After an extensive process of review by faculty, students, and staff, Canvas by Instructure has been chosen as our next Learning Management System (LMS). Canvas provides a superior user experience for faculty, staff, and students, as well as mobile capabilities and simplicity of integration and management that competitors, including Blackboard’s newest product Ultra, are unable to match. Canvas is a twenty-first century learning environment that will support WCU’s needs for the next 5-10 years for online, hybrid/blended, and face-to-face instruction.
The implementation team, in consultation with the LMS Committee, is working on a detailed migration plan to guide faculty and staff in their efforts to learn the new platform, adapt their courses and workshops to the Canvas structure and workflow, and take advantage of the superior user experience to optimize the learning environment for students.
During the 2021 spring semester, Western Carolina will be working through a migration and implementation process that will move the university from Blackboard Learn to the Canvas Learning Management System. Courses will remain in Blackboard for Spring 2021, but all courses that begin after the conclusion of the spring semester will be delivered in Canvas.
Blackboard Learn will be turned off on June 30, 2021. In the coming weeks, we will provide instructions for exporting Blackboard courses for retention.
More information is coming soon, so watch your email box for the Provost’s newsletter, subscribe to the CFC content (Faculty News) in Inside WCU, look for the LMS migration section in the IT Weekly email from the CIO, and feel free to check our information page at our new Canvas website!
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