In one of the classes I'm teaching this semester, 14 of 17 students were also in one of my classes last semester - a class in which I used Canvas. On the first day of class this semester, when I mentioned that we would be using Sakai, there was an outbreak of grumbling among the students. "Why?!" they wanted to know. I explained that we had only a limited number of spots in our institution to pilot Canvas.
Still, I had gone to great lengths to set up my course in Sakai, more thoroughly than I had bothered to do in the past, trying to make it as useful for the students as Canvas had been last semester. When I showed them the first online quiz that was assigned for this week, someone pointed out that it didn't appear on the Calendar, even though the due date was specified in the published quiz. A mystery... temporary, I'm sure, as there is probably some preference that I set wrong when I created the quiz. Still, to be sure, I asked students if quizzes typically showed up on the Calendar for their other classes. My question was met with blank stares and hesitation, until one student spoke up and confessed that they didn't know... because they never used the Calendar in Sakai. They too found it useless.
In another class that I'm teaching, when I introduced the online quiz for the first week, I went over tips on how to avoid technological problems while taking a quiz in Sakai. I asked the students if they had ever experienced problems with online quizzes in Sakai. Well over half of the class raised their hands and shared their Sakai problems: Sakai froze in the middle of my quiz; the browser crashed; the question displayed incorrectly with parts of the questions wrapped into the answers; Sakai wouldn't save the results after I answered all the questions; it wouldn't let me select the answer I wanted...
What a contrast with my experience last semester with Canvas -- of 75 students in three classes using Canvas, I had only one student report a problem with a quiz (he took the quiz on his smart phone, and on one of the questions he was unable to select the answer he wanted).
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
Introduction: Sakai vs. Canvas
After a semester of piloting Canvas, I am (unwillingly) back to using Sakai. The Canvas experience was wonderful, both for me and for my students. From the first days of class, I received unsolicited feedback from my students telling me how much they loved Canvas (and how much they had hated Sakai). Personally I had never hated Sakai, but it did find it limiting and difficult to use.
I was not a novice user of Sakai - I was one of the first to use Sakai to teach an online class when my institution first began using Sakai. I've used it for several years, and have experimented with most of the features available in our version of Sakai. However, in many cases, after trying Sakai, I found easier ways to do the same things. Sharing slides and resources was easier through my own personal website. Grades were easier in Excel. Quizzes were easier in class. Messages were easier through email. The calendar... well, I found the Sakai calendar almost completely unusable.
So I went through phases - first trying features in Sakai, then slowly switching to other ways of doing things. Over time, though, I realized that it was inconvenient for my students to have to go to Sakai for their other classes, then to my website for my classes, then to their email for messages... So I reluctantly started shifting back to Sakai. It was frustrating, though, since in many cases "convenience for the student" meant a lot more work for me.
When I first piloted Canvas, then, it was like a breath of fresh air. It was better for the student, AND easier for me! The Calendar was a joy to work with; tests and quizzes a snap; assignments straightforward; the gradebook reliable. I honestly felt like I could be a more creative teacher, focusing on what I wanted to accomplish rather than on how to manage technology. My courses were better organized, my communication with students more thorough and more regular, my learning outcomes better documented. And in addition to all this, it was easier to use and reduced both my workload and my frustrations. So needless to say, I am not looking forward to giving up Canvas and returning to Sakai.
I was not a novice user of Sakai - I was one of the first to use Sakai to teach an online class when my institution first began using Sakai. I've used it for several years, and have experimented with most of the features available in our version of Sakai. However, in many cases, after trying Sakai, I found easier ways to do the same things. Sharing slides and resources was easier through my own personal website. Grades were easier in Excel. Quizzes were easier in class. Messages were easier through email. The calendar... well, I found the Sakai calendar almost completely unusable.
So I went through phases - first trying features in Sakai, then slowly switching to other ways of doing things. Over time, though, I realized that it was inconvenient for my students to have to go to Sakai for their other classes, then to my website for my classes, then to their email for messages... So I reluctantly started shifting back to Sakai. It was frustrating, though, since in many cases "convenience for the student" meant a lot more work for me.
When I first piloted Canvas, then, it was like a breath of fresh air. It was better for the student, AND easier for me! The Calendar was a joy to work with; tests and quizzes a snap; assignments straightforward; the gradebook reliable. I honestly felt like I could be a more creative teacher, focusing on what I wanted to accomplish rather than on how to manage technology. My courses were better organized, my communication with students more thorough and more regular, my learning outcomes better documented. And in addition to all this, it was easier to use and reduced both my workload and my frustrations. So needless to say, I am not looking forward to giving up Canvas and returning to Sakai.
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