In 2016, West Des Moines Community Schools recognized the need for a central location to support student learning. The following year, Canvas became our official learning management system (LMS). This was an exciting action for our district, providing many opportunities to support 21st century skills.  A learning management system is a software that helps provide, track, and report on classes and assignments.  Canvas provides parents and students with greater access to their curriculum and learning by housing important student curricular expectations and information. This could include their online textbook, links to resources, homework, videos, assessments, online discussions, and so much more.

There are varying uses of this integration tool from elementary and secondary related to content and courses. In addition, Canvas is utilized to develop WDMCS online and blended courses. More colleges are moving toward the implementation of a learning management system. For example, both Iowa State University and the University of Iowa use Canvas for all their students in face-to-face and online courses. Our WDMCS students will be prepared for these future opportunities.

Visit the Parent Portal and create an account using a Student Pairing Code obtained from your student. Once you've created an account and logged in, you will have access to the Dashboard and grade books.

Once logged into Canvas, click the "View Grades" button on the right side of the Dashboard. You will be able to see a quick view of your student's grades by percentage (not letter grade) for all current courses.

You can download the Canvas app for iPhone or Android devices. To download the free app, go to Google Play or the App Store on your phone and look up "Canvas Parent." The parent icon is a blue set of circles.  When logging in to the app, be sure to search for West DesMoines and select the provided school with parents in parentheses.  A separate "Canvas Student" app is also available for download on Google Play or the App Store. The student icon is a red set of circles.

Notification settings are managed under the Account tab in Canvas. Parents can determine the frequency of notifications, including immediate notification, daily, weekly, or no notices based on the type of information posted. Status updates of assignments can be looked up in the individual course listing under Grades.

The parent notifications you are receiving are like a blind carbon copy email of your student's notification.  The link in the email takes you to the student login page, not the parent page.  Rather than clicking on the link, use this as a reminder to open your app or go to the district website to log in to Canvas.  You can also set your notifications to include the name of the student, along with the grade of the assignment in your account settings.  Canvas will not automatically include this information until you give them permission to due to privacy regulations.

If you are a WDMCS employee as well as a WDMCS parent, you will not be able to use your district-issued single sign-on process. You will need to use your personal email account to log into Canvas as a parent observer.

All secondary teachers use Canvas to track grades. Elementary grades are currently tracked in Infinite Campus.

Secondary teachers use Canvas to store digital resources and assignments.

All official letter grades will continue to be reported at the end of each term in Infinite Campus for grades 7-12. Infinite Campus is required for state reporting. It helps the district manage student information, attendance, and enrollments.

Infinite Campus is a Student Information System (SIS), required for state reporting and still an important tool within the system. All official letter grades will continue to be reported in Infinite Campus at the end of each term but daily assignments and other grades will no longer be posted.