The AWS Outage Was a Nightmare for College Students

The outage impacted online learning platform Canvas, which is used by half of college students across the US, leaving many unable to access course materials or contact professors.

When Abby Fagerlin tried logging into Canvas, a popular educational technology platform, to check on her assignments Monday morning, she couldn’t get in.

That meant the 19-year-old college sophomore, who is studying physics at Pasadena City College, was unable to access materials she needed for her three classes, which were hosted on or linked through the learning management system. After searching online, she realized the Amazon Web Services outage that crippled much of the internet Monday had also temporarily taken down Canvas.

Fagerlin also couldn’t be sure if she’d missed a message from her professors—some of whom she said communicated exclusively with their students through a messaging system hosted on Canvas. Going to talk to one of her ...