Where should one start?

[rrodee]

We are seriously looking at the Blackboard to Canvas migration. As the Blackboard lead Sys Admin I would appreciate any / all resources or experiential feed back from those who have gone before me. We are a 2 year technical college running about 2500 courses per semester and serving about 4K FTE's

[kona]

 @rrodee , greetings and welcome to the Community! We migrated over from Angel, so I can't help much with that, but I'm going to share this with the https://community.canvaslms.com/groups/lms-migration?sr=search&searchId=3438cf6a-5ed1-423b-b053-021a...‌ & https://community.canvaslms.com/community/answers?sr=search&searchId=1c574126-5821-400d-a7ba-57944c4...‌ groups to see if they can help.  Because there's no right or wrong answer to this question I've also switched this to a discussion (instead of a question). Hope you get the information you're looking for!

[rrodee]

I was really hoping for “THE ANSWER” to my question however I am a pragmatist and thank you for your direction.

Ren

[kona]

LOL... I think all of us would love "THE ANSWER" to this question, as well as a few related ones. Unfortunately people tend to have different opinions on things like this... Crazy, huh?

[rrodee]

One can always hope

[hwebb]

We also did this a year ago - we did a small pilot in the summer and switched over to Canvas from Blackboard in the Fall completely - we have never run dual LMS systems even when upgrading Blackboard.  We did not migrate courses and provided a lot of training for faculty from everything to Canvas BootCamp to I just to post my syllabus to I want to be an expert and provided multiple training delivery methods (on campus, online via zoom, videos, cheat sheets and the Canvas Guides).  If they wanted to migrate the course themselves that was fine, however they needed to understand that it might not be as easy to correct issues rather than take the opportunity to rebuild the course using the new tools.  We also immediately created groups in the Commons for each sub-account so that content could be shared within departments.  Another great thing we did we create a few open enrollment courses for generic courses - i.e. Biology Lab Resources where the Biology faculty could add the link to the course in their individual sections so that students could self-enroll (they must have an existing account) but then can access all Biology lab resources - twofold pro here 1. each instructor does not have to add all the content and 2.  it remains consistent for all Biology students.  We've learned a lot and have about 3500 sections per semester with 60% actively using Canvas.

[awilliams]

Hey  @rrodee . If you'll permit me a few redirects as well...

Preparing Your Canvas: Starting a new LMS  -- 5 part blog series documenting Northern Kentucky's transition from Blackboard to Canvas

Blackboard to Canvas: show value 

Blackboard to Canvas 

https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-7103 

[rrodee]

Thank you so much

Ren

[harrison]

Did that exact same migration last year.  Dual use of Bb/Canvas in the spring and went to Canvas-only this summer.

Was not an overly difficult move, Canvas team was good to work with.

Biggest thing I learned was that planning the structure you will use for subaccounts, terms, courses, users, etc.

We use Banner as an SIS, so we did a complete integration during the move.  All users, subaccounts, terms, courses and enrollments come out of Banner twice a day.  Also plan on how you will handle the ad-hoc type of Canvas courses for departmental things, search committees, and such.  We use Active Directory as an LDAP source, so had to deal with non-school users who would not have an AD account.

Training of your users is also an issue as Canvas and Bb differ in a number of ways.

We did migrate courses from Bb to Canvas.  A somewhat painful procedure.  Had a number of courses that would not or were difficult to migrate.  Canvas support worked overtime with us on that!  Users must understand that content only migrates, they must still build the structure of their course.  Training helps here, but it's slow going for a while.

Bruce Harrison

Univ. of Tennessee at Martin

[meichin]

Hi there!  And welcome to the club.  We have found the move to be quite challenging.  But we had been using Blackboard for over 15 years, so perhaps your move will be easier. 

We have developed lots of information over the past 10 months, and are certainly willing to share if we can in anyway help. We are still writing support articles and instructor tips, and holding training sessions. We currently have 50% of fall courses in Canvas, and 50% in Blackboard. (The headache of supporting 2 LMS's with the same staff is also challenging, but we feel the gradual move is the best plan.)

Please check out our Transition Center  - we borrowed ideas from UNF and USF, so please feel free to borrow ideas from us.  

You should also visit our Support Center to see the kinds of things we are including - these will be some of the things your Blackboard users will also want to read about. 

What our Blackboard fans miss most:

1. Adaptive release

2. Permissions granularity - based on the user level

3. Robust discussion boards

4. Safe Assign

5. Automatically sending announcements to student email inbox and receiving student response via email rather than       the Canvas messaging system

6. Organizations

But the good news is that there is LOTS to love about Canvas, and overall it has been a great move.  Just not easy.  

Things to love about Canvas:

1. It is student centered

2. It is easier to navigate

3. The customer support and training have been great

4. Canvas listens to their customers and makes improvements every 3 weeks to reflect that

5. No servers to maintain (we were self-hosted on Bb)

6. The community support is awesome

[kmeeusen]

Hi  @rrodee ‌

I would suggest participating (or at least checking out) the https://community.canvaslms.com/groups/lms-migration?sr=search&searchId=861a22c5-acb2-483b-a3a0-4a9c...‌ group in this Community.  Many great tips, tricks and techniques - even a few of my own.

Kelley