Regent University & Canvas

The university had to upgrade our online learning platform in order to keep pace with technology, maintain software support, and improve the user experience, particularly in the mobile domain.

Over the course of several months, Regent considered various platforms, narrowing the choices for our upgrade to Blackboard Ultra and Canvas. Both Learning Management Systems (LMS) platforms are significantly different from Regent’s current version of Bb and would require comparable migration efforts. Representatives from Information Technology (IT), Academic Affairs (AA), and academics met on a number of occasions to view product demos, participate in Q&A with vendors, discuss pros and cons of the platforms, and strategize about the implementation process for a new LMS. This analysis led to a unanimous decision by the group to migrate to Canvas.

Yes. Non-academic units who utilize Bb will also migrate their courses and organizations to Canvas.

Information Technology (IT), Teaching & Learning Technology Support (TLTS), and Academic Affairs (AA) will be leading the project in collaboration with representatives within the academic units.

Yes. There are a number of steps involved in this migration process. The first step is to identify the master shells/courses that represent the best version of each course. This process will be managed by the deans in each school/college and has a due date of August 15. Once identified, these courses will be converted by a third-party vendor, K16, in cooperation with Regent and Canvas; this process will take several months. View the Learning Management System (LMS) migration timeline.

Yes, the Regent Canvas Project Team will reach out to the colleges/schools/offices about their organizations soon. In the meantime, it would be very helpful if you proactively let the team know about your organizations. Please send an email to canvas@regent.edu.

A third-party vendor, K16, will help Regent with course migration. After the master shells/courses have been identified, K16 will migrate Blackboard course content from these courses into Canvas. K16 will work closely with the Regent Canvas Project Team to make every effort to migrate each piece of your course content as cleanly and completely as possible. In some instances, the content won’t be able to be converted exactly requiring post-migration review and editing. As such, quality checks by support staff and academic units will be conducted. TLTS has created a master shell checklist to assist in this process. More details will be available through your school/college administrators.

In addition to migration services, K16 will archive all Blackboard courses and organizations (including content, student data and grades) through the end of our Blackboard contract. The process for accessing this information will be available soon.

The current plan specifies that courses will start being offered in Canvas in Spring 2023 (D Session). These first courses will serve as pilot projects, with additional courses coming online in Summer 2023. During this pilot period, faculty and students may have courses in both Bb and Canvas. For Fall 2023, all Regent courses will be offered only in Canvas.

There is a possibility of having courses in both Blackboard and Canvas in Spring/Summer 2023. By Fall 2023, all courses will be offered on Canvas.

Faculty who are responsible for reviewing migrated courses will have access to the production Canvas system by late Fall 2022/early Spring 2023 and all faculty will have access to a test “sandbox” course to assist with training by early Spring 2023. Members of the transition team, including trainers, will have access to a sandbox course in Fall 2022.

If the course will be offered prior to Fall 2023, it will have to be developed in Bb and then imported later into Canvas. Any new courses that will be offered in Fall 2023 for the first time should be developed in Canvas during the months preceding the LMS launch. Please consult your dean and/or the Canvas Project Team regarding new course development.

Blackboard will continue to be used through Summer 2023. In Fall 2023, all courses will be taught on Canvas, and no live courses will be on Blackboard. Faculty and staff will be able to access Blackboard until August 28, 2023 to download materials they would like to keep; students will have until August 19. Administrators who process accreditation or regulatory reports may require access to courses or student data beyond August 28, 2023. For this purpose, we have secured the services of K16 to archive all the existing courses. IT will convert Bb course files into Canvas, as needed.

Faculty and staff will have access to their Blackboard content until August 28, 2023. Students will have access until August 19. At that point, Blackboard will no longer be available. We encourage students, faculty, and staff to download and save any materials they would like to keep. For accreditation and other reporting requirements, IT will have access to up to 50k “archived” Bb courses. Only IT will be able to restore those archived courses and related data. The courses will be restored to Canvas, and responsible parties will be given access to them, as needed. Please consult your dean and/or the Canvas Project Team regarding accreditation-related data archiving processes.

Panopto, Respondus, Zoom, LTI, 3rd party tools, and content publisher integrations will work with Canvas seamlessly. SafeAssign will be replaced with TurnitIn.

Zoom and Panopto recordings created within Bb courses will be relinked in their respective courses in Canvas as part of the K16 migration process. Collaborate is a Bb proprietary product, and the content will not be migrated over to Canvas. If instructors would like to use their recorded content within Canvas, they will have to download the content and reload it into Panopto or Brightcove.

Content created using prominent publishers (such as McGraw Hill, Pearson MyLab, etc.) will be relinked and available within your respective course(s).

For faculty, continue to monitor your email for LMS project updates, announcements, and other important information. In addition, check the Regent Canvas website often for new information. You can also submit questions to the Canvas Project Team through email at canvas@regent.edu.

Canvas is compliant with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).

Canvas had the top rating in Student Disability Services’ evaluation. Canvas also has a strong commitment to accessibility, and more information can be found on the “What are the Canvas accessibility standards?” page.

Canvas’s mobile experience was one of the main reasons it was chosen as the new LMS and has been highly rated by students, faculty and administrators.

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. TLTS has also created a document to help instructors navigate Canvas’s weighted assignments function.

Canvas uses TurnItIn to detect plagiarism and educate students regarding appropriate citation and referencing techniques. For more information, click here for faculty support and here for student support.

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. Please refer to the Blackboard-Canvas Equivalency Chart below, which compares the features and provides links and information for each. Videos demonstrating the differences between Canvas and Blackboard are also available on the TLTS YouTube channel.

The following features are available in Canvas but were not in Blackboard.

The following features and tools were available in Blackboard but there isn’t a direct equivalent in Canvas. However, a similar or functional workaround is available in Canvas through the following tools.

Yes, Canvas can be configured to manage multiple submissions (designate number of attempts under Assignment settings), and the Gradebook, including an associated rubric, can be utilized to provide feedback for each iterative submission.

However, while overall scores and comments are retained for each draft, the specific rubric entries (scores & comments) are only retained for the most recent iteration. Apparently, this is because the rubric is attached to the assignment itself, rather than any given iteration. Therefore, the Canvas gradebook only stores one completed rubric per assignment rather than storing a completed rubric for each iteration.

Since faculty are basically using their own Regent Zoom accounts, you can control the entry parameters for the streaming session. When you create the Zoom room for the session, you will see two blue boxes checked in the middle of the interface. The “Passcode” and the “Waiting Room” boxes are checked by default. Since Canvas is behind a firewall, you have the option of unchecking the Passcode blue box, and then students will not need to use a passcode to enter the session. The “Waiting Room” forces students to wait until you admit them to the session. If you just want them to enter the session when they login, uncheck the “Waiting room” box. If you uncheck both the “Passcode“ and the “Waiting room” button, you must check the “Only authenticated users can join meetings” button – this will ensure that a student must login to their Regent Zoom account first before they join your session to more securely control access.

After you end your streaming session, the recording will automatically be uploaded to the Zoom cloud storage account reserved for your Zoom account. You will get an email verifying that the recording has been saved. You will also get a link that is the streaming address for the recording. The link is live, so you can send it to people so they can click on it and access the recording. You can also click on the “View Details” button in the email and get options to download an mp4 file of the recording or delete the video recording.

You will have all the support necessary for a successful transition and beyond. To prepare faculty who are responsible for reviewing migrated courses, training resources will be provided in Fall 2022. All faculty will have access to a “sandbox” course to assist with training by early Spring 2023. Members of the transition team, will have early access to Canvas.

Instructure (the makers of Canvas) will also offer training, including the following:

• Unlimited access to core and advanced on-demand training content via the Training Portal;
• Six (6) Custom Training Webinar Sessions (up to 90 minutes each);
• Canvas Training information will be posted to the Canvas Website and email announcements will be sent.

Additional training sessions and workshops will also be provided by Regent TLTS staff. College/School specific training may also be available; check with your dean or other administrators.

Canvas offers many resources on how to use their product. At any time, faculty and students can access these video links or the Canvas Instructor Guide to begin to learn. If you’re looking for a quick introduction, you might consider this five-minute instructor overview video.

Canvas support is provided 24/7 through the Regent Help Desk at 757.352.4076 or helpdesk@regent.edu.

The Regent Canvas website provides a lot of information about Canvas. TLTS also provides additional support resources on their YouTube channel and website. Instructure, the company behind Canvas, also has a robust support community that has numerous articles and instructional videos.