Educational technology platform Canvas

WITH all the big steps the Philippines is currently making to boost its educational sector, the learning management system Canvas has been made available by educational technology company Instructure Inc. in the country. This educational tool is designed to create a compelling teaching and learning experience for K to 12 to higher and further education students.

With its customizable, user-friendly interface, Canvas simplifies the learning experience online, mobile or tablet. It also facilitates easy integration of content, applications, tools and services that teachers need to share, to catalyze discussion and encourage students to share inputs and participate in discussions. Canvas is cloud based, which means features and functions are regularly updated and pushed out to customers, and the platform is reliable with 99.9% uptime.

Welcoming Paradigm Shifts

“One of the most interesting developments in the past decade has been toward the integration of learning management tools to facilitate more efficient, participative, and collaborative learning, making the educational process easier for both teachers and students,” explains Troy Martin, Director, APAC Sales at Instructure, Inc. “With this advancement, we’ve seen the “thinning the walls” of the classroom over the years — engaging a larger, authentic community in the process.”

For teachers of fully online courses, Instructure has seen a shift toward greater social interaction, providing more opportunities for collaboration; both enabled by improved technology (Canvas) and a natural result of continual changes to course design.

For teachers of traditional classroom based courses, there is also a shift from using the LMS primarily as a content repository – a place to store syllabi and resources – to one which truly changes the learning experience.

“Teachers are beginning to move learning activities such as quizzes, assignment submissions and peer reviews from the classroom online, and are slowly extending classroom activities (such as discussions) outside the physical walls and into the space that the LMS provides,” Martin emphasized.

Ramping up Teaching and Learning in PH

With Canvas, teachers can provide formative and summative assessment and live rich feedback (including video) via the Canvas Speedgrader App. On the other hand, Canvas also gives the students a portal wherein they can respond, react to the teacher’s and their classmates’ inputs as well as an arena where they can collaborate with each other.

“The visibility of a student’s progress also allows the teacher to push certain areas of the curricula to address specific learning outcomes, and also enables parents to keep track of progress too,” Martin noted.

Video also allows teachers pull in experts in certain subject areas, or students can attend courses in a different school remotely, it also means that teachers can continue their own professional development with a wealth of academics and content available to them.

“This open education can make a real difference to teaching, it means that content is more relevant, more global and innovative, and more up to date than static text books,” Martin concluded.

For more information on Canvas by Instructure and to try it for free, please visitwww.CanvasLMS.com.hk/.