Academic Technology projects

Academic Technology

Canvas Student Learning Resources

Canvas, UW–Madison’s academic learning management system, is a strategic central location to present important and just-in-time information to students. Sponsored by Dean Christina Olstad, this project will leverage Canvas as a common landing place to provide students with timely and relevant information such as health, wellbeing, and resources to facilitate getting and staying connected on campus. Along with stakeholders from across multiple areas of campus, several members of DoIT’s Academic Technology department are involved in this effort in roles related to project management, subject-matter expertise, technical consultation, and research.

NameCoach Implementation

Accurate name pronunciations help to promote inclusion, belonging and rapport in every interaction. As part of an overall effort to build inclusion features into campus tools and systems, the university licenses and supports a product called Namecoach, which enables students and employees to record and share their name pronunciations.

Since January 2022, NameCoach has been available from within the Canvas learning management system for playback of name pronunciation recordings within courses. Because of the success of that initial implementation, the DoIT Academic Technology department will roll out additional features such as the ability to attach a NameCoach name pronunciation recording to an email signature. DoIT will also provide integration tokens and API documentation for groups wishing to provide NameCoach features within other campus systems.