This session will present the design process for creating Berklee Online's new learning environment (based on Canvas), including how we are measuring its impact. The goal is to spark discussion about how investment in design and modern technology improves the quality of the student experience.
A guiding principle for Berklee Online is not to let technology get in the way of teaching or learning, but rather leverage it, along with elegant design, to enhance the connection points between students, teachers, and the learning materials. Berklee Online has received much praise for its customized Moodle learning environment, but we reached a critical juncture in which it became increasingly difficult to innovate. We decided to make a change: to move to the open-source version of Canvas as a backend, so that we could leverage its data model and core feature set, and develop our own front-end application based on teacher, staff, and student feedback—in other words, what is uniquely Berklee—and inspired by the best in modern web content and communication.
The new environment emphasizes the interaction between participants in a course—everything that they are creating and sharing in the experience, merged with content presentation. Our goal is to make the conversation around the course material as much a part of the online learning experience as the instructional content we develop. Keeping the front-end experience separate from the Canvas code allows us to stay clear of making changes to the open-source Canvas application, which in turn allows us to stay current with upgrades that Canvas releases multiple times a year.
This session will present the design process for creating the new learning environment, including how we are measuring its impact. The goal is to spark discussion about how investment in design and modern technology improves the quality of the student experience.