On January 8th, 2015, CIO Dana Roode sent a ZotMail out to campus faculty and staff about the Canvas Pilot project.
Colleagues,
Technology is playing a rapidly increasing role in education. UCI’s primary Learning Management System, the Educational Electronic Environment (EEE) system, is a key part of this. In recent years we have carried out a series of planning exercises to consider UCI learning management needs and how to best address them as they continue to evolve. The outcome of this is a plan to pilot a commercial learning management system to augment EEE functionality. Instructure Canvas, a product our colleagues here and at other campuses are using successfully, has emerged as the tool of choice.
Unique UCI functionality in EEE will be retained, but we will look to Canvas to provide functionality now routinely provided through commercial products. The planned hybrid environment will provide UCI instructors and students with the best of both worlds – including external functionality that we would never be able to provide through our internal EEE efforts.
This is a long-term process that will start by a limited pilot to verify our strategy; changes will be implemented incrementally over many years and in the context of broad consultation.
Additional information about these plans is available at sites.uci.edu/eee; feedback and questions can be submitted through that site or email to eee@uci.edu.
Our goal is to ensure that the UCI learning community continues to have access to the best possible learning environment. The engagement and support of instructors and students will be essential in achieving this goal.
Dana Roode
CIO and Associate Vice Chancellor
Office of Information Technology
Dana.Roode@UCI.EDU