LMS Migration: Canvas is coming to ODU classrooms

Course migration will begin in late November 2021 for Faculty Champions teaching in Spring 2022. All other faculty will have access to their migrated courses in January 2022 to begin reviewing and updating them for use by Summer/Fall 2022.

• We are looking for a small number of Faculty Champions ( < 50 courses).
• Faculty Champions should be nominated by their departments.
• Faculty Champions should be those willing to frequently communicate with CFD, CLT & ITS over their experiences and their students' experiences using the new LMS.
• Faculty Champions should be those willing to document and share their tips and best practices with other faculty to improve content delivery and the student experience.
• Those creating an entirely new course might as well do it in Canvas and consider being a Faculty Champion.
• Faculty Champions could be those taking over an existing course who do not plan to reuse Blackboard content from the previous incarnation.
• Faculty Champions may be those who already have experience with Canvas.

• Courses that use multi-layer deep course structures
• Courses that use large test pools
• Courses that use extensive use of Adaptive Learning at many levels

All courses taught in Summer 2022 or later will be taught in Canvas.

• Everyone. The existing Blackboard contract will expire June 30, 2022, stopping access to all existing courses/data in that Blackboard Learn and Blackboard Collaborate.
• Current plans will migrate the most recent version of all active courses to Canvas in early spring, providing faculty with access to existing content.
• We will be archiving all existing courses in Blackboard Learn to ensure content or grade data is not lost. These can be restored on demand to capture information which can be proffered through a CSV file in the event of a legal grade request or dispute.

• Canvas training and workshops will be provided during the fall for Faculty Champions.
• Canvas Training and Workshops will be offered in the spring semester for all other faculty.
• Training schedules will be posted to the Canvas Migration web site and email announcements will be sent to all faculty.

• Options for faculty workshops and assistance for course migration and setup are being investigated and will be announced.

• The Center for Learning and Teaching is working on a migration plan for PLE courses, but we don't have a timeline for the deprecation of PLE yet. In the meantime, courses taught in Canvas will have links to PLE, just as Blackboard has now.

• Only the most recent version of each course you teach is being planned for migration to Canvas. 
• A list of Blackboard courses for migration was derived by searching for all active courses and Organizations in Blackboard. That list then had all duplicate courses removed for each faculty member where the most recent course was selected to arrive at a recommended course migration list. 
• We will provide a UI shortly to enable faculty to review which courses are planned to be migrated.
• The UI will also enable faculty members to swap out a course from the list and select a different course for migration if needed.
• All faculty should plan to review and validate their course content and how it is delivered, make any required changes, and reuse the updated course content as needed.

• Due to multimedia storage constraints in Canvas, all multimedia content (.mpg, .mov, .mp4, .wav etc.) should be stored in Kaltura. Make sure the media content is uploaded to Kaltura and is linked to or embedded in your Blackboard course prior to the migration. There will be a 2 GB multimedia file limit set per course in Canvas.

In the management of any course, instructors may come across students who are unable to complete a course. This typically results in a grade of "I" being submitted to Banner. Previously in Blackboard, instructors typically allowed the student to complete the course in the existing course shell they started in.

As we transition to Canvas, the process for provisioning course content that will allow students to complete their coursework will be slightly different.

• Faculty that have incompletes should minimally export the gradebook for the course prior to the discontinuation of Blackboard.
• Faculty that know they have courses that have student incompletes where students will be returning can request the course content be migrated to Canvas prior to the discontinuation of Blackboard.
• If courses need to be recovered after the discontinuation of Blackboard, email itshelp@odu.edu to request to have the course restored. ITS will notify you once it is restored.

• If the course that has the incomplete uses PLE, please contact the Center for Learning and Teaching (email clt@odu.edu or use the Faculty Help Request form) so they can assist with migrating that content.

You can find detailed instructions with screenshots in our guide: Managing Incompletes in the Transition from Blackboard.

• Because Blackboard will not be available after June 30, 2022, there would be no place to reload course archives. Faculty should instead consider downloading individual content items and information from their courses if they wish to keep a copy.
• ITS is planning to have all courses archived to the K16 Scaffolding product where content can be pulled from when needed.

• There is no concept of an 'organization' currently in Canvas. All existing organizations will be migrated as Canvas courses. More information about this transition will be published soon.

• Courses that are cross listed in Banner will show up just as they do in Blackboard, as a single course based on the lowest CRN. Although a cross listed course in Banner has multiple sections, it would count as only a single course in Canvas (or Blackboard).
• Faculty should make every effort to work with their department scheduling office and the registrar's office to cross list courses in Banner.

• When a course remains unpublished, students do not have access. A course must be published for students to see it on their Dashboard, assuming it is being published within the term dates set in place. Once the course is published, you can determine how much content you want students to view. Once the instructor has graded a submission, they will no longer have the option to unpublish the course.

• Students will be able to access the course immediately after publishing, assuming it is within the start and end default term dates. Also, please note that you will be unable to unpublish a course if you have graded an item in the gradebook.

• When creating content within your course, you have the option to publish that content immediately or leave it unpublished until you are ready for the students to view it.

We are limiting Faculty Champions to one course as we continue to test our confidence in the large scale operation of the new system. We may uncover issues that were not readily apparent in the beginning, and we need to minimize the impact of unforeseen hiccups.

We are limiting Faculty Champions to a single course each, regardless of whether you migrate or develop that course.

The courses selected by the Faculty Champions will not impact the migration of courses from Blackboard to Canvas. All teaching faculty will be receiving an email in the very near future where they will be able to review all the courses that are currently planned for migration. It will be during that review where faculty can provide us feedback on course needs.

• Canvas has many of the same features as Blackboard, but not all. There are some new features and some familiar ones, such as discussions, groups, gradebook, modules, etc. 

• The "My Media" and "Media Gallery" options in course navigation are generally used for Kaltura Media embedding.
• Canvas does have a tool in the Rich Content Editor that supports Vimeo, YouTube, and Kaltura content.

• Yes. Supported file types are listed in the Canvas Guides: How Do I Create an Online Assignment?

• Zoom has been defined as the University standard for web conferencing.
• The conferencing tool that is packaged with Canvas is Big Blue Button. It does have several limitations. These include recordings that are only kept for 2 weeks (14 days) and are not downloadable, attendee limit of 24 etc. Additionally, video recordings are not automatically transferred to Kaltura.

• Yes. See the How Do I Create a Formula Quiz Question With a Single Variable? page. You can also use the Canvas Formula Quiz Question Helper Functions.

• Question types with partial credit options are outlined here on the Understanding Multiple Answers Questions page.

• The Canvas Calendar has a great agenda feature that will allow you to create office hours. More information can be found in the Canvas Guides.

• Users can upload an image to display behind the course card in the Canvas Dashboard. Accepted images include JPG, JPEG, GIF, and PNG files. For more information on how this is done, see the Add an Image to a Course Card page.

• Canvas Self-Enroll is being evaluated and how we would approach using that option. We believe that Canvas Catalog is a viable solution and will be providing more information on that in the near future.

• Yes, Canvas offers course and department-level groups. Go to the "What are Groups?" page for more information.

• Yes, there are student and instructor mobile apps available for iOS, iPadOS, and Android. Announcements, Discussions, Quizzes, Assignments, and Grades can be accessed from the student app. The instructor app allows annotations in the Canvas DocViewer. For more information, go to Canvas Apps 101.

• Canvas is built to be an accessible platform, but development of accessible content within a course is the instructor's responsibility and still needs to adhere to university accessibility guidelines. For more information, please refer to Educational Accessibility Resources for Faculty and Staff.

Instructure has stated that the Rich Content Editor's accessibility checker tool is an ongoing project, and they are continuing to improve the 11 different checks that it currently performs. More information can be found in the Canvas Community.

• The ITS eLearning staff will be migrating all current integrations in Blackboard over to Canvas before making them available to faculty and students. Most third-party apps and publishing integrations that work in Blackboard will work similarly in Canvas.

• All Zoom cloud recordings are currently being copied to Kaltura and can be accessed through "My Media" in Canvas. From there, you can embed Zoom recordings.

• Yes. The conferencing tool that is packaged with Canvas is Big Blue Button. It does have limitations, though. For example, meetings are limited to 24 attendees, recordings are only kept for 2 weeks (14 days) and are not downloadable. It is highly recommended that faculty use Zoom, the University's standard web conferencing tool.

• Turnitin has been selected as the University-supported plagiarism tool and will be integrated with Canvas. Faculty received training on this new product in January 2022. You can watch a recording of this training or browse resources on Turnitin's web page.

• First, the instructor will need to link Google Drive as a Service.
• Second, a Google Doc can be either embedded in a Canvas Page or you can use the Collaboration Tool to share the document with one or more students.

• All Pearson apps will work similar to how they do in Blackboard.

• Kaltura videos that already exist in your My Media can be embedded into Canvas. The same Kaltura Mediaspace is accessible in both Canvas and Blackboard at ODU.

• You can choose from a few options for displaying test/quiz results - on a certain date, after it has been graded, etc. Here you will find the different options for setting up a quiz.

• Canvas outlines a few ways you can administer extra credit. See the How do I give Extra Credit? page for details.

• Instructors can create as many assignment groups as necessary to accomplish variations of weighting. Please view the How Do I Weight the Final Course Grade Based on Assignment Groups? and How Do I Create Rules for an Assignment Group? pages in the Canvas Guides.

• Columns in the Gradebook are only created by adding an assignment in Canvas. If you need to create a column in the Gradebook to use for manual grading, you can create a No Submission or On Paper assignment.

This capability is being migrated from Blackboard to Canvas and will be completed before the start of the Fall 2022 semester. Until then, the process will be very similar to pulling grades from Blackboard for import into Banner.