FY2025 Accomplishments
Empowering the U-M Community with GenAI
As the University of Michigan remains committed to leading the nation in how higher education can embrace artificial intelligence, Teaching & Learning continues to broadly promote AI literacy for the U-M community. Over the last year, the team has stayed busy developing new resources and offering training opportunities for all skill levels, enabling the community to discover how AI can transform academics, research, and daily workflows.
GenAI Workshop Series
Building on a successful launch from FY24, Teaching & Learning offered a comprehensive series of Generative AI workshops throughout the year, delivering 80+ workshops to 1,689 participants. Adapting to participant feedback, these sessions adopted a new format and expanded the range of topic areas to meet the varied interests and needs of instructors, staff, and students.
To complement these workshops, participants were offered three newly developed GenAI badges through the Canvas Credentials program, allowing them to showcase their new GenAI proficiencies on platforms such as LinkedIn.
Alongside the workshop series, the team also introduced the self-paced course, “Teaching with GenAI,” which has had over 300 participants to date.
U-M Maizey-Canvas LTI
To facilitate the integration and usage of GenAI in the digital learning environment, Teaching & Learning released the U-M Maizey LTI tool for Canvas, an integration that enables instructors to easily create an “AI tutor” — a chatbot available to students 24/7, powered by Maizey and customized with course materials to deliver real-time guidance, personalized learning, and streamline academic processes. This integration aims to reduce the strain on instructor resources arising from repetitive inquiries, limited hours of access to academic support, and catering to various learning styles by using AI. To date, the Maizey-Canvas LTI has supported over 400 courses. In April, the Maizey-Canvas LTI received external recognition as a finalist for the 2025 1EdTech Learning Impact award.
To further the adoption of this integration, Teaching & Learning collaborated with the Emerging Technology team to host a series of ‘Make a Maizey’ workshops, starting in December 2024. These in-person clinics encouraged instructors, faculty, and other academic staff to drop in and work one-on-one with team members to create their own Maizey for their Canvas courses, regardless of their skill level with AI. The teams have hosted six workshops to date to a growing number of participants and are planning to increase the offerings in the fall semester.
Teaching with GenAI Learning Community
At the beginning of 2025, Teaching & Learning launched the Teaching with GenAI Learning Community, a community of practice co-sponsored by CRLT, Flint ODE, LSA Technology Services, and ITS. Sixty-one faculty and instructional staff eagerly explored how to effectively integrate GenAI into their teaching practices and build a network of support among peers. Between January and June, the group met monthly, hosting dynamic sessions that included hands-on projects, challenges, and an instructor panel with participants from the Ann Arbor, Dearborn, and Flint campuses.
"The [meeting] flew by and the two breakout sessions were great opportunities to meet people on my own campus who are wrestling with AI, too... I have not thought about how AI can solve a problem for me; I always saw it as the problem. I am changing my thinking already. Looking forward to the learning."— Jennifer Coon, Director, College of Business, University of Michigan-Dearborn
Accessibility
In partnership with the ITS Accessibility team, Teaching & Learning implemented the Canvas Content Accessibility checker, a tool powered by Panorama. The service provides tools to ensure course content in Canvas meets digital accessibility standards and offers equitable access to learners with disabilities campus-wide. The team offered robust support for this new implementation through regular training sessions and by creating an online directory of resources.
Building on a successful launch of the auto-captioning tool for MiVideo last fiscal year, Teaching & Learning continued to improve the service by adding extended audio description accessibility to V7 Players.
Learning Analytics in Action 2025: Enriching Your Teaching with Data
In April, the Teaching & Learning team hosted the inaugural ‘Learning Analytics in Action 2025: Enriching Your Teaching with Data’ event, a comprehensive showcase of how the effective use of data can transform classrooms and enhance student success. Teaching & Learning provided a full day of presentations and use cases to over 75 faculty, instructional staff, advisors, and other interested parties. Participants discovered how Canvas, MiVideo, Annoto and other available learning tools can offer a wealth of valuable insights into student engagement and performance. Attendees were able to learn from a broad spectrum of U-M educators and came away from the event with practical techniques to incorporate into their classrooms and daily workflows.
Testamonials
“I am so excited to figure out how to use MiVideo and Annoto! I use videos in my Canvas course, but until this session, I had never heard of MiVideo or Annoto…”
“I was already familiar with [Student Success Viewer], but not actively using it. I got exactly the nudge I needed to hop in… Super valuable tool for me as an advisor.”
“[My Learning Analytics] was completely new for me and really interesting!”
Learning Analytics in Action 2025: Enriching Your Teaching with Data
Instructor Tools Launch
In December, Teaching & Learning launched the Instructor Tools app, a new resource designed to make it easier for instructors to manage and optimize their course sites. This upgrade allows for quick access to productivity features, such as the Canvas Course Manager, as well as other functionality, including the ability to enable the U-M Maizey integration in just a few clicks. Looking forward, T&L will continue to add new tools designed to improve productivity and ease course administration for instructors over time.
Remote Office Hours Queue
The Remote Office Hours Queue also received important updates that improved the performance and security of the app throughout the year. Among these updates, queue owners gained the ability to see usage information and to export that data for various purposes. T&L received enthusiastic feedback regarding this upgrade, particularly from advising offices who frequently use ROHQ, as it allows for better understanding and evaluation of advising service utilization.
MyLA
My Learning Analytics (MyLA) is a tool that allows students to use data from Canvas to analyze course engagement and performance. The tool remains well-received from both instructors and students, as evidenced by its notable increase in utilization. In the last fiscal year, MyLA has supported:
- Over 330 courses — a 29% increase from the previous year
- Nearly 20,000 students — a 38% increase from the previous year
One major update this year focused on supporting faculty by adding the ability for Canvas sub-account administrators to set up MyLA for their courses. Keeping with Teaching & Learning’s broader focus on digital accessibility, the team worked with the ITS Accessibility team to identify and implement changes, such as improving the usability for screen readers within the Assignment Planning view.
Canvas Catalog
ITS Teaching & Learning expanded online learning support to campus units, providing Canvas for credit-bearing programs and Canvas Catalog for non-credit-bearing offerings. As units address the growing demand for non-credit-bearing online training and professional development, they are able to choose which platform best meets their needs, resulting in reduced administrative costs and new revenue generation opportunities. The cost efficiency of Canvas Catalog in particular allows units to add economically priced offerings, increasing their overall reach and impact for both internal and external audiences. There are currently 1472 published courses from 11 campus partners.