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The LMS Review Team invites input from the campus community on the vendors vying for the opportunity to be the University of Windsor’s next generation Learning Management System (LMS) when they provide public presentations of their products on March 2 and 3.

The LMS Evaluation Committee, which includes representatives from all major stakeholders across campus, has been working hard to evaluate the extensive written proposals from each vendor since the Request for Proposals closed at the end of January, and has invited vendors to present their vison to the campus community for feedback.

“The LMS is critical digital infrastructure that significantly impacts the experience of all instructors and learners, so it’s vital that the campus is part of the decision-making process to select our next generation LMS that is capable of supporting our diverse community now and into the future,” says Nick Baker, co-chair of the evaluation committee.

The committee’s other co-chair, Graham Fawcett, says “The campus community voice played an essential part in the LMS review last year in shaping the extensive requirements that we asked vendors to meet, and now we are seeking input from the community again through the vendors’ presentations.”

The presentations will be held virtually in Teams Webinar. To attend one or more of the presentations, register using the following links:

• Blackboard (Learn Ultra/Original), March 2, at 10 a.m.
• D2L (Brightspace), March 3, at 11 a.m.
• Instructure (Canvas), March 3, at 4 p.m.

Each vendor will have up to 45 minutes to present their visions to campus, addressing seven key themes informed by the LMS review process:

1. Accessibility and universal design;
2. User experience, interface, and personalization;
3. Collaboration, co-creation and community;
4. Analytics, curriculum, and activity;
5. Assessment, communication, and content;
6. Extensibility and standards compliance; and
7. Migration.

Questions from the audience will not be possible during the presentations, but all attendees are invited to share feedback with the evaluation committee using a short survey that will be provided following each presentation, which will not be recorded.

In the next phase of the evaluation process, the vendors will be invited to provide the campus community with access to a “sandbox” version of their system to showcase the product and allow users to test the system over approximately three weeks. Feedback from the sandbox experience will help inform the final recommendation and decision. More information on sandboxes will be available after the vendor presentations.

The University of Windsor began an LMS Review in 2021 after Blackboard announced that as of 2023, the company will no longer support or allow self-hosted instances of its product, such as the one University of Windsor uses. For more information about the LMS Review and its timeline, visit the LMS Review website or email lmsreview@uwindsor.ca.

Campus community members will be required to migrate or download any remaining files, documents, or data they may still want from the UWindsor-hosted Google Drive by April 30.

“The move to Microsoft 365 for our students and alumni came in 2020. Since then, some students, and alumni, as well as faculty and staff have continued to use Google Drive as a place to save documents or share files.” says Mike Fisher, manager of web services and systems support, IT Services. “We want to ensure people have a final chance to move their files by the deadline.”

UWindsor students should review their Google accounts and save files elsewhere if they have:

• received an email listing failed files after the 2020 migration process;
• used Google products like Sheets or Docs, which save to Google Drive, after the migration process; or
• continued to use their Google account for storage after the migration process.

A few faculty and staff had also activated UWin Gmail accounts for collaboration purposes. These employee accounts were not part of the May 2020 migration. Any files saved only on Google Drive that faculty or staff wish to keep need to be transferred to OneDrive or downloaded prior to the deadline.

Knowledge base articles are available to aid faculty, staff, and students who would like to migrate their outstanding Google files to their OneDrive, which has one terabyte of storage. Alternatively, information on how to download files to a computer is also available.

Alumni who still have files on the UWindsor hosted Google Drive they want to transfer can download them to their computers for storage in their preferred location.