Select early adopters will start using Canvas in Spring 2020. The majority (75%) of faculty will shift to Canvas by Fall 2020. All faculty will be using Canvas by January 2021.
Canvas is a learning management system (LMS) that will completely replace Blackboard Learn for students, faculty, and staff at Chapman University by January 2021. We're excited for this change and we hope you'll like the new learning platform.
Learn more in some of the Frequently Asked Questions listed below.
For faculty: We offer self-paced Canvas courses, Educational Technology Services (ETS) workshops, and ETS drop-in hours for training. Each faculty member can sign into Canvas with their Chapman credentials and find a "Self-paced Growing with Canvas" course as well as a personal practice sandbox course. Visit the Chapman Canvas Instructor Training site for more training options or visit the Chapman Canvas workshop registration for details on workshops and drop-in hours. Canvas also offers great Canvas Instructor Guides or, if the technology paired with Canvas is Chapman-specific, search our Chapman Canvas Knowledge Base.
For students: We offer a Chapman Student Canvas Training site, or we can teach faculty how to add pre-made student training modules to their courses that help students understand the basics about Canvas. Students can also search the Canvas Student Guides or Canvas Student Video Tutorials.
Course sites are available now. If you choose to teach through Canvas in 2020, we hope you will sign up through the Early Canvas Adopter Form so we can better support your early adoption needs. Our goal is to have the majority of our faculty using Canvas by fall 2020. All faculty will be using Canvas by January 2021.
Faculty are not required to use a learning management system (LMS); however, most find it a great tool to support the content, communication, and assessment needs to support student learning. We highly recommend using Canvas for its great learning support and learning analytics. Starting Spring 2021, no course sites will exist in Blackboard Learn and they will only exist in Canvas.
Yes, your current and past Blackboard courses will be migrated to Canvas. The migration schedule is dependent on the timeline for your campus division.
You can choose to have us migrate your content, you can migrate your content yourself (which often gives you more control over what and how it is migrated), or you can choose to start fresh and build your course from scratch on Canvas. Contact us to for information to help you make this decision: canvas@chapman.edu.
In fall 2018, we kicked off a project to evaluate whether Blackboard Learn continued to be the right software to support teaching and learning on our campus. In April 2019, we convened a Request for Proposal (RFP) Committee to formally evaluate three different cloud-based Learning Management Systems (Blackboard Ultra, Brightspace, Canvas) to see which would meet our campus needs. Since then, we've gathered data from students and faculty, conducted numerous hands-on focus group sessions, and held an all-campus Town Hall to discuss this issue. From that assessment we learned that Canvas was the preferred LMS for our campus.
LMS = Learning Management System. Our LMS for the past 16 years has been Blackboard Learn.
We have answers. Submit your inquiries via our online form or send an email to canvas@chapman.edu