INSTRUCTURES Inc. on May 5 launched in the Philippines an online educational application called Canvas, developed in 2008 and used by various universities worldwide since 2011. The software seeks to facilitate learning for both teacher and student from a traditional classroom into a technologically based experience. Canvas is currently used by 2,000 customers and 10 million users in more than 35 countries.
Troy Martin, instructures director, and Julian Yballe, APAC sales and regional director, said Canvas is being used “with great success” in such prestigious universities as Darlinghurst in Sydney; Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts; SIM University in Singapore; and the University of Auckland in New Zealand. Martin said both teacher and student could work in the comfort of their homes. He said because teachers can easily and fully customize online courses, they could facilitate the students’ learning activities in quizzes, assignments, submissions and peer reviews. He said Canvas is designed to create a compelling teaching and learning experience from K to 12 pupils to higher-education students.
“With its customizable, user-friendly interface, Canvas simplifies the learning experience online via mobile or tablet. It facilitates the integration of content, applications, tools and services that teachers need to share, and to catalyze discussion and encourage students to share inputs and participate in discussions. Canvas is cloud-based, which means features and functions are regularly updated and pushed out to customers, and the platform is reliable with 99.9-percent uptime,” he said.
He offered the company’s “winning solution” through a six-way process that includes the use of the Native Cloud (the process can only be done through access of the Internet); ease of use as adoption is very practical “since we all have access in Facebook, Twitter” and other social media; customer support as other cities in the world, such as Sydney, Los Angeles and New York, are interrelated; data driven, thus, it offers an accurate and comprehensive lesson; collaborative since there is interconnection between professors and their students; and 99.9-percent shared uptime guarantee helping the university grow throughout the years using this software. Stefanie Pangco and Karen Mae Larcena