SMU rescheduled all final exams originally set for Friday, May 8, to Sunday, May 10, after a nationwide Canvas outage disrupted access to course materials during the first day of finals. As of 9:44 p.m., Canvas access appears to be restored, yet further guidance from SMU on exam schedules is not known at this time.
The exams will take place at the same locations and start times, according to an 8:12 p.m. SMU Aware update. The new date also falls on Mother’s Day, adding another scheduling complication for students already navigating disrupted study plans, travel schedules and end-of-semester deadlines.
The outage began around 3:30 p.m. CST, according to SMU’s Office of Information Technology. In a 5:59 p.m. update, the university said the disruption was part of a “nationwide Canvas outage affecting thousands of universities.” SMU said its Office of Information Technology was continuing to monitor the issue and work with Canvas as the company responded.
The disruption appears to have come amid a larger cybersecurity incident involving Instructure, the company behind Canvas. According to a report from TechRadar, Instructure confirmed that hackers accessed “certain identifying information of users” at affected institutions, including names, email addresses, student ID numbers and user communications.
Some Canvas users also were met with a black screen contaiing a message from the alleged hackers behind the attack saying “ShinyHunters has breached Instructure (again).” The message claimed they had accesed internal canvas data and warned schools to negotiate a settlement with them by May 12 before data may be leaked.
While the full scope of the breach remains unclear, the outage immediately raised concerns among students who rely on Canvas for coursework, assignments, professor communication and finals preparation.
Universities across the U.S. also began adjusting finals schedules as the disruption continues. Baylor University’s Office of the Provost said, “At this time, we do not know how long Canvas will be unavailable. It could be hours or it could be days. In the meantime, with finals scheduled for tomorrow, students may not be able to access the materials they need to study.”
Senior Travis Pryor said the outage disrupted one of his final projects as an SMU student as he attempted to submit code for a senior lab assignment.
“I was struck to see that Canvas was down,” Pryor said. “I wasn’t able to submit that code today.”
Pryor also described a shift in how students were studying around campus as they adjusted to limited access to online course materials.
“It kind of feels like we’re in the Stone Age almost,” Pryor said. “A lot of us are just sitting around here trying to work with whiteboards and using traditional study tools.”
Christian Gulbrandsen, a senior double majoring in business analytics and data science, said the outage left some students unable to access the materials they needed most.
“For some of my classes, I can’t even study because I don’t have the resources to study for them,” Gulbrandsen said. “Without having that type of stuff, what the professor wants to focus on, I’m kind of stuck just guessing.”
The outage was especially frustrating to Gulbrandsen because many students may not have downloaded Canvas materials ahead of time.
“You can’t just punish someone who put off studying because something bad happened,” Gulbrandsen said. “If I was going to start studying for an exam on Monday today and now I can’t, even though I would have plenty of time to study for it, there’s no excuse.”
Sophomore Anna Zhao, a double major in computer science and finance, said the outage affected her ability to study because she could no longer access files, lectures or notes.
“I have the sample practice test, but I do not have the key, so I don’t know if my answers are correct,” Zhao said. “That impacted my study in some way.”
Zhao added that she was also uncertain about how the outage would affect an online final scheduled for the next day. She also said changes to the finals schedule could create new issues for students who plan to leave campus after exams.
“I know many students have already flights scheduled to fly out back home,” Zhao said. “ I understand that may be a big impact and may be unfair in certain ways.”
On an SMU parents Facebook page, one parent raised a similar concern, saying their student’s Friday morning final had been moved to Sunday despite the family already having flights scheduled to attend another child’s graduation out of town. The parent said they had already moved the student’s belongings into storage and had a dorm checkout planned for Friday morning, raising questions about who students should contact beyond their instructor.
In the latest update, SMU said students with questions or concerns about exams should contact their instructors, while instructors should contact their department chairs. The university also acknowledged the disruption, saying it understood the situation was “disruptive and frustrating,” particularly during final examinations and end-of-semester preparation
Further information after Canvas’ restoration late Thursday evening is not known at this time.
