We have exciting news for you about Canvas! 

All faculty and staff now have access to Canvas!  Click on the graphic or go to (https://westerncarolina.instructure.com/) and log in with your WCU username and password. 

The entry point is the Dashboard where you will see:

Development Shell – you are the instructor and can use this to experiment with different functionality in Canvas

Growing with Canvas (technical training on how to use Canvas) – you are the student in this course. 

All Canvas related information is on the CFC’s website – Canvas Central – canvas.wcu.edu

If you want to get started on your own, the Canvas Community is a great place to find text and video tutorials and self-paced courses. We suggest starting with Growing with Canvas, Preparing to Launch, and Higher Education: First Day Ready. You can access the Preparing to Launch and Higher Education: First Day Ready self-paced courses through the Training Portal. Follow these steps:

1. From within Canvas, click on the Help icon in the left navigation menu.
2. Then click on the Training Services Portal link. This launches the training portal
3. Authorize the portal.
4. Go through the Tutorial that is presented if this is your first time accessing the portal.  On repeat visits, you can close the tutorial by clicking on the X in the corner.
5. Click on the Launch Training button in the upper right corner.
6. You can scroll through the courses, search by name, sort, or filter to find a course.

We know this will be an important transition and we are here to partner with you. The CFC has a team of instructional designers working to migrate most of your 2020 courses from Blackboard to Canvas; if you have a 2020 course that will not be auto migrated you will receive an email from us. This will require some work on the individual faculty member to get the course ready for the next time it is scheduled. You will be receiving more information from the CFC about the migration and additional training offerings coming in the spring.

The implementation team is working alongside the LMS Committee to produce a detailed migration plan, allowing for an easier transition among faculty and staff. Transferring classes to a new system is no simple task. To help mediate this exchange, it has been decided that all Blackboard courses will remain accessible for spring 2021, but all succeeding courses after that semester will be transferred into Canvas.