The University of Michigan announcedTuesday that the academic platform CTools — which was launched in 2004 — will be entirely phased out by the end of 2017.
According to the press release — CTools users — both faculty and students, will be able to set up CTools project sites to be used for research, information storage, and collaborative purposes with the permission of the office for Information and Technology Services from December to February, at which the ability to create new pages will be entirely disabled. However, no classes will be permitted to use CTools as their educational platform.
The process of switching from CTools to Canvas — the new University platform which was piloted by all academic units during the 2014-2015 academic year — began September 2014. Starting this year, all courses at the University were required to use Canvas.
Currently, CTools is being used for the creation and maintenance of project sites, according to the press release, which noted that about 60,000 sites remain online. However, fewer than 6,000 of those were active during the last year.
Sean DeMonner, the executive director of ITS Teaching and Learning, said these numbers are potentially a result of the convenience of other, more modern technologies.
“Use of CTools Project Sites continues to decline — likely the result of several newer collaboration tools being available to campus.” DeMonner said. “Most people find that tools like U-M Google and U-M Box better meet their needs.”
The University also announced Tuesday that throughout the University-wide shift to Canvas, several options such as the Migrations Champions program, will be in place to assist faculty and student site owners in transferring data from CTools to the new platform.
During the spring and fall of 2017, ITS is scheduled to transfer project site data from CTools to
Box — which is a cloud-based data storage system that is available to all University faculty, staff and students. Any site manager will have the option to personally download their site data, or have their site deleted.
Site managers will also have with the option of transferring their CTools site data transferred to Canvas, where it will safe from deletion and can be accessed past the CTools elimination date.
DeMonner said the transition to Canvas has already shown promise, and that the willingness of the faculty and students across the University to embrace the new platform will likely ensure a smooth phase-out for CTools.
“Any large-scale change requires support from many individuals across our campus,” DeMonner said. “Canvas was a success due in large part to our partnerships with individuals in each school and college. We plan to use a similar model as we move project sites to other solutions.”
