Case Study: Penn Harris Madison Schools achieves rapid teacher adoption and early enrollment of 1,600 students with Canvas LMS

K-12 district moving to digital curriculum picks Canvas teachers enroll students before training

Penn Harris Madison Schools, a K–12 district in Indiana, needed to move away from slow, textbook-centered instruction and a piecemeal mix of free web tools toward a cohesive, device-agnostic digital curriculum that would deepen student engagement while fitting into existing Windows and Google Apps workflows. The district also faced pressure to meet Common Core and state accountability requirements, so they sought an intuitive learning management system that could scale across platforms and be easy for teachers and students to adopt.

After a three-month evaluation of major LMS options, the district selected Canvas for its clean, consistent interface and seamless integration with Google and other systems. Teachers quickly adopted it—enrolling 1,600 students before formal training—volunteering peer-led training and using Canvas for classroom instruction; the district plans to expand rollout, use Canvas for ongoing professional development, and reports strong early buy-in as a sign of success.

Penn Harris Madison Schools

Matthew Hapke

District’s Network Administrator