Case Study: Montana University System unifies digital learning across campuses with Canvas by Instructure

Montana University System unifies 32,000 students on Canvas with Instructure

The Montana University System (MUS) was facing a fragmented digital learning environment, with its various campuses operating independently on different LMS platforms like Moodle and Brightspace. This created significant challenges for students transferring between institutions and for faculty, while legacy systems were no longer meeting the system's evolving needs. To unify the experience for its 32,000 students, MUS partnered with the vendor Instructure to implement its Canvas LMS platform.

Instructure provided a flexible, phased implementation plan for Canvas that allowed each campus to migrate at its own pace, supported by extensive training and migration assistance. The solution successfully created a single, scalable ecosystem that resulted in a consistent and improved student experience across all institutions by the Fall 2025 deadline. The vendor's platform received overwhelmingly positive feedback from both students and faculty, particularly for its usability and mobile capabilities, and it established a strong technical foundation for future system-wide collaboration and course-sharing initiatives.

Montana University System