact by Instructure to get a deeper look into the way its Learning Management System (LMS), Canvas, was being used by students and faculty. Karen Acree, the Director of Applications and Technology Learning Services, and Greg Reynolds, Manager of Technology Learning Services, wanted to be able to analyze LMS adoption to create a strategy that could improve their EdTech optimization.

Karen Acree also found Impact’s insights and reports to be useful tools for interdepartmental communication and long-term strategy building. With Impact, Karen, Greg and their teams could identify the areas within Canvas and the third-party tools that needed more attention, as well as the users that needed more encouragement to use certain tools or pages. They noted that the real time monitoring is particularly helpful during specific parts of the year to make sure users are getting the most out of Canvas, such as at the beginning of a semester or during exam season.

With the deep reporting capabilities of Impact, SJC can investigate usage and LMS adoption on a course or even individual user basis. Not only can Karen and Greg collect vital performance data about the Canvas usage, Impact makes it easy to monitor and track third party Learning Tool Interoperability (LTI) and identify successful tool integrations, as well as those that need more attention, and as they go, they can calibrate their budgets accordingly.

Karen, Greg and their team have been utilizing 24/7 in app messaging in order to effectively communicate with their institutional community. The ability to target specific user groups with relevant messaging has also improved engagement and self-help efforts among users.

When learning transitioned to a 100% online experience during the pandemic, there was an urgency to deliver effective communication through Canvas and to make sure that all users knew how to use these essential EdTech tools. With Impact’s messaging feature, SJC could place messages right within their Canvas LMS to guide users and help them navigate to relevant resources immediately. However, they quickly realized that they needed to create more documentation, specifically video tutorials, to introduce certain aspects of the Canvas LMS that users may need to leverage.

Since users weren’t able to ask any questions or receive any training face-to-face, the most effective way to answer questions was to create a library of video tutorials.

Greg’s team even made a basic Canvas introduction video that covered everything from logging in, to checking grades and navigating through third-party tools. This was a tremendous help and alleviated the help desk from basic navigation tickets, especially during the beginning of semester when new students arrived.

Greg noted that videos became a really important tool not just for helping students navigate through courses, but also as training materials for faculty. However, despite the time and effort that went into creating such valuable video tutorials, the users weren’t watching them because they weren’t easily accessible in the right place at the right time.

This is where Impact came to the rescue. Greg and his team were able to embed these videos in messages that could be anchored to the areas where they would be needed, as a result, engagement shot up.

There were even fewer tickets coming into the help desk regarding issues that were covered by the videos and users turned to a self-help approach when presented with the materials proactively.

Karen and Greg also found that embedding videos in the messages increased engagement because students at SJC preferred to have visual guidance rather than absorbing the content as long checklists or heavy text.

In addition, the videos offered a more personal approach, which was well-received during a time when face-to-face interactions were limited due to campus closure.

Having personal, contextual and proactive help right within the Canvas LMS environment resulted in users becoming more independent when seeking answers. With easy accessibility through the Impact support center and linking resources in messages, users no longer had to leave the LMS in order to get information or answers to their questions.

Looking to the future, Impact by Instructure continues to provide proactive messaging, support and in-depth insights for SJC to support their digital transformation and EdTech adoption strategy. In addition, Karen, Greg and their team are looking forward to be able to utilize the upcoming walkthrough feature in order to further support their users’ navigation through Canvas. The students at SJC value a hands-on approach when learning the functionalities of these tools, blending the video tutorials with an in-depth, step-by-step walkthrough is proving to be ideal for their campus.