Canvas Project Updates  - April 26, 2024

statue on UM campus

Dear Faculty,

Please find more Canvas project updates below regarding where we currently are in the migration process from Moodle to Canvas, when you will have access to Canvas, upcoming training opportunities, and information about course preparation. 

MIGRATION

The UM Canvas Implementation Team is working with a third-party vendor, K16 Solutions, to migrate courses from Moodle into Canvas. The first round of migration included courses from Fall 2021 – Fall 2023 and is now complete. Spring 2024 courses will be migrated in mid-May and Summer 2024 courses will be migrated in early Fall.  This mass migration includes online, blended, hybrid, and many face-to-face courses. Courses with no use of activities or very minor use of content will not be included in this mass migration. Please know there will be other migration methods available for courses not included in this migration with K16, including uploading a Moodle course backup file.     

These migrated courses will contain content only, no student data or submissions. They will be read-only since they will serve as archives of your Moodle courses. Content can then be copied into a sandbox course shell or directly into your Fall 2024 course shell where you will have full editing access.  

ACCESS TO CANVAS

The implementation team will announce when user accounts are set up and available for faculty to login. There is still testing underway with Banner and new automation features. The target date for account creation is currently the week of May 6th. You will receive an email notification when you are enrolled in your Fall 2024 course shells. Instructions for accessing your migrated courses and copying content into new course shells will be provided at that time. 

If you are part of the summer pilot for Canvas, your user account has already been set up. 

TRAINING

Once you have been notified of your Canvas access, you can start taking both on-demand and live trainings. It is important that you register for all live trainings via Griz Hub, to guarantee a space and receive notifications about the training. The first training you should take is the UM Canvas Essentials On-demand course or the UM Canvas Essentials Live training. Both cover the same material, but one is a self-paced, online version and the other a fast-paced, live session via Zoom.  Consider this a prerequisite for all the other training, such as the 30-minute webinars and the In-person Course Building Workshop, as you’ll need a basic foundation in Canvas first. For descriptions, dates and registration please go to Griz Hub. 

If you are not part of the summer pilot for Canvas, please note that you will want to wait to participate in the live training sessions until you have a UM Canvas user account set up and access to a sandbox course shell or your Fall course shell. While waiting, you can set up a free Canvas account and get a blank course to practice with; although, keep in mind that some features will be different. More resources can be found at the Canvas Resources website. 

COURSE PREPARATION

Although content will migrate over to Canvas, the layout is different than Moodle and will require some time to make adjustments to align with the Canvas layout. Your Fall 2024 course shells and any sandbox shells will include a UM branded template. Participating in Canvas training will be important to help you adjust your content and make design selections within the template. UMOnline instructional designers (IDs) will be available for training and support. 

The Implementation Team appreciates your patience as we launch our instance of Canvas at UM. We have worked hard since January to prepare UM for this transition. Please understand that we are currently in the pilot phase of implementation and our primary focus is on the summer courses that are participating in the pilot.   

We know this is a huge lift for everyone and ask for your continued patience as we work through the many details this transition requires. It is a lot of work, with many moving parts that require various integrations, but we think Canvas will provide you and your students a great online learning environment, whether you teach online or in-person. 

We look forward to working with you as we move into the wider training phase of our Canvas implementation. Check the Canvas Project website for more information, and you can contact the team at canvas.umt@umontana.edu if you have questions.   

 

-The UM Canvas Implementation Team