Funding remains available to reimburse public school districts for costs associated with the purchase and licensing of a qualifying learning management system (LMS) for the 2022-23 school year.
Additionally, any nonpublic school interested in adopting the Canvas system as its LMS can be added to the Iowa Department of Education’s statewide contract, which will cover student and teacher licenses along with implementation and initial, one-time, set-up costs.
Learning management systems enable educators to effectively and efficiently develop courses, deliver instruction, foster collaboration, assess student success and provide other learning resources. Additionally, a robust LMS that accepts common cartridge files and allows for customization of content and delivery is needed for teachers to access, use and customize the high-quality course content and units developed by Iowa-licensed educators in the course repository of Iowa e-Learning Central.
Federal funding available through the Department’s Rethink K-12 Education Models grant will be used to cover the costs. The Iowa Department of Education was awarded the nearly $17.7 million competitive federal grant to help establish and support Iowa e-Learning Central, which houses high-quality courses and units, supports content creation and collaboration, expands statewide access to courses across all grade levels and facilitates online course sharing between schools.
To be considered for reimbursement, a qualifying LMS must meet the following characteristics of a robust LMS:
- Able to download Common Cartridge files
- Has sufficient amount of file space to accept common cartridge file downloads
- Able to display HTML pages
- Allows teachers to customize content and delivery after downloading
- Has online tools for student learning, engagement and evaluation of learning
- Facilitates student to student learning (social interaction)
- Facilitates student to teacher learning
- Is adaptable with multiple devices
If your district or school has purchased or licensed a qualifying LMS for the 2022-23 school year, email a PDF copy of the invoice to Eric Gebhart at eric.gebhart@iowa.gov. If approved, public school districts will be provided an allocation in CASA (Consolidated Accountability and Support Application), which schools use to report information to the Iowa Department of Education.
Canvas is the only LMS for which the Department can offset the cost for Iowa nonpublic schools. Nonpublic schools interested in setting up Canvas for the 2022-23 school year can contact the Department’s Canvas representative, Kirk Kezel, at kirk.kezel@instructure.com.