• Utah has a statewide contract with Instructure so all teachers can use Canvas, a learning management system, to help connect students to their coursework outside the classroom.
• Rather than widespread Canvas availability being an end to the quest for more parent access to learning materials, it ought to spark discussion about how to achieve a higher parent access standard.

Utah has made important strides to make public education more accessible to parents. Legislators have passed laws that require instructional materials to be “readily available and accessible to parents”; laws that require library platforms to let parents view what their child checks out; and laws mandating processes for approving instructional materials at the district level. It’s clear Utah prioritizes parent access to learning materials.

Furthermore, Utah has a statewide contract with Instructure so all teachers can use Canvas, a learning management system, to help connect students to their coursework outside the classroom. Certainly, this tool increases access and participation of parents. 

But is that enough to say Utah parents have full access to curriculum?

What is Canvas?

Canvas is a learning management system that’s designed, according to its website, to help “learning institutions, educators, and students to access and manage online course learning materials and communicate about skill development and learning achievement.”

It hosts a number of different offerings, customizable to the course and teacher. It includes the following: Dashboard, which is a landing page; Calendar, a tool to see when modules or assignments are due; Inbox for communication between students and teachers; and more. Within the platform teachers can create modules, post assignments, provide quizzes and tests, moderate discussion boards, host the course syllabus, and make student grades available. All of this can give parents a window to the course’s learning materials. It can even host “Pages,” which stores content or resources like a video, text or files, even if the content doesn’t belong to a specific assignment. In this way, and through the other features, most of the courses learning materials can be made available online.

It even offers apps specific to teachers, students and parents, aptly named Canvas Teacher, Canvas Student and Canvas Parent. Clearly, the tool is designed to help these different stakeholders collaborate with each other to aid the learning of students.

History of Canvas use

Canvas has been a tool in schools across the nation for years. While Canvas has been used in Utah since at least 2010, the Utah Education Network (UEN) announced several years ago its collaboration with Canvas to bring the tool to all Utah public K-12 school districts in fall of 2017. By 2018, more than 90% of school districts were using Canvas. But that metric may not cover how many teachers and students are actually using it and to what level of efficacy.

Regarding the actual number of people using the tool, in January 2018 there were 149,671 active users, according to data from the UEN. Six years later, in January of 2024, there were 424,274 active users.

For comparison across several years in that same month, the highest number of active users in January was in 2021, with 454,384. The absolute peak of Canvas use was just a few months before, in September 2020 with 475,871 active users. Almost certainly, this was a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the widespread use of remote learning at that time.

Since then, the use has dipped and then started to pick up again. As features of online schooling, or online schooling itself, have remained popular, we might anticipate Canvas use to grow.

Opportunities and limitations for parent access to curriculum

Canvas as a parent access tool can be evaluated on its ability to do the following: (1) give parents access to the full year’s list of instructional topics in a given class/grade and to similar lists for future classes/grades, (2) communicate weekly with parents about topics being taught in the classroom, and (3) give parents access to curriculum materials the teacher uses in the classroom.

First, through its syllabus function, Canvas can give parents access to each year’s list of instructional topics (if a teacher posts a syllabus), but it is not structured to give parents those lists for future years. Second, while Canvas communicates with parents about new grades, scores, etc., it lacks a robust yet simple communication function for parents regarding weekly instructional topics. Third, Canvas does give parents access to curriculum materials a teacher uses, if teachers choose to post that material to Canvas.

In short, Canvas is a helpful tool for teachers, parents and students to access information at a granular level, with interactive tools that allow key parts of a course to be accessed and completed online. However, it may not easily meet the robust threshold of parent access that would offer choice before the start of the school year or communicate readily with parents about weekly instructional topics.

Additionally, while Canvas is available to every teacher in the state, teachers do not have to use it pursuant to a statewide mandate, nor must they use it in the same way, or with the same level of efficacy. In fact, in speaking with one Utah parent about her experience with Canvas for several of her children, she noted this variability, acknowledging that she’s seen different teachers use it differently. In short, simply because all Utah teachers have access to Canvas does not mean that all parents have all the information they need about learning materials.

Prudent public policy aimed at increasing access to curriculum ought to weigh how it can support and promote the effective use of existing tools like Canvas and beyond.

Rather than widespread Canvas availability being an end to the quest for more parent access to curriculum, it should spark discussion about the opportunity to incentivize educators to use the tools most effectively. Understanding the power of technology can even spark discussion about how it can be used to give parents greater and simpler access than they’ve ever had.