This study examines the effects of instructors’ academic disciplines and prior experience with the learning management system (LMS), Canvas, on current use. Our mixed method study collected data via an online survey from 557 instructors at two United States universities. Quantitative analyses found significant differences in instructors’ use of Canvas by their academic discipline and prior Canvas experience. Content analysis of the open-ended responses revealed that, when reporting the strengths and weaknesses of Canvas, while instructors across disciplines reported common strengths, the weaknesses they identified varied according to the features they used for their specific disciplines. Our findings lead us to recommend routine evaluation and assessment of instructors’ needs related to LMS. We suggest that, together with general LMS training, campuses design and offer discipline-specific LMS training to ensure instructors’ needs for LMS based on their academic fields are addressed. Also, we propose that universities should design and offer basic and advanced LMS training programs for instructors with different levels of LMS experience.

A large number of university web portal's content and design do not meet today's students' expectations and requirements. To address students' expectations, universities spend millions on the redesign and maintenance of their web portals which students say are inadequate and lack basic services. To this end, this study explored the factors that influence students' acceptance of university web portals. It proposed an extension of Davis's (1989) Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) by adding three user related external constructs in it. A total of 429 usable responses were collected from university students through a web survey. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The results of the study revealed that website quality, perceived self-efficacy, and facilitating conditions were significant in explaining students' use of university web portals and therefore, indicated that the extended TAM has sufficient explanatory power to explain students' usage of university web portals. In conclusion, important theoretical and practical implications of the results are presented for both researchers and practitioners.

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