Anecdotally, most professors already hate Canvas, Brightspace, Blackboard, or are at least indifferent…but are forced to use it by admin, who put other constraints that harm teaching like enforcing grade inflation (because otherwise students will drop out, and the college won’t get their oversized tuition).

Although college education’s problems are far deeper than LLMs. IMO the biggest problem is that most students go only for a degree, so don’t pay attention; why should OP’s professor put more effort into teaching if they may be the only one to benefit from it? In fact, I’d recommend greatly increasing LLMs and CMSs to teach courses, so that for such students the professors are absent, because they are completely unnecessary; but students like OP who actually want to learn beyond the test can still reach out to professors and work on research, do independent studies, etc. with closer supervision (since the professor doesn’t have to supervise lots of bored students who are, not even wrong in, only going to college for a semi-decent "career").

Interesting article. I wonder how much of the problems with either LMS or AI usage are to be ultimately pinned on the faculty themselves. The article does say that too many of the faculty "like the convenience and like being able to phone it in". Canvas simply constructs the exact destructive incentive that exacerbates this tendency: as the article says, Canvas is ultimately a compliance and accreditation tool, not a learning tool, and so it makes accreditation easier and easier, while the learning part is still left to the teachers. Is it not that Canvas simply does what it is supposed to do? Is it not that it is on the educational institutions to ensure real standards of quality? Instructure Inc. is not the one that overprioritizes accreditation at the expense of learning.

That said, I see potential in the idea that this separation of "accreditation" and "learning" is exactly the problem.

The author has linked two other blog posts to this one (the ones linked in "bad teaching" and "ridiculous standards") that, in my opinion, target the core of the issue better. I'm not sure if Canvas is really at the heart of these problems, as the article asserts, or if it, just like AI, is exposing harmful societal incentives that we have been living with for ages.

There's a comment under the article that basically shows what I'm saying. It's possible for a teacher to have an easier time teaching with Canvas, while not sacrificing the critical human aspect of learning. I do concur that it is simply a lot harder to do this now.

LMS facilitated surveillance is particularly relevant at a time when academic freedom is under assault.

The state of Alabama just passed a law prohibiting all state workers (college professors included) from using the term “Gulf of Mexico”.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/state-policy/...

Texas A&M university has censored teaching Plato’s philosophy because he described same-sex relationships.

https://www.aaup.org/academe/issue/fall-2026/legal-watch-def...

Great piece.

Canvas is a slightly more modern and private equity Moodle for the banal transactions of student/instruction life and not actually for learning.

It’s nice it helps instructors for sure, but it’s never really been about the students.

Students are just water boarded with a multitude of too many different tools to different tools from canvas that aren’t connected nor work together for the student experience.

Learning management systems can be for managing the learners and access to learning, but rarely about the learning or learning experience or learning outcomes.

These platforms are too often so entrenched and anchored in earning in the past that they can’t see let alone reach the present or future.

Hating AI and Canvas are not mutually exclusive positions.