IT department switches campus to canvas

  The Information Technology department at Bethel College will be switching learning management systems from Jenzabar to Canvas. However, the My.Bethel site will not be going away. This change mostly affects staff members. The only change that students will see is in the My Courses tab on the My.Bethel site. There are currently two ways for students to access their grades electronically. One way is via the My Courses tab on the My.Bethel website. Another way is to go to the Student tab on the My.Bethel site and click on the Student Information tab on the left menu. From there, a student can access his or her academic record. According to Director of Administrative Computing Harold Rodgers, “Students will still be able to access their grades, the way they do now, but it will look a little different." The Information Technology (IT) department is also considering other changes to the layout for the My.Bethel site without replacing the site itself. In addition to the changes in the learning management system, students will no longer be able to access the H-drive, which is currently available on all Bethel computers across campus. At the beginning of the 2014-15 school year, the campus email was changed to Microsoft Office365. Although there were other factors that influenced this decision, the Microsoft Office365 service also includes a file hosting service called OneDrive that allows students to upload and sync files to cloud storage. In this way, students can access files from any computer or personal device. Information Systems Manager Todd Lemons explained why the school had chosen to make these changes. “One of the reasons we switched to Microsoft Office365 was so we could have access to OneDrive,” he explained. “The advantage is that you can upload files to OneDrive and access them on any computer and even personal devices like iPads or phones. With the H-drive, you have to be on a campus computer.” In order to keep any documents currently saved on the student H-drive, students may upload documents to One Drive or save them externally. The exact date for the impending changes has not yet been released, and more information will be released closer to the date when the changes will be implemented.