A Canvas Case Study: K–12

Kenmore - Town of Tonawanda Union Free School District

Fulfilling The Need for a True Learning Management System

Kenmore-Town of Tonawanda Union Free School District

Buffalo, New York, US

8,000 Students

Started 2019

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Increasing student engagement through a new complete learning management system led Kenmore-Town of Tonawanda Union Free School District (Ken-Ton) to use Canvas since 2019 with great success

The Challenge

The Kenmore-Town of Tonawanda Union Free School District, also known as Ken-Ton, is one of the largest school districts in Western New York. It offers instruction for students ranging from pre-kindergarten through high school and has built a strong culture of learning and support for teachers, staff, and the surrounding communities.

Western New York schools continue to embody a culture of innovation throughout their learning community. As part of that approach, the district continued to provide the tools and support needed to meet ever-changing academic and career requirements and create a rewarding learning experience for students. A robust learning management system like Canvas has proven to be a big step toward fulfilling these commitments.

The district’s strategic plan features vital technology tools for classrooms and individual users. To date, it includes:

A laptop for every teacher

Either an Interactive Display Panel or wireless projector in every classroom

1:1 iPads for students in grades K-2

1:1 Chromebooks for students in grades 3-12

Key Findings

Ken-Ton ended its pilot program with a competing LMS after discovering Canvas LMS.

The team’s favorite Canvas features include the simple user interface, SpeedGrader, New Quizzes, and MasteryPaths.

The district received continuous implementation support from the Canvas team and the Instructure community of educators worldwide.

Canvas LMS has empowered Ken-Ton’s educators to provide students with multiple pathways to subject mastery.

Initially, Philip Jarosz and Joi Chimera, Instructional Innovation Support Specialists for Ken-Ton, helped teachers integrate innovative new tools into their curriculum and lessons. (Since then, the instructional innovation support team has expanded to include Mary Beth Flatau, David Rogalski, and Kerry Smith.)

“By following this plan, technology will not only be used as an administrative tool but as an unequivocal need and resource,” said Chimera.

Ken-Ton had implemented Google Classroom but wanted to increase student engagement by incorporating a new complete learning management system (LMS) to integrate teaching, learning, and professional development. So in 2018, Ken-Ton decided to try a semester-long pilot program with the Schoology LMS involving 12 teachers and hundreds of students.

During the Schoology pilot, Ken-Ton Instructional Support Specialists noticed several things that didn’t meet their needs. For example, the interface wasn’t user-friendly. Also, there was a general lack of proactive support from Schoology. Students in co-taught classrooms couldn’t be coseated in courses on Schoology. So, the Ken-Ton team continued looking for other learning platform options.

The Solution

Jarosz learned more about Canvas LMS at an education technology conference and decided to explore using it. Chimera, who had used Schoology and Blackboard as both a student and teacher, immediately noticed that Canvas had a superior user interface. So Jarosz and Chimera reviewed Canvas with the district’s technology directors, who switched half of the teachers who had tried Schoology for the first semester to Canvas starting in January 2019.

Ken-Ton needed Canvas to integrate with its student information system (SIS), Infinite Campus. The team also needed to schedule co-taught students in the same section using cross-listing and, of course, for students to have easy access to their courses. Canvas delivered all this and much more the district needed. Canvas representatives consistently visited with the Ken-Ton team to discuss the product, provide training, and answer questions. A few months after the evaluation began, KenTon closed its Schoology Enterprise account and went with Canvas instead.

The Results

Ken-Ton now relies on Canvas for grades 5-12. They scaled rollout post-pandemic through personalized staff development opportunities–both conducted online in Canvas and in-person with Canvas Learning Teams for their secondary grades. The district also uses Canvas to review teachers’ curriculums, making it easier for them to distribute content to students and integrate technology into lessons.

“Canvas has been there every step of the way to support us when we need it, whether it be getting our sync up and running or navigating the day-to-day needs of our teachers as we all learn the system. Beyond that, we’ve now met and ‘followed’ a wide range of educators who support one another as we all make learning better for our students,” said Chimera.

Teachers’ needs heavily influenced Ken-Ton’s decision to go with Canvas. They were excited about increasing peer reviews of assignments and have been using the SpeedGrader tool to evaluate individual and group assignments quickly.

“Video screen share in SpeedGrader has been truly gamechanging, as it allows our teachers to provide students with detailed feedback in real-time. The personal connection between instructor and student in this process is key for fostering growth and understanding,” Jarosz said.

Over the last few years, the Ken-Ton team has utilized Canvas to power its commitment to personalized, mastery instruction that reaches every student.

The Mastery Instructional Process has been a crucial strategy for educators to provide targeted feedback to students, reinforce expectations, and identify their strengths and areas of improvement.

MasteryPaths in Canvas has allowed them to promote custom, performance-based learning experiences for students, and involve teachers and designers in identifying activities and differentiating assignments to help students achieve mastery.

Aligning instructional materials is also crucial to student success.

Ken-Ton relies on Canvas Commons and department-wide courses to support curriculum consistency at scale.

“One factor in our decision was the future of how Canvas could help us see out a vision of a coherent, consistent, engaging curriculum for all of our students,” Chimera explained.

With Canvas, Ken-Ton teachers can easily monitor student progress, identify areas for additional support, and differentiate instruction using tools like Modules and Learning Mastery Gradebook.

By aligning instruction to goals and utilizing outcomes to measure student progress, Canvas has allowed teachers to provide students with multiple ways to demonstrate their understanding and take ownership of their learning.

Our technology department strongly believes that students should have experience with a robust LMS before they continue into their post-secondary institutions. Canvas provides that opportunity to our students.

Philip Jarosz,

Instructional Innovation Support Specialist

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