Planning your pilot and testing Insights is critical to implementation success.
Turning on Insights is easy, like a flip of a switch. What can be challenging with any new technology is the actual rollout and adoption of a new tool. We want to provide you with the tools necessary to succeed with your Insights rollout.
One of the best ways to overcome common technology implementation challenges is a clear plan for testing and piloting before rollout. This enables you to include all of your stakeholders, faculty and staff in a way that is intentional, designed to your existing process or desired process, and safe in regards to your live data.
Your testing of Insights will happen in Canvas beta, an isolated area that will not impact your live data or events.
As you test in beta, you can try features out without disrupting your current processes and, at the same time, have deeper planning sessions internally on when and how to roll out the features in Canvas production.
Even as you transition to your production environment, you can determine who you initially want to have using Insights, when, and for what purpose. You are in the driver's seat.
Three key aspects to consider as you plan
Once you reach this stage, it is important to maintain momentum during your testing and piloting phases. Here are three main aspects that will need to stay at the forefront of your preparation.
- Your environment requirements. Always follow your institution's requirements and recommendations first and foremost. Know your Institution's IT requirements that will impact your strategy for implementation and adoption, especially when it comes to testing and piloting tools that access Canvas Live Events.
- Canvas beta refresh. Canvas beta refreshes every Saturday and features you are testing may be impacted or lost by that refresh. Read below for specifics on what is effected with each Canvas beta refresh. Here is a link to the Canvas release schedule to help you plan specific dates to decide what and when to test when and to help you set expectations with your staff.
- Insights Canvas Intake. This is the initial set up that forms the connection through which Insights will pull live data from Canvas. Depending on how you use Canvas today and how your data is organized, it may need to be tested more than once ensure accuracy. Read below for specifics on what is effected with each Insights Canvas Intake. Once this functions as expected, the Canvas sync will be in place and will not need to be reset again.
Pros and Cons to testing in each respective location:
Canvas beta, Canvas production
Let's start with what to test in your beta environment as you progress in your implementation process. Some of these recommendations may be immediately applicable to the work your faculty and staff are doing; some of these may be adopted a year or more later after your initial pilot. Regardless of the timeline, it is crucial to thoroughly test all aspects to ensure that a small team within your institution comprehends the complete capabilities and can assist in determining when staff should start utilizing these features, at a pace that suits your institution.
Functions to test include:
- Academic Subject Code
- Terms
- Cycles & Goals
- Cycle Type
- Assignment Types
- Institutional Hierarchy
- Course Code Pattern (Course Levels)
- User Roles and Access
- Canvas Default Rating Scale (Mastery Levels)
- Assessment Plan
- Assessment Results (Chart)
- Findings and Recommendation
- Reflections and Actions
- Action Type
- ILOs (including Categories)
- Programs
- PLOs (including Categories)
- Course Groups
- Course Group Type
- Outcomes on Analyze Page (CSLOs)
- Curriculum Mappings
Actions to test by user role include:
- User roles and assigned subjects
- Action type
- Course group type
- Assignment type
- Cycle type
- Course code pattern setting
- Institutional hierarchy
- Programs and course groups
- ILOs
- PLOs
- Canvas default rating scale
- Assessment
- Approving course learning outcomes
- Curriculum mapping
- Reflections and actions
Insights Sandbox [Optional]
Insights sandbox allows you to practice all of the Insights features with mock demo data.
Pros: provides a safe environment where you can freely explore different settings, views, and practice various steps without any concerns or worries.
Cons: users have the ability to see the functionality that is limited in your own Canvas environment. In other words, your instance of Canvas may look slightly or significantly different than ours here at Insights that is connected to this sandbox environment. None of the content
Who can access this? The team involved with onboarding Insights can request access to an Insights sandbox (typically the Canvas LMS administrator or the LMS admin and 1-2 assessment / curriculum staff). We do not recommend adding faculty to the Insights sandbox because it will not look like the customized environment your faculty are used to experiencing in Canvas today.