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Dele Davies, M.D. | Dan Moser, Ph.D. |
Beginning in the 2017 fall semester, Canvas will be the primary campus LMS, and as of July 1, 2018, Blackboard will be completely retired.
In the letter, Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Dele Davies, M.D., and Dan Moser, Ph.D., associate director, learning environment, information technology services (ITS), explained that the University of Nebraska has been investigating adoption of the system for some time. The process included faculty and student surveys, showcases and various pilot tests of the system over a two-year period.
“The response of faculty and students was overwhelmingly positive,” Dr. Moser said.
UMNC colleges and departments, as well as the Education Council, received presentations on the system, which was used by more than 250 faculty and more than 1,150 students during the review process. Canvas presentations were made to the Chancellor’s Council, UNMC Faculty Senate, UNMC Student Senate and UNMC Education Council. Both the UNMC Education Council and the Learning Technology Committee of the Education Council endorsed and recommended adoption of Canvas as the UNMC LMS.
“Based upon the review, UNMC is adopting Canvas and is obtaining a full campus license for Canvas starting July 1,” Dr. Davies said. “The university’s contract with our current LMS, Blackboard, will end on July 1, 2018. The academic 2107/2018 year will be a year of transition from Blackboard to Canvas, with Canvas as UNMC’s primary LMS.”
The transition to Canvas will require extensive work and resources from the UNMC academic community, he said.
Training sessions and presentations will be offered by IT and college personnel. Online resources have been created and are available for both faculty and students during this transition here.
With only about 15 percent of courses converted or created on the Canvas platform, there are more than 1,000 courses still to be converted.
“The UNMC campus community is actively participating in this process, but there is extensive work ahead,” Dr. Davies said. “Currently, each college is working to address this need by working collaboratively with Information Technology Services and other educational resources. Detailed timelines and plans are being created by each academic unit.”
Other areas that will need to be addressed during the 2017/18 academic year are:
- UNMC training and certification needs to be converted to Canvas and the monitoring and integration to employee records needs to be created.
- Organizations that are currently on Blackboard will need to be transferred to another service, options include Office365 and Canvas.