By Hannah Parker
News Editor
Mira Costa implemented Canvas as its official Learning Management System at the beginning of this school year, and teachers, students and staff will continue to use it as a managing program for the 2016-17 school year, Costa Vice Principal Kristin Wolberg said.
The Manhattan Beach Unified School District Board of Trustees approved the Costa Learning Management Committee’s proposal to implement Canvas at its June 1 meeting. The committee consisted of Costa faculty, and it met sporadically throughout the 2015-16 school year to discuss the prospect of an LMS.
“From what I have heard so far this year, teachers are finding Canvas useful for communicating with students,” Costa Principal Dr. Ben Dale said. “Canvas is our one learning management system, and it’s seemingly working well.”
Canvas allows teachers to post files, administer exams and send notifications to students about grades and assignments. Additionally, Canvas imports grades into the Student Management System Powerschool. According to a teacher survey, the priority that is placed on streamlining grades is the most important feature of an LMS, Wolberg said.
Read the District’s goals for the school year.
“Teachers are noticing the benefits of the streamlined grading,” Wolberg said. “Students are now able to get helpful feedback quicker and teachers are able to push information to the kids right away.”
The process in selecting Canvas as the LMS began before the 2015-16 school year when the LMS Committee invited teachers to attend demonstration days on campus where they were introduced to different LMSs. During the 2015-16 school year, teachers were able to pilot LMS systems including Canvas, EBackpack, Google Classrooms and Hiku and attend LMS Committee meetings to voice their opinions on each system.
Read about the benefits to using Canvas as an LMS
“It was great to hear at our last professional development on Aug. 26 that 100 percent of teachers were using Canvas,” Dale said. “It is necessary because students need one place to find their work, not six.”
Canvas has been implemented into MBUSD’s 2016-17 budget. The program will cost $30,000 for the first year and $20,000 for the second year.
“There are tons of benefits with Canvas,” Wolberg said. “The feedback that we have gotten from parents has been particularly strong. They can now help manage and support their students at home.”
According to a survey of 20 Costa teachers, a majority stated that Canvas is an organized and advantageous system for students and staff. Costa English teacher William Brown said that while having minor technical issues, Canvas is helpful in creating a streamlined system.
“Before we started using Canvas, I had a website for my students,” Brown said. “I think having one spot for everything is pretty helpful. There were some glitches, but those have been worked out.”
Additionally, a survey of 157 students showed that 57 percent of the students polled either slightly or strongly agree that gathering and managing assignments is easier using Canvas; however, Costa senior Hira Shah feels that consistency may be a problem, she said.
“I think Canvas has been helpful,” Shah said. “However, it can be confusing if teachers are not consistent and do not always use it.”
Although Costa has transferred to using Canvas as its LMS for the remainder of the school year, Costa will not be transferring its SMS Powerschool to Aeries, a program under consideration that can also be used to post grades, Dale said. A district committee met on Sept. 8 to review the success of using Powerschool as Costa’s SMS, Dale said.
“The transfer to Aires is a rumor,” Dale said. “However, just like Canvas, we revisit our SMS every four years or so to ensure that it is still the best option for Costa.”
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