Last year, Duke began a gradual transition from Sakai to Canvas as the University’s primary learning management system. Now completed, the move has elicited overall positive responses from faculty, though some identified a few persistent kinks in the platform’s utility.
In December 2022, Duke administration announced their intention to switch to Canvas, a more commonly used site amongst peer institutions. During the 2023-24 academic year, the University offered professors the option of migrating early from Sakai to Canvas during a testing period in fall 2023, with the expectation that all courses would be on Canvas by spring 2024.
University administration later extended the transition timeline, making Canvas available to all Duke and Duke Kunshan University instructors in spring 2024 but not mandating the switch until the summer session.
In its initial announcement, Duke administration highlighted Canvas’ ability to service an “expanded array of learning experiences” and its “stronger user community” in comparison to other learning management services.
Owen Astrachan, associate director of undergraduate studies and professor of the practice in the computer science department, found Canvas’ compatibility with third-party platforms to be beneficial for connecting outside software to use in his assignments.
“These LMSs — the learning management systems of which Sakai and Canvas are some examples — support [learning tools interoperability, which] … allows you to take some third-party software and integrate it with your class,” he said. “So it’s my understanding and based on my experience [that] Canvas is better at that for these outside software vendors.”
Astrachan was one of the professors who opted to make the platform switch in fall 2023 as an “early adopter,” which allowed him to become familiarized with Canvas sooner than some of his colleagues. However, some of the qualms he raised about the site during the testing period remain unaddressed a year later.
In a September 2023 interview with The Chronicle, Astrachan explained that students were identified by their Unique IDs rather than their NetID on Canvas, which made it difficult to match Canvas identities with other University programs that use NetIDs, like Microsoft 365.
While Astrachan was able to develop software to connect Unique IDs and NetIDs, faculty that transitioned to Canvas later on were not as prepared to bridge the technological gap. He felt that the University could have resolved this issue easily rather than leaving professors to figure it out themselves.
“Could Duke do it at the back end so that within Canvas they just pull your NetID given your Unique ID?” Astrachan asked. “… Testing that and maintaining that, that’s work — but in my opinion, it’s work they should have done.”
Leonardo Bacarezza, lecturing fellow of romance studies, felt Duke did “an excellent job” in handling the switch, which he characterized as “very well planned and very gradual.”
Bacarezza noted that he used Sakai and Canvas in a similar manner and that “the experience was not that different” across the two platforms.
“If anything, I think visually Canvas is a little bit more interesting for the user,” he said. “… Sakai was a little bit cold and it felt a little bit out of date.”
He also pointed out that Canvas is more compatible to work with “on other screens that are not your computer,” such as mobile devices and tablets.
Bacarezza explained that he had previously worked at another institution that used Canvas, making the transition to Canvas at Duke a welcome one for him. He acknowledged that some of the platform’s features might present a learning curve for instructors less familiar with the service, noting that more advanced features require “some basic coding” knowledge.
“Sakai has been here for a bit, so people are very used to the system and the environment and everything,” Bacarezza said. “You need to learn how to do things differently, but that’s part of any process of adjustment.”
Bacarezza identified an online “community … of Canvas users” that can provide support to instructors looking to improve their understanding of the platform’s functionality. The University also has publicly available guides to navigating the platform on the Duke Canvas website.
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