Students studying quietly
Students concentrating in Torgersen Bridge. Photo by Laura Castro for Virginia Tech.

A joint commitment between IT Learning Systems (ITLS) and Technology-enhanced Online Learning and Strategies (TLOS) is to remain engaged in innovation in teaching and learning.

Canvas learning management system

Introduced at Virginia Tech in the fall of 2015, the Canvas learning management system (LMS) is now used in nearly all colleges and departments. During FY 2023, over 95 percent of faculty and 99 percent of students used Canvas for at least one course. Eighty-two percent of courses used Canvas in Fall 2022 (up from 80 percent the previous fall), while 80 percent did so in Spring 2023 (up from 79 percent the previous spring).

ITLS and TLOS work together to assess, select, and implement new tools for Canvas. The “Learning Tools Interoperability” (LTI) standard provides a uniform method of integrating third party tools into Canvas. Many tools are selected based on faculty requests and feedback. In FY 2023, ITLS added six new tools to our integrations portfolio:

  • CidiLabs DesignPLUS provides a toolkit for instructors and instructional designers to quickly add course modules, upload content, and design more engaging, accessible courses for their students.
  • Eli Review provides writing instructors a streamlined way to give better, more timely feedback to their students, helping them be more effective in writing instruction.
  • Hypothes.is allows students and instructors to highlight, annotate, and collaborate on digital content such as journal articles, ebooks, and coursework. It essentially creates a network of collaborators across courses with annotation tools.
  • Gradescope gives instructors a more efficient way to grade at scale for some of our larger STEM courses, while opening the possibility to shift away from old scanners/bubble sheets down the road.
  • McGrawHill Go is an eBook system with built-in assessments and reading assignments. This allows instructors to easily connect students with the reading and learning most relevant to the course.
  • Orbitnote helps us create and edit PDF documents in collaborative and accessible ways. Users can upload PDFs from Google Drive, OneDrive, or a local computer, and use Orbitnote to convert images, annotate the document, and improve accessibility.

Canvas readily enables us to add tools like these; this allows us to test new tools with minimal investment, and then decide whether to incorporate them into our standard LTI offering or drop them after a semester or two. Each of the tools we keep are selected for their potential to contribute to a better teaching and learning ecosystem, and our commitment to continue assessing and improving Canvas in this way remains a priority. 

The university’s contract with Instructure (maker of Canvas) runs through Summer of 2029. Over the next five years, ITLS will continue working to implement new integrations and enhance Canvas’s capabilities while maintaining a stable LMS ecosystem for years to come.

Continued support for video, online meetings, and course evaluation

In addition to Canvas, ITLS provides support for several enterprise-wide tools for teaching, learning, and administrative functions. These systems are used both via Canvas integrations and on their own for meetings, news features, and other university functions.

Zoom and Kaltura (video.vt.edu)
Usage of both tools spiked during the pandemic, as instruction moved online. By FY 2023, a new baseline has been set, which is lower than the pandemic peak, but significantly higher than 2019 and earlier, showing that use of video for academic purposes has become routine for many members of our community.

Graph showing faculty Zomm usage topping out at 43,614,921 minutes during the pandemic.
Graph showing student Zoom usage topping out at 7,335,803 minutes in March 2021. Post-pandemic.
Zoom usage among all users spiked during the pandemic — with faculty usage topping out at 43,614,921 minutes, and student usage topping out at 7,335,803 minutes in March 2021. Post-pandemic, usage has modified but remained significantly higher as flexible learning and working became the norm.

LinkedIn Learning
LinkedIn Learning allows students, faculty, and staff to complete on-demand courses in various software applications, business methods, and creative tools. During this fiscal year, 8,006 Virginia Tech students took at least one course — and increase of 30% over FY 2022.

Student Perceptions of Teaching (SPOT) evaluations
ITLS also supports integration of SPOT evaluations into Canvas, providing easy access to the surveys to encourage students to complete evaluations at the end of each semester. The response rate for Fall 2022 was 61.6 percent (109,509 responses), and 60.1 percent for Spring 2023 (98,986 responses) — right in line with the typical response rate, which has held between 60 and 65 percent for the past five years.

Improved communications leads to more effective user support
IT Learning Systems (ITLS) provides individualized user support for these tools as part of their day-to-day operational responsibilities. The ITLS team closed 179 incidents in 2022 — a drop of nearly 50% compared to 2021. This decrease is due in part to the return to more normal operations as pandemic restrictions eased, but it is also a testament to the success of ITLS’s improvements in documentation and communication with TLOS and 4Help agents over the past year.