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The most recent survey of Classes*v2 users suggests that many students and faculty feel the system is showing its age, and find the core software (Sakai) to be unintuitive and limited in its functionality. In addition, the long-term future of the Sakai system is uncertain, as many of the core open-source community members have moved to alternative platforms–most notably, Canvas.

Canvas has offered very strong support for Yale’s distance and hybrid initiatives since 2014. Faculty and students have found the system easy to use, highly flexible, and in many ways preferable to Classes*v2. In fact, many faculty members who have used Canvas for distance courses have asked to use it for their on-campus courses as well.

With these things in mind, the Center for Teaching and Learning undertook a pilot of Canvas in fall 2015 to evaluate its suitability to replace Classes*v2/Sakai for support of on-campus courses. The pilot included 71 courses from across University divisions, with 100 instructors and over 2100 students participating. The results were very clear: a strong majority of Yale faculty, teaching fellows and students who used Canvas during the pilot semester would prefer to use Canvas.

In February 2016, a cross-campus LMS Steering Committee composed of faculty, students and administrators reviewed the results of the fall pilot and recommended that Canvas should become the new centrally supported learning management system for the University.

For more information on the decision to move to Canvas, please see the Canvas @ Yale transition site: http://gotocanvas.yale.edu