[setopt]

Just to add one more data point, we also use Canvas at my university. The deadline for submitting who are eligible (i.e. passed compulsory assignments and labs) to take the exam was yesterday, and I couldn’t meet that deadline because Canvas went down. I usually do corrections offline so I have backups of my own evaluations, but these are courses with many teachers and many TAs, so Canvas is the way we sync our assessments.

[p-e-w]

I guess what surprises me the most is that it’s even legal for schools to outsource the core of what they do to some random tech company.

Either way, they were under no obligation to adopt this garbage technology regardless of whether it’s available, so this is 110% on them.

[jameshart]

I’m sorry… is your view here that you can’t believe it is legal for a school to purchase software or pay someone to host software for them?

You are aware that you are posting on Hacker News, a forum for people who make their living selling software and the expertise to host it?

[matsemann]

The alternative would be that each school develop their own platform for this, which also isn't very good use of their time and money?

Edit: No idea why this was down voted so much. I'm not defending Canvas, just wondering what the alternative would be.

[lol768]

> The alternative would be that each school develop their own platform for this

I worked at a university which did exactly this, in the UK.

It was a bespoke platform which integrated incredibly well with the rest of the systems the university used because it was designed from the ground-up to meet the institution's needs, there were regular user groups involving academics to understand what features needed to be built/worked on etc. At one point it was all OSS on GitHub too, in case other universities could've found it useful. It handled plagiarism detection (integrating with Turnitin), marking, exam grids, coursework submissions and feedback, seminar allocations, personalised timetables & mitigating circumstances.

The in-house dev team was vastly cheaper than anything SaaS would've cost, as well. It also maintained software for on-campus parcel deliveries, online exams, opinion surveys, a mobile app for students/staff, the SSO system, the course catalogue, car parking permits, a content management system and more.

[akpa1]

That sounds like a dream.

My (also UK-based) university has been working on a new student records management project for years that's been incredibly ill-fated. It's destined to replace all their current systems and the first module module was meant to launch last year, except it thoroughly failed testing and nobody has heard anything about it since.

No idea how long it'll take to pull through. I don't believe it's an in-house effort.

[hunter2_]

In-house bespoke software sounds reasonable, and multi-customer SaaS sounds reasonable, but outsourced bespoke software sounds like a complete dumpster fire:

End users who report problems:

* are ok with IT level 1 telling them IT level 3 is working on it with velocity appropriate to keep their jobs,

* are ok with IT level 1 telling them ${vendor_of_well-known_solution} is working on it with velocity appropriate for many customers, but

* are not ok with IT level 1 telling them ${vendor_of_bespoke_solutions} is working on it with velocity appropriate for one customer (if they even still exist).

[jcgrillo]

This sounds like a great opportunity for students to gain hands on experience with real software engineering work as well.

[master-lincoln]

They do not need to develop it, but host an existing software on their infrastructure maybe...

[tejohnso]

The alternative could be to self host.

https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms/wiki/Production-St...

Or maybe consider not following the herd, and use a much simpler but sufficient system that can be self hosted, if available.

[Hendrikto]

The alternative is FOSS.

[master-lincoln]

Seems like instructure canvas is FOSS: https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms/tree/master

[philipwhiuk]

If your line is GPL rather than AGPL there's Moodle.

But you do then have to have a sysadmin capable of managing an enterprise grade LAMP stack.

[matsemann]

Canvas already is AGPL, though?

[Hendrikto]

So it can be used by multiple universities who share the maintenance. That is my point: Not everybody has to develop their own.

[dboreham]

Um. This is the forum for an industry that outsourced its entire core of what they do to Microsoft (GitHub).