This session examines how the University of Bridgeport created a Canvas course to replace faculty dependence on Pearson’s MyMathLab. Using faculty created content, pride and engagement grew among faculty and an exciting learning environment evolved for students providing an experience and benefits beyond anything the MyMathLab ‘integration’ could provide.
The University of Bridgeport decided to change a traditional online Intermediate Algebra course from being completely within Pearson MyMathLab to a department created and supported robust Canvas course. This project has helped improve completion rates, retention, and has created supportive community for online students. The essential course content and assessments were created by faculty members with the help of an instructional designer and now Pearson’s MyMathLab is limited to supporting material.
Previous to the creation of this course, efforts integrating MyMathLab with Canvas revealed few benefits and multiple issues. MyMathLab was like an island, housing students and storing essential information outside of the Canvas LMS. This collaborative effort between Instructional Design and the Math Department, brought forward a course utilizing essential Canvas course components to mirror the custom published Pearson MML course. Students are now offered opportunities to gain instruction directly from their instructor, from other isntructors at the university, by accessing the publisher created materials, or any combination of the three. By integrating publisher content and Canvas LMS, a more personalized learning environment was created allowing for an increased sense of community and greater support which has satisfied students’ needs and expectations. Rather than having the bulk of the course work be done in the publisher software, the publish software is now utilized as extra credit and/or homework allowing the learning management system to shine as the online ‘classroom’ and take center stage for interaction, collaboration, and assessment.
This session will explore:
- How publisher created software can put the students on an island
- Challenges Instructional Designers face integrating publisher created software with Canvas LMS
- Benefits of keeping the LMS environment dominant when utilizing publisher created software
This session will also provide a tour of the Canvas shell created and details on how we effectively engaged faculty in creating this custom math course for online students.