Virtual Learning Environment

Service Description

To provide a Virtual Learning Environment to the University to allow staff to add resources for students to access online. Slides, video, audio and other pieces of content which are created outside of the VLE can be added into modules in the VLE to enhance teaching and learning efforts when away from campus.

Features

  • Hosting of Lecture Materials (PowerPoint, video, links)
  • Collaboration with discussion boards, virtual classrooms
  • Built-in links to services such as Turnitin and Grademark
  • Distance learning with remote delivery of courses available

Users

Any member of the University.

Service Hours

24 hours a day, seven days a week

Level of Service

Target availability of the VLE: 99.9% of service hours, excluding advertised planned maintenance downtime. This equates to a target of no more than ¾ hours of unplanned outages per month.

The central infrastructure is fully resilient, meaning that any hardware or network failures will not result in a loss of data.

Backups are taken every night but these are only for system disaster recovery; it is not possible to retrieve specific courses or specific pieces of content that have been deleted accidentally.

Support and Documentation

Documentation, including a Staff User Guide, is available at https://services.ncl.ac.uk/digitallearning/canvas/

Additional support is available via the IT Service Desk on 0191 208 5999 or https://nuservice.ncl.ac.uk

All incidents relating to this service will be handled according to the Incident Management and Major Incident Management processes.

Request Process

Staff:

  1. All requests to get access to the VLE for Staff should be made via the IT Service Desk on 85999 or https://nuservice.ncl.ac.uk

Students:

  1. Students are enrolled automatically based on their degree programme and module choices.
  2. Go directly to https://canvas.ncl.ac.uk and log in.

Requests for any other aspect of the service should be made via the IT Service Desk on 0191 208 5999 or https://nuservice.ncl.ac.uk

All requests relating to this service will be handled according to the Request Fulfilment process.

User Responsibility

Students should use the VLE as directed for their particular modules.

Staff should keep copies of all uploaded material on the University filestore as it cannot be retrieved through the VLE if it has been deleted.

Costs

N/A