Canvas LMS – Page 26

SMU is a 100% Canvas Campus.

Canvas As graduation ceremonies reached their culmination on May 14th, Southern Methodist University officially graduated into the next era of course management. Consistent with the announcement and transition plan set forth in last August’s message to faculty from the Office of the Provost, I’m pleased to announce that Canvas has been implemented as the sole course management system for university sources of record. If you haven’t heard by now, Canvas is a cloud-based course management system which offers a modern interface designed to better support the increased teaching and learning demands of higher education in functions such as blended learning, “flipping classrooms,” and providing a more robust overall framework for online education and distance learning activities.

After 12 years of long and faithful service, Blackboard is officially retired from course management duty; no further course shells or course enrollment data will be populated into Blackboard. Starting immediately, all course shells and course enrollment data will be published exclusively to Canvas. For faculty still needing to export course materials from Blackboard for use in Canvas, Blackboard (http://courses.smu.edu) will remain openly accessible for faculty access until June 30th, 2016. If you have any remaining materials on Blackboard, please proceed to retrieve them as soon as possible. If you need assistance with this transition, please contact 214.768.HELP or email help@smu.edu as early as possible, as our time before now and the fall semester will become increasingly limited.

In conjunction with this transition to Canvas, SMU’s embedded Academic Technology Service Directors in each academic unit are in the process of contacting each and every SMU faculty member to ensure that plans are being made to accommodate the transition along existing project timelines. If you require direct consultation navigating this transition and have not yet connected with your department’s Academic Technology Service Director to make a plan, please refer below to the contact for your school or college:

Meadows School of Arts	Mousumi Tanha	mtanha@smu.edu
Cox School of Business	Jeff Liew	jliew@smu.edu
Dedman School of Law	James Pan	pan@smu.edu
Dedman College	Dr. Michael Robertson	robertsonm@smu.edu
Simmons School of Education	Scott Martin	smartin@smu.edu
Perkins School of Theology	James Pan	pan@smu.edu
Lyle School of Engineering	Merlin Wilkerson	merlin@smu.edu

Please make time between now and June 30th to export any and all course materials you’ll need in any future course. Do not delay! Being sure that you’re prepared now will save anxiety later on.

SMU faculty and students can login to Canvas using SMU campus login credentials. For SMU courses of record, course shells, instructors, TA’s and students are all automatically populated from enrollment data from my.SMU. Between now and continuing into the fall term, OIT will be offering webinars and in-class Canvas training opportunities which cover basic usage to more advanced topics such as utilization of the Gradebook and Assignments. Please find a training that meets your needs here. If you require individual training or coaching—don’t worry—your Academic Technology Services Directors will be hosting and scheduling Canvas Open Labs within each school as well to help you directly with Canvas course migrations.

SMU will retain Blackboard course archives for five years—special archive recovery services will be available after June 30th, but Blackboard archives will not be immediately accessible for use. Faculty may submit individual tickets to the SMU IT Helpdesk for recovery of past Blackboard course materials. Please contact the main SMU IT Helpdesk if you need further assistance at 214.768.HELP or by emailing help@smu.edu.

Important Upcoming Canvas Dates:

May 12, 2016	Spring 2016 Term Closes
May 13, 2016	Canvas transforms into sole course management system for courses of record at SMU (No further my.SMU enrollment data published to Blackboard)
May 13, 2016 to June 30, 2016	Blackboard (http://courses.smu.edu) still openly available to SMU faculty community for the purpose of course material recovery and for faculty to be able to export past course materials for future usage or archiving
July 1, 2016	Blackboard (http://courses.smu.edu) will no longer be available for open access to SMU community. http://courses.smu.edu will be re-directed to SMU Canvas login splash page

New In-Depth Canvas Sessions Announced

Need some more assistance with the finer points of SMU’s new Canvas LMS? OIT has scheduled additional training sessions over the summer that cover advanced topics ranging from grade books to modules. Just like the basics sessions OIT has given through the spring semester, these summer sessions are walk-in only, so stop by on any of the dates!

Below is a list of the upcoming sessions, their locations, and their dates and times. For any questions regarding these sessions, please contact your academic technology liaison in your department.

Schedule of Courses

June 3, 1PM	Intro to Canvas (Condensed)	Crow 186
June 3, 2PM	Assignments & Grade Book	Crow 186
June 6, 10AM	Quizzes	Hughes-Trigg
June 6, 11AM	Mastering Modules	Hughes-Trigg
June 13, 2PM	Intro to Canvas (Condensed)	Webinar
June 23, 10AM	Intro to Canvas (Condensed)	Webinar
July 11, 3PM	Canvas Course Set-Up Workshop	Crow 186
July 11, 2PM	Assignments & Grade Book	Crow 186
July 20, 10AM	Quizzes	Crow 186
July 20, 11AM	Mastering Modules	Crow 186
July 28, 10AM	Assignments & Grade Book	Crow 186
July 28, 11AM	Canvas Course Set-Up Workshop	Crow 186
August 5, 1PM	Intro to Canvas (Condensed)	Crow 186
August 5, 2PM	Assignments & Grade Book	Crow 186
August 8, 2PM	Quizzes	Crow 186
August 8, 3PM	Matering Modules	Crow 186
August 8, 4PM	Assignments & Grade Book	Crow 186

End of Term Course Conclusion for Canvas

At the end of every term, (dates are set in accordance with the academic calendar) all Canvas courses for that term will automatically be concluded.
When all courses are concluded at midnight the last day of the term, students will then transition to “Read-Only” access. Instructors will have an additional 14 days of “Full Access” after that, in order to complete grading.

If your course dates exceed the normal term, please call the help desk to put in a ticket and we will contact you to help adjust your course.
If you have an incomplete, please call the help desk to put in a ticket and we will contact you to help make the adjustment.

Spring 2016 dates

Student full access ends midnight May 10th
Instructors full access end midnight May 24th

Canvas Readiness Update

Support for courses within Blackboard
will end in

motionmailapp.com

SMU CANVAS: Are you ready?

As the countdown quickly continues toward the imminent decommissioning of Blackboard in June, increasing numbers of faculty are taking advantage of OIT’s Canvas workshops and learning to build (and rebuild!) courses in our new system. Over 100 faculty members have attended OIT’s hands-on training to date while many others have successfully utilized online resources. OIT’s training sessions will continue every week and into the fall semester—and other “conversion camps” and Canvas learning opportunities will be scheduled soon.

Now is the time to start making plans for moving your Blackboard courses and materials into Canvas for future terms. If you have not yet become familiar with Canvas or attended a training session, if you have not yet created a plan to download or consolidate your previous Blackboard course files, if you have not yet requested a Canvas “sandbox” course shell—the time is now! Continue reading Canvas Readiness Update

Preparing & Building Courses in Canvas

Canvas Tips & Tricks
When teaching any online course for the first time, course materials and files must be readied and assembled for course uploading. Creating new organizational folders for each course is one easy starting point for ensuring that your course materials for the transition to Canvas.

On your computer, create a new course folder for each unique course you are teaching. (Include any/all courses you have taught previously using Blackboard that you will teach again—especially consider courses you teach infrequently but will teach again in the future)
Copy or move all relevant course files into the relevant course folder.
Utilize SMU’s Box cloud storage service to maintain your course folders so as not take up space on your hard drive (Tip: SMU Box is also a great way to share your course folders/files with colleagues!)
Use your reorganized course folders to build your courses in Canvas.

Exporting, Reclaiming & Reorganizing course Materials from Blackboard

Many educators who have utilized Blackboard have accumulated substantial course materials and course artifacts which are still only stored within Blackboard. While Blackboard is still openly available to faculty until the end of June, all instructors are advised to export/download any and all course materials for reuse well before the June deadline. Since courses, course materials and files will not be moved automatically into Canvas, all educators must ensure, before June 30th, that course materials required for reuse are exported or downloaded from Blackboard for use in building new Canvas courses. Academic technology team members and instructional designers are available immediately to help guide you through this process. While SMU will offer numerous day-long “Canvas Conversion Labs” during May and June to assist with exporting course materials from Blackboard, please start preparing your materials now. Recovering Blackboard course materials after June 30th will be handled on case-by-case requests, since Blackboard will no longer be openly accessible.

Build courses in Canvas

After you’ve become familiar with Canvas and have consolidated digital course materials in folders for each course, you are ready to build out your course. course shells for your upcoming courses will be available for building and publishing well before the start of each term. If the official course shell is not yet available, please request a “sandbox course” from the OIT help desk for each course you’d like to get a head-start on building.

We’re excited about the opportunities that the Canvas course management system offers the SMU community. SMU, OIT and CTE are committed to providing as much training, guidance and instructional design assistance as possible during this transitional year.

Even with that support, however, most of the work that needs to be completed between now and the time SMU turns off Blackboard now falls to the instructor.

If you have yet to begin preparations for using Canvas, please begin the process of learning Canvas, preparing your course materials (especially those which you might need to retain from old Blackboard courses) and start building your courses in Canvas itself. An initial investment into planning for this imminent change in course management systems will pay dividends as SMU moves exclusively into Canvas.

Tag: Canvas LMS