University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and the rest of the UW campuses are part of a nationwide outage of Canvas, an online learning platform used for assignments, grading and more, that is causing disruptions to some final exams.
UW-Madison became aware of the outage around 3 p.m. May 7, toward the end of final exam week, according to a message on the university’s IT website. The outage, which is affecting universities across the country, follows news disclosed earlier this month that Instructure, the vendor that operates Canvas, was the target of a cyberattack.
“We recognize this is occurring at a very challenging time during final exams and grading, and we’re committed to providing you with support and flexibility as we navigate this significant disruption,” said a message sent to students by John Zumbrunnen, UW-Madison’s provost and executive vice chancellor for academic affairs.
“Multiple teams are working to address this issue,” the message, a copy of which was obtained by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, said.
Messages sent to UWGB and UW-Madison students and faculty instructed them not to follow through with prompts by Canvas to perform any action, such as clicking a link, logging in or resetting a password. The message warned that the prompts may not be legitimate.
The outage has led to disruptions for UW-Madison students taking or preparing for final examinations or trying to turn in final projects in the last week of the academic year.
The message from Zumbrunnen said to watch for communication from instructors if students had upcoming final exams or outstanding assignments that required access to Canvas.
Some UW-Madison students with finals scheduled for May 8 received emails saying their exams might not proceed as planned if Canvas is not restored by the morning.
“If the UW Canvas site is NOT restored by the time of our final exam tomorrow … then we will work on alternate plans and will communicate them to you as soon as we are able,” an email from one instructor said. “We are not equipped at this late stage to be able to provide paper exams by tomorrow.”
UWGB final exams are scheduled to begin May 11.
The outage comes following a cyberattack on Instructure, which operates Canvas. The breach, first reported May 1, affects the cloud-based system operated by Instructure, and affects UW-Madison and all other UW campuses, according to a statement by the UW System.
A message on the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee website on May 7 said that logging into Canvas had been temporarily disabled.
“Additional status updates will be provided by Friday, May 8, 11:00 a.m.,” the website said. “Your instructor will address your specific course as necessary.”
Final exams for UW-Milwaukee do not begin until later this month, according to its academic calendar.
UW-Madison advises students to visit alerts.wisc.edu for updates.
Reporter Sarah Volpenhein can be reached at svolpenhei@gannett.com or 414-607-2159.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: UWGB, others part of nationwide Canvas outage disrupting exams
Reporting by Sarah Volpenhein, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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