Get Started Teaching in Canvas
Overview of the transition to Canvas for College of Education Instructors
April 2024 Update: All courses are expected to be on Canvas for Fall 2024. Special permission will be required to use Moodle in Fall 2024. Blackboard is no longer available for teaching as of Summer 2024. Any course material in Moodle or Blackboard that is expected to be used in the future should be downloaded or converted to Canvas before Spring 2025.
When you are ready to get a look at Canvas, or want to attend a live training, the best place to start is the Canvas Support Options and Resources page from the IDEAS team in the provost office.
For the latest updates about the change to Canvas, visit the Provost's page on the Learning Management System Transition.
This page summarizes some key information about making the change to Canvas. If you have questions, or need assistance with the transition, contact Fred Zinn in the College of Education, or the Instructional Media Lab on campus (413-545-2823, instruct [at] umass [dot] edu).
Planning to convert to Canvas
Upcoming Milestones:
- May 3, 2024 - deadline to request concierge conversions for Fall 2024
- April 2024 - Faculty can request Canvas courses in SPIRE for Fall 2024.
* Dean's approval will be required to use Moodle in 2024-25 - Summer 2024 - Blackboard not available for teaching.
- Fall 2024 - the majority of classes are expected to be taught in Canvas.
- Spring 2025 - the last semester classes can be taught in Moodle.
- Summer 2025 - Canvas becomes the primary LMS for UMass Amherst.
- June 25, 2025 - access to archived courses in Blackboard and Moodle ends.
In Fall 2024 Canvas will be the default LMS for campus
Note that the transition timeline has changed. Canvas will be the only LMS option available in SPIRE for Fall 2024 course requests. Moodle will only be available for teaching in Fall 2024 by special request and with permission from the dean of the college. Now that nearly all Blackboard courses have been converted to Canvas, Blackboard is no longer available for teaching as of Summer 2024.
Convert any Moodle or Blackboard courses you may want to teach in Canvas in the future
If you will be going on sabbatical, or have courses you teach only once every few years, consider making a backup or getting them converted as soon as possible. Courses are typically kept on servers for a few semesters after they finish; however, Moodle and Blackboard will be turned off in June 2025. You can be certain to have access to old course materials by requesting a conversion to Canvas or downloading a course backup to a local drive.
Getting Started in Canvas
Option One: Explore on your own
You can log in to Canvas now, begin exploring self-paced training materials, and experiment with your own practice sandbox course. Go to this page: Canvas at UMass Amherst and select “Log In to Canvas.” Once in Canvas, look for courses labeled “Canvas Training and Resources” and “sandbox.” The Canvas Training course contains a self-paced set of exercises to introduce you to Canvas. The Sandbox course is an empty course for you to use for trying out the features of Canvas.
Option Two: Attend a training
During the transition, the IDEAS group is offering Canvas live, hands-on training sessions. These include short “Quick Preview” demos, and longer hands-on “Practice Sessions.” To see a schedule and register, go to this page: Technology Training & Webinars
Option Three: Request Canvas for an upcoming course
When you are ready to use Canvas for an upcoming course, you can request Canvas in SPIRE the same way you have requested Moodle or Blackboard in the past. See instructions on this page: Request a Canvas Course Through SPIRE. Canvas courses requested through SPIRE are the only courses that can be populated automatically with students.
If you want to begin working on a course for a future semester that is not yet available in SPIRE, you can request a conversion of a previous course (see below) or contact instruct [at] umass [dot] edu (instruct[at]umass[dot]edu) to request an empty development course. Courses developed this way will need to be copied into the SPIRE-requested course when it becomes available.
Options for converting courses to Canvas
If you have an existing course in Moodle or Blackboard, there are multiple ways to get courses and content converted to Canvas. The path you choose will depend on the complexity of your course and how much work you want to do yourself.
** Deadline for conversion: Past Moodle and Blackboard classes will be unavailable after June 2025. If you have courses that you may not be teaching until after 2025, make a point to convert them as soon as possible.
If you want to rebuild a course from scratch, or are designing a new course, you can request an empty Canvas shell via SPIRE for the upcoming semester, or by contacting instruct [at] umass [dot] edu for a future course not yet listed in SPIRE. Instructions for Requesting a Canvas course through SPIRE
If you want to have content moved to Canvas, and you want to organize it yourself, you can request “content-copy migration”. This process can be done any time and takes 2-3 business days to complete. Fill out the Content Migration Request Form and select “Content-copy Migration”. Note that not all elements copy, or may not copy as expected, so leave time to review and rework your course.
If you want a more careful conversion, you can request “concierge migration” during an upcoming window (see Provost's page for the next deadline). Converted courses take more time and will be ready for review within a month of the next semester. This option still requires that you fill in and organize some of your content, but it will save you work by addressing some of the common conversion issues (especially with quizzes and other complex tools). Fill out the Course Migration Request Form and select “Concierge Migration.”
Only courses requested through SPIRE can have students enrolled. When you are finished adapting a converted course, you will still need to request the "official" course in SPIRE for that semester and copy the content from the converted course into the SPIRE course.
If you are not sure what option is best for you, contact Fred Zinn or instruct [at] umass [dot] edu (instruct[at]umass[dot]edu).
Preparing a migrated course for teaching
The migration process will still require some clean up before your converted course is ready for students. A few steps you should expect to take (See the Canvas Course Checklist for a detailed list):
- Customize the standard Home page (if using*) with contact and course information.
- Customize the standard Syllabus page (if using*) to add syllabus text and/or a link to the syllabus in PDF or other format.
- Review the Modules page (if using*) and reorder and re-label content as needed.
- If you had modules in Moodle that displayed instructions, content, and links in the same weekly block, they will have been split into separate items within each module in Canvas. The best way to recreate these blocks in Canvas is to create Pages that collect all this content in one place, then add these pages to the appropriate Modules in Canvas.
- Review other tools, such as quizzes, to make sure they are set up the way you need them to be. The IDEAS group can help if you run into something you are not sure how to recreate.
- Copy the converted course content into a SPIRE-requested Canvas course. Note that the converted course is not where your students will be. Once you configure your converted course, access the SPIRE course you requested (the course with the semester listed on its card on the dashboard), select Import Existing Content, and select the converted course.
For details and instructional videos about the above processes, visit After Migration: Working with Content Migrated from Moodle or Blackboard.
(if using* - note that any page in Canvas can be used as a home page, and most pages can be hidden from students. Use this power responsibly.)
Importing content from sandbox and converted courses
Students are only enrolled in Canvas courses that have been requested through SPIRE. If you have prepared a course using a sandbox or a converted course, you can copy that course (whole or in parts) into the SPIRE-based course.
This IDEAS video demonstrates the process: Import Migrated Content into Your SPIRE Course (3 min)
A summary of the steps:
- Open your SPIRE-requested course (the semester will appear on its card on the dashboard.)
- On the Home page, upper right, select "Import Existing Content" to go to the Import Content page.
- From "Content Type" drop down menu, select "Copy a Canvas Course".
- From "Search for a course" drop down menu, select the course you want to copy.
- To copy everything from one course to another, under "Content" select "All content".
(NOTE this will replace everything in the SPIRE course. If you want to copy parts of another course, select "Select Specific Content".) - If you know you want to convert quizzes or dates, select these options under "Options".
- Select "Import" -- the process may take a few minutes.