By Alexia Finney | Staff Writer
Canvas is back up and running after an outage that lasted over 12 hours and left students unable to complete assignments or take exams.
Chief Information Officer and Chief Information Security Officer Jon Allen said the issue began early Monday morning after a failure in Amazon Web Services, the platform that hosts Baylor’s learning management system.
“We are really at the mercy of our service providers, and then their service providers, for our technology,” Allen said. “Canvas runs on AWS, and that’s where the problem began.”
When asked what could have started the problem, Allen said it likely stemmed from a technical error from Amazon Web Services.
“In my experience, the two most common causes are equipment failure and user misconfiguration,” Allen said. “Someone makes a change that has unintended consequences.”
For students, the outage was an inconvenience. St. Louis freshman Malika Yaya said the Canvas outrage disrupted her schedule and caused her to be at Moody during late hours.
“I had an English paper due at midnight,” Yaya said. “It’s still due at midnight. It opened up again later, so my professor said to just turn it in.”
Similar to her, Port Arthur sophomore Alexander Jackson said he noticed students at Moody staying up late, attempting to catch up on their schoolwork.
“There’s groups all around us,” Jackson said. “All my classmates are complaining because they have assignments and tests to study for. They couldn’t access test reviews or assignments.”
Yaya added that the outage made attending class feel pointless because her coursework is all online.
“Honestly, if Canvas was down, they should’ve canceled all classes,” Yaya said. “That might sound dramatic, but Canvas is the backbone of all our classes. Professors always say, ‘Pull up Canvas,’ or ‘Check the prompt,’ and we couldn’t. So having class today felt pointless.”
Although students alike are frustrated, Allen said outages are an inevitable part of relying on technology and are likely to continue in the future.
“You can change providers, but at the end of the day, any provider can have an outage,” Allen said. “Nobody’s immune. What matters is how they respond and resolve it. For students, that response can make all the difference in staying on track with coursework.”
Allen also noted how interconnected modern education has become. Canvas isn’t just a place to find assignments, but a place that connects students, professors and resources to one another.
“It’s a reminder of how interconnected everything is,” Allen said. “Not just Canvas, but the systems that power daily life.”
