by | Feb 24, 2021 | Blog, Canvas
There are a number of different ways that we have been building out our support resources for faculty and students to help make this transition easier to navigate. Most user-interaction research is showing that an efficiently organized resource that can be searched provides the best user experience. We still have ways to “get a person,” but often that “person” is going to be searching the same knowledgebase that you already have access to as a user. We’d urge you to explore the many resources we have for help before you need them for a specific solution. And, of course, if you are unable to find it, we’ll do everything we can to try to get you to a solution.
Canvas Help During Spring of 2021
During the Spring of 2021, students and faculty can access the 24/7 Canvas chat portal and support hotline. WCU has purchased this extra Canvas help to assist faculty and students in the pilot during the spring 2021 semester and to assist faculty as they work to transition their courses for the Fall and Summer of 2021.
Illustration of the Location of Help in Canvas
WCU Specific Requests
For WCU specific requests like enrollments, how to use Panopto, Poll Everywhere, or any other integration, the best place to start is at the WCU IT Help Portal. If you don’t find the answer in the database (which is basically a tag-oriented searchable FAQ), you can submit a ticket and a member of the local support team will get to you as soon as possible.
Canvas Community
There is also a community site for Canvas that has some general questions and answers. Note, however, that there are some differences in Canvas installations and so, for example, WCU uses Panopto for video storage and OneDrive for your protected online work storage of student and course data, etc., so our Canvas users won’t be storing their videos and large files directly in the Canvas course or in Dropbox or in Google Drive.
by | Feb 22, 2021 | Blog, Canvas
There are many similarities between Blackboard and Canvas such as discussions, assignments, quizzes, and a gradebook. The difference between the two learning management systems is the foundational structure of the program and the process instructors and designers use to create an exceptional learning environment. Canvas uses Modules as the primary function for creating and organizing a course. The gradebook is created by adding assignments, quizzes, and graded discussions to those modules. Whereas you could create gradebook columns in Blackboard, you cannot in Canvas (they are created when you build an assignment).
Canvas is also built around quality instructional design principles and user interface design. This allows instructors to use Canvas in any modality: fully online, hybrid/blended, and yes, even a total face-to-face course.
The Coulter Faculty Commons has created a sequenced learning experience called Priming the Canvas for all instructors to learn how to maximize Canvas for their students. Priming the Canvas is a workshop/course built in Canvas and will be completed asynchronously, allowing the most flexibility for individuals to manage around their schedule. There will also be regular synchronous open Zoom sessions for faculty who have completed some of or all the modules in Priming the Canvas.
All instructors have been enrolled in Priming the Canvas as a student, providing the learner’s viewpoint. Each instructor has also been provided with a Development (DEV) course as the instructor, which provides a place to practice and create various assignments from the Priming the Canvas course.
What should you do next?
-
-
- Access the Priming the Canvas course. Start with the Getting Started module and progress through the other modules at your own speed (tip: leave your browser open when you finish, and you can return later to continue working through it).
- Register for one of the Zoom sessions held on Thursday and Fridays at 11:00 A.M.
- Instructors also have access to the Canvas Training Portal; also available by clicking Help in the Global Menu within Canvas.
by | Feb 16, 2021 | Blog, Canvas
- Spring and Summer 2020 courses have been migrated into Canvas and are available for instructors to get started! Spring and Summer 2020 instructors should have received an email from Dr. Eli Collins-Brown with information on getting started.
- Fall 2020 courses and active student centers and organizations are currently being worked on by the LMS Implementation team and we hope to have a migration date soon; we are targeting March. Spring 2021 courses will be available August 2021, Faculty that want to use these courses for Fall 2021 should import these courses themselves. Here is the how to for exporting from Blackboard and importing to Canvas – Migrating a Course – Exporting a Blackboard Course/Importing to Canvas. Once a course has been migrated, it can be found on your Canvas dashboard which you can access by visiting canvas.wcu.edu and clicking the “Login to Canvas” button.
Canvas training workshops will begin February 18th. We will have workshops available every Thursday and Friday at 11am during the Spring semester; we have included the overview below. Prior to attending the workshop, faculty are encouraged to have started the self-paced training course and required to have completed the migrated course checklist. We are asking that all instructors register for the workshop ahead of time so that we can prepare session information and staffing. To register for Canvas workshops, visit canvas.wcu.edu and click “Register for Canvas Course Workshop”.
Canvas Workshops:
In this workshop, CFC staff will answer questions related to Blackboard course migrations (faculty who seek this kind of assistance should have a completed migration checklist document, to expedite support).
- Staff will also assist faculty who choose to go an alternate route and build a course from scratch.
- For departments interested in requesting a workshop or training for the department or program, a request form is also available on canvas.wcu.edu.
Migration Tips:
- canvas.wcu.edu is the landing page for everything Canvas at WCU, this page has a link to login to Canvas that you can bookmark and valuable information about migration from Blackboard to Canvas.
- All courses will be in Canvas beginning May 17th with the Minimester.
- We have compiled information from our recent Departmental meetings and created an FAQ page. We will continue to add questions and answers as they come up. Visit the Canvas Migration FAQ page to explore our FAQ.
- Canvas is also here to help during the migration. We encourage all instructors to use the help support link within Canvas if you have questions as you are building your courses in Canvas.
- This is the overlap period between Blackboard and Canvas. All faculty have access to Canvas right now.
- A self-paced training course(s) is available in your Canvas dashboard which is the best place to start. All instructors have also been given a development shell to create and copy content into as you are getting familiar with Canvas.
- Canvas Commons is a public resource available from Canvas which offers support, training, ideas from other schools, etc. You can visit Canvas Commons available in Canvas on the global left menu by selecting “Commons”.
- If you want a course prior to 2020 in Canvas follow the steps in from IT Help to export the Blackboard course and import into Canvas.
Canvas Migration Timeline
by | Feb 9, 2021 | Blog, Canvas
We have been talking to Faculty and Staff across campus and we have been compiling the questions we have received so that we can share the information with everyone. To look at the questions and see the answers, please visit our FAQ page – https://ithelp.wcu.edu/en-us/category/1400336. We will be continuing to add questions as we get them. Do you have questions that you are not seeing? Please take advantage of the 24/7 Canvas support and Canvas training services portal which you can access within Canvas: access it through the ? icon in the left side menu.
- canvas.wcu.edu is the landing page for everything Canvas at WCU, this page has a link to login to Canvas that you can bookmark and valuable information about migration from Blackboard to Canvas.
- All courses will be in Canvas beginning May 17th with the Minimester.
- We have compiled information from our recent Departmental meetings and created an FAQ page. We will continue to add questions and answers as they come up. To visit the page, go to https://ithelp.wcu.edu/en-us/category/1400336 to explore our FAQ.
- Canvas is also here to help during the migration. We encourage all instructors to use the help support link within Canvas if you have questions as you are building your courses in Canvas.
- This is the overlap period between Blackboard and Canvas. All faculty have access to Canvas right now.
- A self-paced training course(s) is available in your Canvas dashboard which is the best place to start. All instructors have also been given a development shell to create and copy content into as you are getting familiar with Canvas.
Canvas Migration Timeline
by | Feb 2, 2021 | Blog, Canvas
You may have heard students and/or other instructors are using Canvas this semester. We are excited to announce that Canvas pilot groups across all colleges have started using Canvas. The 13 instructors in the pilot group are teaching a course in Canvas; with around 400 students. Feedback has been very positive regarding the ease of use.
- canvas.wcu.edu is the landing page for everything Canvas at WCU, this page has a link to login to Canvas that you can bookmark and valuable information about migration from Blackboard to Canvas.
-
- All courses will be in Canvas beginning May 17th with the Minimester.
- We have compiled information from our recent Departmental meetings and created an FAQ page. We will continue to add questions and answers as they come up. To visit the page, go to https://ithelp.wcu.edu/en-us/category/1400336 to explore our FAQ.
- Canvas is also here to help during the migration. We encourage all instructors to use the help support link within Canvas if you have questions as you are building your courses in Canvas.
- This is the overlap period between Blackboard and Canvas. All faculty have access to Canvas right now.
- A self-paced training course(s) is available in your Canvas dashboard which is the best place to start. All instructors have also been given a development shell to create and copy content into as you are getting familiar with Canvas.
Canvas Migration Timeline
by | Nov 3, 2020 | Blog, Canvas
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:
- From within Canvas, click on the Help icon in the left navigation menu.
- Then click on the Training Services Portal link. This launches the training portal
- Authorize the portal.
- 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.
- Click on the Launch Training button in the upper right corner.
- 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.
Priming the Canvas: Welcome Module, Course Resources 