28 APRIL 2016 – Instructure, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company and creator of the Canvas LMS (learning management system), announced today that it has grown its operations in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region by doubling its staff. Additionally, four prestigious customers in the APAC region have selected Canvas as their LMS of choice, bringing a modern learning platform to schools and universities across the region.

Canvas was recently implemented by SCEGGS Darlinghurst in Sydney, The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, SIM University in Singapore, and University of Auckland in New Zealand. In addition to the four customer wins, Canvas has more than doubled its headcount within the sales, marketing, and customer success functions across APAC over the past 12 months.

Troy Martin, Director of APAC for Canvas said of the LMS’ momentum within the region: “The success that Canvas has seen over the past 12 months in the APAC region indicates that there is a growing and real need for cutting edge technology that becomes an enabler, allowing the institutions we work with to deliver the best and most compelling learning experience possible.

“We’ve seen how progressive Asia-Pacific can be when it comes to driving innovation in education and student-centred learning, and Canvas is uniquely placed to facilitate that transition towards a digital teaching model. Our APAC customers, including SCEGGS, Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts, SIM University and University of Auckland have selected Canvas as their LMS platform partner of choice to tackle head-on the challenges and opportunities presented by the global education marketplace. We are delighted to be working with them moving forward.”

SCEGGS Darlinghurst, an independent Anglican girls school of 920 students based in Sydney, is planning to roll out Canvas to the school in May 2016. Ken Emeleus, Director of ICT said that the school had selected Canvas LMS due to the platform’s solid feature set, user experience, and manageability.

“A significant number of our staff were not engaging with our previous solution. They felt it was inefficient and provided a poor user experience.” said Emeleus. “The team at Canvas really recognised the need for schools to follow their own processes when choosing technology solutions.”

Following years of using its homegrown LMS, the University of Auckland – New Zealand’s most highly ranked university – recognized the need to find a modern platform that would provide greater usability and functionality for its faculty and students. Specifically, the university – which boasts over 33,000 students and nearly 5,000 staff – wanted a system that would integrate seamlessly with external tools and applications that the faculty use, while also working across operating systems and devices that students expect to use in conducting their learning.

Dr. Kevin Morris, Director of Teaching and Learning at University of Auckland notes that “the shift to Canvas LMS is an important part of our plan to enhance the learning experience, by providing our staff and students with a flexible, modern tool to support student success.”

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For The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts (the Academy), which has a 1,500-strong staff and student body, selecting Canvas was an integral part of meeting the academy’s 10-year strategic plan, in which they sought new technologies that would ‘enrich educational opportunities for students, enhance international engagement, and improve operational efficiency.’

Head of the Academy’s Innovation Hub (iHub), Peter Duffy, says, “The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts chose Canvas LMS for a two-year trial because of its ease of use and intuitive design, as well as the high quality of technical support provided. We were also particularly impressed with Canvas’ ability to demonstrate how its platform excelled by providing a benchmark across other performing arts institutions.”

SIM University (UniSIM) in Singapore, which has 13,600 students, also chose Canvas as its LMS of record. UniSIM’s Director of Learning Systems and Applications, Chye Seng Lee shared that the University has been using the incumbent LMS since 2006, and had started to evaluate and identify a future-ready LMS platform that can better meet the University’s teaching and learning needs for the years ahead in January 2015.

“’Future-readiness’ refers to the teaching and learning requirements required by the new and modern online learning environment that we envisage our students and faculty to be using in the near future. We chose Canvas because it is more forward-looking and future-ready, and matched our key teaching and learning requirements in the areas of ease of use, mobile learning, social earning, outcomes assessment, learning analytics and learning personalisation,” says Lee.

 

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