An essential aspect of Unizin’s mission as a consortium of higher education institutions is to foster collaboration between our Members to encourage the sharing of ideas, models, content, and data.
At this time, Unizin supports Instructure’s Canvas as the top learning management system on the market. We encourage all of our schools to choose Canvas as their primary learning management system (LMS). Because of their membership in the consortium, our universities have been able to migrate to Canvas faster than they ever could if they were taking on the task alone.
“We worked very closely with other institutions that are a little bit ahead of us in the Canvas adoption process to look at what kinds of models they used when they were piloting,” said Liv Gjestvang of The Ohio State University. “We’re able to leverage and share resources that are saving us a lot of time and creating a much more efficient process.”
The migration to a new LMS usually takes several years, made even more difficult by having to operate multiple systems at the same time. When universities embark on this journey individually, it drains their time and resources. Unizin is making the process much easier, and our universities are migrating to Canvas roughly in half the time it would normally take to complete the switch.
“We’re in the midst of [the migration] process, but we’ve relied heavily on our peers, on the lessons they’ve learned,” said Lance Pérez of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. “The benefit has been having a set of peers that you can engage in conversations about these issues while thinking about solutions at the same time… Through Unizin and these partnerships, we can actually solve the problems that we’re facing.”
Collaboration is a powerful thing. Unizin Members are reaping the benefits of being part of a community of educators who care about learner success and want to improve teaching and learning with digital solutions.