Academic Learning Systems @ WWU

Overview

The Learning Systems team in Academic Technology and User Services at WWU supports essential academic technology tools in order to facilitate and enhance the teaching and learning experience of students, faculty, and staff. This team consults with faculty, primarily, and provides assistance for all who use these systems for the academic mission. This group also provides presentations, trainings, and a large collection of help documentation and videos.

Canvas Learning Management System

Canvas is WWU’s learning management system. It is populated with all WWU course and enrollment information so that instructors can create, deliver, and manage course materials and grades for their classes. Canvas courses also include non-CRN courses, those not associated with WWU classes, but that can be used to deliver training, process applications, share materials with key populations, and more.

Google Workspace for Western

Google Workspace is WWU's educational license for Google. Faculty, staff, and students can activate their WWU Google account for additional storage and collaboration space. Some tools, such as Gmail and Maps are not available in this suite of Google apps, but it does include the full set of apps for document creation (Docs, Slides, Sites, etc.), Drive, YouTube, and more. 

Panopto Video Management System

Panopto is the centralized video management system at WWU. Panopto can be activated directly in Canvas courses (via navigation) to provide video hosting, recording, editing, uploads, streaming, captioning, and interactive quizzing. This allows faculty, staff, and students to create recordings, upload pre-existing videos, and share this media securely with individuals or groups, including specific classes via Canvas. Video content is automatically captioned and our Disability Access Center can also customize transcripts when needed. 

Socrative Polling Platform

Socrative Pro is a student response system that can help instructors to poll their students anonymously, gauge student learning through quizzes, and complement their discussions with interactive approaches, all of which are helpful to increase student engagement. It is free for up to 50 students or can accommodate 200 via a Pro account–available for the WWU academic community.

Zoom Conferencing System

Zoom Pro is WWU’s web conferencing platform, allowing for faculty, staff, and students to connect with video, audio, phone, and chat. Clients can share their screens with one another, present content, and divide into “breakout” rooms for collaborative work in smaller groups. Once activated, each client can use their WWU license for sessions up to 300 people and for meetings as long as a day. Western holds several webinar licenses that can be reserved for events via Video Services. Some instructors utilize Teams for collaboration activities as part of the Office 365 license at Western as well.

Other Helpful Systems and Support