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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE
Office of Information Technology (OIT)
Service Description: Canvas, Instructional Technology and Electronic Educational Environment (EEE) Web Applications
Effective Date: July 1st, 2019
2019-2020 Academic year
General Overview
This document describes the instructional technology web application services provided by the Office of Information Technology (OIT) to academic units in support of courses offered through programs that are subject to technology funding requirements (for example: self-supporting graduate programs).
Service Scope
OIT provides application support and highly-available infrastructure for the Instructure Canvas course management system located at http://canvas.eee.uci.edu/ as well as supporting services (e.g. official enrollment and course data management) and supported third party or homegrown ancillary services. Supported classes include traditional, hybrid, and fully online courses and programs that have course codes and are listed in the University Registrar’s course catalog.
Current and expected users of Instructure Canvas include:
- On-ground, hybrid, and online students, instructors, and teaching assistants
- Instructional design support staff
- Technical support staff
This service description is effective for twelve months beginning July 1st, 2019, at which point it will be reviewed, costs will be reassessed and may be adjusted, and the service description may be extended.
Cost
The current cost assessment can be found at https://www.oit.uci.edu/recharge-services/#canvas.
Programs are responsible for providing OIT with good faith estimates of their student headcount. This estimate may be based on historic averages and current enrollment trends. If a program’s actual student headcount at the end of the academic year differs from the estimate by 30% or more (higher or lower), either a refund or additional charge will be initiated accordingly.
For new programs without an enrollment history to draw upon, a good faith estimate based on the program’s expected enrollment and/or comparable programs will be accepted as the starting point.
During Week 9 of each quarter, OIT will exchange recharge account funds with each participating academic department along with the list of course codes, course titles, instructors’ names, and the total count of unique students officially enrolled in the program.
System, Application, and Programming Support
OIT will provide the hardware and software infrastructure to support courses (as outlined in “Service Scope”) utilizing a combination of vendor software (Canvas) and in-house development (including the core user and course data management utilities and other custom applications). Various components of maintenance and systems support provided by the OIT team include:
Architecture and Infrastructure
OIT will provide required infrastructure and back-ups including redundant servers and database architecture for OIT products and services. OIT will provide 24/7 automated system monitoring and on-call staff member response.
Software Maintenance
Instructure Canvas is a cloud-hosted, vendor-supported application. The vendor will manage software updates to the Instructure Canvas software.
OIT will manage communication with the vendor and end-users around any service disruptions anticipated as a result of maintenance and upgrades.
Infrastructure to support the campus Canvas environment is custom built and maintained by OIT. OIT will monitor systems status and perform regular maintenance and operational activities, scheduling disruptive, non-emergency maintenance during off-hours and in balanced consideration of campus activities, and providing advance notice of at least 2 full business days.
OIT will provide as much notice as reasonably possible in the case of emergency upgrades or maintenance required to resolve security vulnerabilities or other critical issues.
Custom Development
Customizations or augmentation to the Canvas course management system are limited given the nature of the vendor application and are not included as part of this agreement.
Any requested customizations, augmentations, or custom development work will be considered alongside other project priorities and requires additional funding. Custom projects can be submitted for consideration via email to eee-support@uci.edu.
OIT supports campus Canvas authentication via WebAuth.
Canvas Integration of Third Party Tools & Services
All third party integrations with Canvas require Learning Management System (LMS) administrator approval. Some may require additional funding. Custom integrations with third party tools and services may be requested via email to eee-support@uci.edu and will be taken into consideration on an individual basis. OIT will approach requests with an intent to proceed as often as possible; however, approval cannot be universally guaranteed and approved services may be discontinued in the case of contract lapse or other material incompatibility with applicable university policies and legal considerations.
In some cases, tools that do not pass review for campus-wide integration may still be approved for Canvas integration at the school or department level, which OIT will take responsibility to implement, provided that the overall risk level is within an acceptable range and the school or department is also prepared to accept responsibility for any additional risk beyond that which would typically be acceptable for a campus-wide integration.
The pace of the vetting process is variable. OIT can make no guarantee of a standard time frame, outcome, or availability of funding for third party tool review or implementation.
OIT is responsible for technical implementation, configuration, and, unless otherwise established prior to production release of any approved integrations, general support to ensure integrations are appropriately configured and functioning as expected.
For most integrated services implemented campus-wide, OIT will also provide some degree of troubleshooting and interaction with applicable vendors. Beyond basic configuration, OIT cannot guarantee broader support for custom integrations implemented at the school or department level.
Integrated third party services developed by staff or consultants in other campus units also require OIT consultation, vetting, approval, and are to be maintained and supported by staff from the applicable campus units.
Canvas Data Portal
This service does not include retrieval, filtering, or refining of information, including user activity logs, from the Canvas Data Portal’s raw data retrieval mechanism. Canvas Data requests will be treated as separate development/work requests and may require additional funding.
Canvas Data Retention
OIT is responsible for determining and implementing retention policies governing all data and content associated with the campus’ Canvas instance.
Other LMS Services
OIT is responsible for determining which of the legacy, custom learning management tools and services OIT has historically built and maintained (e.g. the campus’ official online Evaluations system) will be retained, retired, or rebuilt. OIT is responsible for implementing retention, retirement, or rebuild plans, maintaining and supporting retained or rebuilt services, and providing timely information to end-users and other stakeholders throughout the multi-year transition.
Quality Assurance
OIT is responsible for testing prior to delivery of any new updates or any new changes.
Support
End-User Technical Support
OIT is responsible for front-line technical support to users of all OIT-supported services, including but not limited to: campus UCInetID accounts, campus email service, campus wireless network service, and OIT supported web applications. OIT is responsible for issue escalation and communication with applicable vendors and other third parties for those issues that cannot be fully addressed by OIT staff.
Emergency Support
24/7 emergency support is available by phone at (949) 824-2222 or through oit@uci.edu.
Non-emergency Support
Non-emergency support is available by phone at (949) 824-2222 or through eee-support@uci.edu. For non-emergency support, OIT staff are generally available during the 8AM-5PM Monday through Friday schedule based on the campus calendar and contingent upon individual staff availability. OIT primary and secondary support staff will be assigned as appropriate.
Account Policies and Responsibilities
All users of all supported OIT services must adhere to UCI’s Computer and Network Use Policy available at http://www.policies.uci.edu/adm/pols/714-18.html.
For those campus units that offer in-house technical support to subgroups of OIT service users, OIT is responsible for determining what, if any, roles and accounts can be provided with adequate system permissions to troubleshoot issues and provide assistance to users without compromising the privacy of other users or the security and stability of the system for all campus users.
Campus units with specialized support and/or administrative access are responsible for requesting access for new individuals with at least 5 business days of lead time, and notifying OIT if any existing users should have their access removed.
Users and campus groups assume responsibility for general security best practices (e.g. selecting strong and unique passwords, not sharing passwords, and referring users to relevant resources from OIT).
Service Failure
While OIT will take necessary measures to prevent unscheduled service disruptions, the possibility of hardware and software failures beyond OIT control still exists due to the nature of the vendor-supported system, system crash, disk failure, power outage, network problem, or similar causes.
Software Rights
All the software owned or developed by Instructure remains the property of Instructure and shall not be copied, distributed or modified without the express permission of Instructure.
All the software owned or developed by OIT remains the property of OIT and shall not be copied, distributed or modified without the express permission of OIT.
Supporting Information
The following project / enhancement proposal request form is an example for the information required to request custom projects, including Canvas augmentations, third party integrations, and any other custom enhancements or addition to OIT supported services.
Project / Enhancement Proposal
The project proposal form can be found at OIT’s project proposal website: https://wiki.oit.uci.edu/display/public/How+to+Submit+a+New+Project
Signature Form for Professional Programs
EEE Web Applications are primarily geared toward supporting undergraduate education. By special arrangement, EEE services may be made available to UCI professional programs. For more information, please contact eee-support@uci.edu.