The Community College System of New Hampshire (CCSNH) is a public system of seven colleges located across the state of New Hampshire. CCSNH serves around 26,000 learners annually and offers over 80 Associate Degree Programs and over 120 certificate programs and specialized training. The seven colleges offer face-to-face, blended and 100% online classes.
The Challenge
CCSNH’s Alisa Kadenic-Newman, the Director of Academic Technology, was looking for a solution to help gain more insights into the way their LMS was being used and how to drive more awareness and adoption.
In addition to a large number of full-time students and faculty, CCSNH has a lot of adjunct faculty, so the challenge was to make sure that all user groups were utilizing their EdTech tools to their fullest potential and consider their options for a more pivotal migration to an even more comprehensive LMS solution.
Key Insights
Confirm LMS needs with clear user data: Friendly and intuitive, the data tells an immediate story that leads to the ability to make actionable decisions to benefit all
Create a successful migration using real time insights: By bridging the gap between legacy and new systems, active listening and pursuit of information about what’s working and what needs adjustment is key
Success demands constant feedback: Monitoring needs and adjusting to meet them requires on-going partnership and communication between the institution and LMS provider
The Solutions
In the fall of 2016, CCSNH ran a trial and Alisa and her team were finally able to get insights into user activity and use the reporting feature to structure awareness and training campaigns. Alisa and her team were also able to share these reports with administration to communicate the status of their LMS and plan for future strategy.
One key asset that Impact by Instructure provides for institutions is a deep understanding of their EdTech tool performance through usage dashboards and adoption analytics. This data is vital to assessing whether a tool is keeping its promises and whether there needs to be intervention to increase adoption. The reports were also a useful way of preparing for migration and introduction of new tools, and this was especially true for CCSNH.
After several years with Blackboard, CCSNH’s contract was almost up, and the institution saw this as a good time to explore other vendors and solutions. Alisa was tasked with establishing and leading an LMS Request for Proposal (RFP) to find the best fit for CCSNH. In order to ensure that all relevant information was covered in the RFP, Alisa and her team needed to have a full evaluation of their LMS. The Impact by Instructure reporting data was instrumental in helping CCSNH prepare an in-depth assessment of their LMS usage and have a birds-eye view of how all the EdTech tools were performing.
It took CCSNH about a year to go through the full evaluation and selection process based on their RFP and, at the end of the summer of 2017, CCSNH decided to migrate fully to Canvas.
I would recommend Impact by Instructure to anyone who would like to get the most out of their LMS. The solutions are user friendly and intuitive and most importantly the data is actionable.
Alisa Kadenic-Newman
Director of Academic Technology, The Community College System of New Hampshire
Introducing Canvas
CCSNH piloted Canvas in the fall of 2017, and worked diligently with Alisa and her team to implement Impact by Instructure alongside Canvas for their upcoming soft launch.
CCSNH proudly became one of the first Canvas customers to fully weave in Impact by Instructure’s functionality, and worked together to ensure a successful migration. In the spring of 2018, CCSNH completed their soft launch of Canvas and, since they still had faculty working both in Blackboard and Canvas while courses were being imported, it was imperative for them to be able to track who was using which LMS.
Bridging Key Migration Gaps
By the end of Spring 2018, CCSNH realized that they were slightly behind with their migration and needed to implement some extra measures to meet the full launch target date which was May 1, 2018. Using advanced reporting functionality within Impact by Instructure, CCSNH was able to “share data in their weekly metrics meetings with the seven Vice Presidents of Academic Affairs so that they could reach out to the faculty members who needed extra training or encouragement.”
CCSNH also introduced Impact by Instructure Support Center into Canvas in order to provide useful information to the faculty and students during this big change in their LMS.
24/7 in app messaging also came in handy to help communicate new changes in a timely and proactive manner. One way CCSNH used messaging was to implement “Tip Tuesday,” for faculty and students in order to help with the adoption of Canvas.
These messages would be placed in crucial places of the LMS to ensure that there was guidance and to introduce tips on important features and new functionalities.
Slowly but surely, CCSNH was achieving their migration and LMS goals with the help of Impact by Instructure. By the beginning of the summer, CCSNH had achieved their target and was right on track for completing their move to Canvas.
On May 1st of 2018, we met our target, 98% of our courses were successfully migrated to Canvas. We could not have done that without the Impact data.
Alisa Kadenic-Newman
Director of Academic Technology
The Results
Impact by Instructure and CCSNH worked together to provide support, track usage behavior and increase adoption all while successfully migrating to a new LMS and refining their approach for the future.
Looking ahead, CCSNH will continue to use Impact to optimize overall LMS adoption and deliver proactive communication and support to their entire community, leveraging the robust reporting and analytics tools to monitor and adjust to needs in real time.
CCSNH and Instructure meet weekly to go over any new features and any requests that Alisa and her team might have to evolve with the institution.
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