BPS Board hopes to have Canvas issues worked out by next school year
BREMEN—BREMEN Public Schools (BPS) have been hearing complaints from parents about the lack of consistency with Canvas, an online database for schools. Because of that, Superintendent Dr. Jim White, has been looking into it and meeting with the administration from the different schools in the corporation. after verifying parental claims, they have been meeting to determine a way to introduce consistency and transparency in the Canvas system about assignments, when they’re due, and where in the software the assignments are listed. “I don’t think it’s reasonable to say that every piece of material and everything that the teacher does, and every video should be up here—no. But for people needs to be turned in, what needs to be read or done, I think that’s very reasonable. It seems very obvious.”
He went on to explain that with most classes, lack of transparent communication from the teacher on Canvas, was “shocking” and “disappointing.” “There’s a lack of consistency in how the courses are created and how the lessons are up there. There were times that I found it difficult, sometimes impossible, to know what a lesson for the day would be,” he explained.
at present, Dr. White is working with the principals to attempt to strike a delicate balance between involved parents, their students, and teachers. “I’d like to get some teacher input, too, about how they would prefer—i’d like some consistency in this,” he said. “It’s a question of really looking at this and saying, ‘if I’m a parent… and I’m not sitting in the class, do I really know what was assigned yesterday?’”
High School Principal Bruce Jennings interjected that, after meeting with teacher leaders, he discovered that much of the issue could be fixed with a simple solution: “a lot of our teachers post their assignments on Modules, not on Calendar. If you post your lessons to the students in the Modules, which are folders, and you don’t attach a due date to it, it won’t show up in Calendar. That’s been part of the problem: things aren’t appearing in the Calendar because a due date hasn’t been tagged to it from the folder where the lesson is located. Students know where to access the lesson and the folder and the module, but the parent is not going to see it in the folder because a due date wasn’t tagged to it. That might be a simple fix in a lot of cases.”
after meeting with the administration and teachers from the elementary, middle, and high school levels, Dr. White reported to the school board that he and High School Principal Bruce Jennings would be meeting with the schools on a corporate level, during which Dr. White intends to form a committee about the issue who can look into the issue in more depth and then report to the board. “I’d like some consistency in this,” he said. “We need to spend some time working on this, really reviewing. I would also suggest that we get a little training for some of our administration, too, to be able to learn Canvas themselves and be able to do some of that review independent of me.”
Pending the meetings that Dr. White has yet to have and committee findings, the hope and plan is to have a concrete plan in place by the beginning of the 2022-2023 school year. This will include creating examples on Canvas and uploading videos about BPS expectations. at present, the school board has scheduled to hear an update on Canvas at their July 20 meeting.