The proof of the pudding

With a lot of effort from coordinators building their courses, support from the Canvas helpdesk, many webinars, workshops and transition services, we now see 584 courses up and running! But when connecting all the systems to Canvas, we encountered some serious hick ups.

Work in progress

The recipe looked promising, it smelled delicious, but the proof of the pudding is always in the eating. And not everything we tried, tasted well …

 

Student Portal – Canvas connection

Currently, the Student Portal does not show all relevant Canvas content. Though the MyCourses and MyOrganizations deep-link correctly to the specific Courses in Canvas, the Student Portal does not show Canvas Announcements nor Canvas Deadlines.

Between 30 September and 6 October, efforts will be made to repair the Student Portal – Canvas connector. Want to know what will happen and your students might notice? Check the Student Portal Canvas connection page for more information.

 

Automated SIS connector

The SIS connector – loading teacher, student, enrollment, and scheduling information – is not yet automated. Currently Canvas data is updated from source systems SLcM and Syllabus changes twice a day by ‘running the SIS connector manually’. As a result, changes in these source systems will be effectuated in Canvas at either 12:00 or 20:00. We aim to upgrade the connector to an hourly automated update by the end of week 41.

 

Double section and group names

Due to SIS connector inconsistencies, some courses show multiple groups or sections with exactly the same name. This happens when a course is split up in more than one Tutorial or Practical group category.

We sent out change requests to enable correct transfer of multiple cohort divisions from Syllabus to Canvas and avoid duplication of names. These changes will be implemented in December, structurally solving this issue for course period 3 and onwards. For the meantime, we are ‘repairing’ the 58 courses affected in course period 1. Scheduler guidelines have been drafted to minimise the issue in course period 2.

 

Visibility of unenrolled students in courses

Student unenrolments (from modules) done before September, appeared improperly processed in Canvas. Meaning that in some courses some students might be visible while they either quit university or switched to another module before this date. Unenrolments done after 2 September are processed correctly.
By now, most redundant enrolments have been removed manually, but we are still working to complete repair actions.

 

Mediasite performance issues

Mediasite is UM’s video tool, integrated in Canvas to offer video to your students. Despite earlier improvements, we encountered Mediasite performance issues during peak moments (when over 350 students were viewing online lectures simultaneously). That is why we decided to upscale the Mediasite infrastructure to ‘high availability setup’, which will more or less triple viewing capacity. Depending on how we can speed up some parts of the process, the new setup will be operational somewhere between 7 and 12 October.

 

Urgent questions? Don’t panic!

While switching to Canvas, we also de-activated the EleUM support blog and opened the Canvas Support page. You find a growing list of FAQs, guidelines and of course, information on where to turn to for support. We also want to stress that the helpdesk is there for you and will stay available until the end of the academic year! Don’t hesitate to ask for help, we are ready to put the icing on the cake!

Author: Canvas Support Team

 

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License.

 

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