When Highland chemistry teacher Caleigh Oliver went on Canvas over the weekend to check grades, she discovered that she had 15 items on her to-do list, a shockingly low amount compared to her usual numbers, which trend in the hundreds. Then, she looked at the name on the screen and realized that this wasn’t her account at all.

“I log in and it’s like: ‘Hello, John Vi,’ and I’m like, I’m not John!” Oliver said. “And it’s like, you’re a student at East, you have History and AP Language.” 

Confused, Oliver turns to her teacher friends, asking if their Canvas was messed up too. They logged in and theirs also got messed up. Once the school realized there was a problem, they contacted the district IT people and were able to get the problem fixed.

Over the weekend Highland teachers and students logged in to canvas to a surprise. For some teachers, their classes were gone, and some were enrolled in classes of their own. Their students encountered a mixed bag of issues, some losing classes while others unable to submit assignments. The cause: unknown, a random glitch in the Canvas system.

As more people encountered the issue, concern grew and Highland’s principal, Jeremy Chatterton was alerted. Unfortunately, it wasn’t an issue he wasn’t directly capable of resolving.

“It’s just something that we don’t have control over,” Chatterton said. “Our district I.T. has control over our canvas, so I talked to them, let him know our concerns, and they said that they would be working on it.”

It was eventually resolved, but for a period over the weekend canvas continued to malfunction, putting work on pause. It was unfortunate timing, with the end of term looming, the last thing students and teachers needed was a roadblock to finishing their work.

“It was frustrating for sure, for a lot of kids. My own kids both have Mr. Winn as a teacher and they both weren’t able to get work done this weekend that they wanted to get done.”

Luckily, the issue was resolved fairly quickly and things returned to normal far before the end of term. The only worry is something like this happening again, but it’s likely that it was just a one-off event.