As professors and students at Elon University settle into a new semester, they’re also adjusting to a new learning management system. Elon is in its first year of using Canvas after switching from its previous platform, Moodle.

This is Elon’s first learning management system transition in nearly 15 years, since it moved from Blackboard to Moodle in 2011.

According to Kelly Reimer, senior director of Teaching and Learning Technologies, the switch to Canvas came after a campuswide evaluation of Moodle that included surveys and open forums.

“In the IT world, we regularly evaluate what systems we use,” Reimer said. “It’s just a part of our best practices when you work in technology, and so we knew it was time to evaluate what platform we were with and whether that platform was meeting the needs of our faculty.”

Survey responses from over 500 students and feedback from faculty and staff revealed the need for a new system. Reimer said Canvas is an industry leader and provided a better user interface and mobile experience than Moodle.

“There’s a lot of different features in Canvas that our former platform didn’t have, and so I’m excited to hear from faculty about how they’re engaging with those tools,” Reimer said. “I think faculty are still learning the system, so that’s a process of sort of uncovering those things.”

To help professors during the transition period, Teaching and Learning Technologies provided workshops in-person and online over late spring and summer. According to Reimer, about 80 faculty members participated in the workshops.

“We’ve seen a lot of engagement, and we’ll continue to offer things throughout the fall and really all the way into the future,” Reimer said. “This is just what we do. We continue to offer the support.”

Shon Gilliam, a physics laboratory manager, said the tutorials were helpful for setting up the basic structure of a class and adding students, but he is still getting used to the platform.

“I don’t really like major changes, so I’m sure it’s good. Some people say good things about it,” Gilliam said. “I’m just struggling with how to transition the organizational stuff from one to the other, like what’s a page versus a module?”

Moodle featured one primary page broken into collapsible subgroups. A bar along the top listed course, participants, grades and more. In contrast, Canvas has a complete sidebar with home, announcements, syllabus, modules, pages, grades, assignments and more.

This year marks Gilliam’s 19th at Elon, and while he said it is difficult to adjust to Canvas, he trusts he will get used to it.

“I’ve been using Moodle for years and I wish I could just autopilot do what I did before,” Gilliam said. “It’s 90% the same, but just enough different to stress me out in the morning.”

Classics studies professor Brandon Baker said he thinks Canvas looks nicer than Moodle, but also admitted a learning curve.

“If, over time, we experiment with it enough, it might be a very useful tool,” Baker said. “But it’s definitely a shock going from Moodle, which seemed much more streamlined and simplistic than Canvas.”

Baker did not attend the online trainings, but said he was able to figure out most of the functions on his own. 

“On the professor side, the sheer amount of options that we see and that the students will see, it takes a minute to be like, ‘OK, what do I actually need out of all this stuff?’” Baker said. “I found most of my time I was switching to student view, just to know what (students) would see.”

Baker also expressed mild concern about the security of Canvas, especially after its nationwide breach in May.

“There’s security concerns there that I’m like, ‘Maybe they’ve got everything figured out,’ but that is always like a little kernel that’s just sitting there,” Baker said.

He said he hasn’t seen any problems with Canvas so far. Moodle had numerous crashes in the 2025-2026 school year, including one that caused campuswide outages on the first day of classes.

Students also expressed mixed feelings about the transition to Canvas. Addie Kate Phillips transferred last semester from a school that used Canvas.

“I like Canvas. I’m used to using it because we used it at my old school before I transferred,” Phillips said. “So it’s been a welcome change for me.”

But senior Janae Willock said the shift felt pointless.

“I hate it,” Willock said. “It just feels unnecessary. Moodle was working just fine.”

Teaching and Learning Technologies has dedicated a webpage to ease the transition, with an overview of how to use Canvas, commonly asked questions, and how to contact the technology service desk and 24/7 Canvas help.

“We created the Canvas Transition Hub, and so that has been sort of the go-to place for people to receive information, to read updates,” Reimer said. “We have a very active FAQ section for both students and faculty and staff, and so that’s been a great resource for people. We wanted to put the resources out in front of people and be transparent about the work and how people could get engaged.”

TLT is also offering in-person assistance for students at a booth in Belk Library through Sept. 4. Student consultant Ilenay Davila said students have mostly sought help with familiarizing themselves with the layout of Canvas.

“It has been more of a struggle for professors and teachers getting their coursework to Canvas and things like that, but for students, I think they’re able to pick it up more quickly,” Davila said.

Davila encouraged students to use TLT as a resource not only for Canvas tutorials and assistance, but also for Adobe software, printing and other technology needs.

According to the Canvas Transition Hub, students will lose Moodle access in October, and faculty and staff will lose it in December. Until then, TLT urges students to download any files they want to keep from Moodle and verify their email addresses in Canvas to receive all necessary information.

Miles Hayford contributed to the reporting of this story.