REACH Canvas LMS System

Technology Solution Report

Current Operational Practices

The LMS systems are actively being used by the students, instructors and educational institutes for providing better learning environment for learning, administration and teaching in education. LMS is defined as a web-based platform that aids the instructors in planning, evaluating, automating, reporting and implementing the learning process (Ellis, 2009). It allows the institutions to provide personalized learning content to students, manage the educational content in electronic format and let the students participate in their performance. LMS also allows the instructors in planning the process of learning according to individual progress of each student and let the students collaborate with other students on the assigned tasks. Although there are many LMS systems including Moodle, Angel, Capterra, Docebo, Edmodo and many more, yet Canvas is known for its added features as compared to others. For example, it allows integration of Google Docs and cloud computing for instructors and student. Accroding to Edutechnica (2018), around 2,835 institutes are using ANGEL, Blackboard, Moodle or Canvas for offering blended online courses (see figure 1 below for total share of primary LMS systems).

IT Gaps & Improvement Opportunities

It has been identified in the given case that there is no LMS at REACH for students and instructors. With current aim of diversifying the training programs and introducing new management systems in order to become digital, REACH has to migrate to LMS for improving student learning experience. Since the institute is aiming at extending its courses and diplomas, the use of LMS has become important given the current operational environment in the education industry. With Canvas LMS, the faculty members at REACH become able to organize the Tutorings and review the work. The students can get mobile application that is easier to navigate while the calendar automatic checks the Tutorings as they are completed. Canvas LMS would allow students to easily upload their Tutorings and review the modules. The teachers can manage the grades through SpeedGrader and Gradebooks after taking a quiz through quiz feature of Canvas. 

Risks/ Constraints

1. Major risk in having an implementation plan that takes longer than the projected life cycle of the software being implemented. 
2. Risk of having no critical incident management procedures, no disaster recovery plans and no IT risk management documentation.
3. Risk of failure to establish clear project management methodology with no articulation of process and procedure documentation. 
4. Risk of content migration failure.
5. Data migration might get constrained due to change management process.
6. The project is constrained by budget, time and consolidation with 6 months given $300,000 budget. 
7. Willingness to adapt/change associated with process is a risk as well.
8. Risk of system failed to operate as described/expected.
9. Risk of data security.
10. Risk of failure to learn the software within the given time.
11. The data migration might take longer than expected.
12. Acceptance/use of the LMS is not as expected.