This morning, after hours of anxious reddit-searching and page-reloading, UniMelb students received an email from the institution confirming their worst fears were coming true: the Canvas LMS was down worldwide.
Farrago conducted interviews with affected students and faculty members across Parkville and Southbank campuses this morning to see how the outage was impacting learning.
“I think it works perfectly with the whole “going analogue” vibe we’ve been cultivating as a culture this year,” says a Sociology and Media/Communications student eagerly, clutching her Disc-man. “This should be a wake-up call to the university to invest in physical media. Get with the times!”
Farrago reporters declined the request to link the student’s Substack page in this article.
“It just shows we need a homegrown, true blue Aussie LMS,” says one anonymous agriculture student, “None of this would happen without foreign involvement.” A group of international students gave the agriculture student a notably wide berth in the Baillieu foyer.
One student says their first-year arts group project members will be thrilled at the Blackout.
“This gives them a great excuse for doing fuck all, not that they usually need one.”
Jazz & Improv students at the university’s Southbank campus used the outage to gain an advantage in their long-standing battle with Classical students over practice rooms.
“The classical kids usually beat us to practice rooms on the booking system, but now Canvas is cooked they have no claim to the land.”
When asked why they do not just book practice rooms earlier, a J&I drums student says he is too “go with the flow” to remember, but that “it’s unfair for the university to expect so much admin.”
Some white, privately-educated music students have labelled it a step forward in the decolonisation of the J&I practice rooms, a claim which VCA peers have vehemently condemned as “too far.”
However, students are not the only ones affected. Tutors had to go on as normal this morning.
“It was funny in my tutes today because nothing changed. No one does the readings when it’s a normal Friday, so the only difference was that I didn’t have to listen to their excuses for not knowing who Foucault is.”
Eager students have inundated tutors’ Outlook inboxes, keen to get their assignments in despite disruptions.
“PLEASE STOP” reads the standard Automatic Reply sent by one subject coordinator to every @student.unimelb email address, as tutors can no longer decipher if students’ work is “riddled with AI” without using the LMS’ built in AI-driven software.
From here on the ground in Parkville, it is clear that education has halted, the bitter limits of technology exposed in the throes of assignment season.