Migrating to Canvas from Blackboard. What should I know?

[Caracal]

I do find it mostly better than other CMS I've used. Agree with others about Speedgrader. Like every CMS I've ever used, it doesn't seem to have been properly beta tested by actual instructors, and so about once a semester, I screw something up slightly and it ends up being far more complicated to fix than it should be.

[Aster]

The Announcements feature is inferior in Canvas.

You can't turn specific Announcements on and off as easily as in BlackBoard. In Canvas, you can either leave each Announcement up permanently, set each one to a "delay" that you'll manually futz with on the calendar every time (very tedious), or you can switch off *all* the Announcements in your class page.

Since moving to Canvas, I don't use Announcements so much anymore.

I am confused by this, since the only LMS I have used is Canvas. I post class announcements regularly. I can choose how many are posted at the top of the home page (I currently leave the 3 most recent), and there is an archive of all announcements I have previously made under the "announcements" tab.  Most students have the announcements forwarded to their email accounts too. Is there some functionality that I should be wanting to use that I can't do in Canvas?

In BlackBoard, announcements are much more versatile. You can click each one off and on whenever you like.

In Canvas, if you want to hide announcements individually, the only option is to go into the editor of each one individually and activate the "delay posting" function. Very tedious and micromanaging. Transitioning to Canvas from BlackBoard, this was perhaps one of the more unpleasant adjustment that I had to make.

It's puzzling why Canvas has ergonomic buttons for switching on and off pretty much everything else (e.g., grades, files, modules), but for some reason the developers did not enable this for announcements.

[spork]

[. . .]

It's also tricky to set up the grades the way you want them unless you go by a straight point system. 

[. . . ]

I use a point system. The more points earned by the end of the course, the higher the grade. No fiddling with how much different categories of assignments are weighted.

If anyone knows how to hide the gradebook columns that contain percentage figures, please let me know here. No matter what I do, students fixate on the percentage instead of total points.

If your university has enabled it, this may work.

If not, this used to work for me: Put in a stealth assignment worth one point with no due date and set the posting to “manual”. Give everyone a point but (and this is key) don’t post the ‘grade’. Since they have a graded assignment that they can’t see, canvas (at least used to) disable the final grade column.

My university has not enabled the above setting, which is not surprising, since we have no academic technology unit and IT is mainly concerned with ignoring pedagogical considerations in favor of "seCuRitY." It refuses to allow LTIs like Google Drive.

I don't know how stealth assignments work, or if we have that option either, but you gave me the idea of creating a fake assignment worth 500 points and giving everyone a grade of zero for it, which might completely tank the gradebook percentages.

[Harlow2]

Agree that Speed Grader is a nice bit of functionality. However, I find Canvas a bit clunky (though I wonder if there are versions that are less so). Opening a document can require multiple steps that seem indirect and unnecessary.

For students the biggest drawback has been that once a course ends all of their DQs and assignments disappear. I always download their assignments; but if they haven’t copied DQs from a Word or other document they are out of luck, so I warn them multiple times during the semester. Again, this may be how our place has it set up; but something to check out.

[mythbuster]

We migrated several years ago. This discussion is bringing back the things that were majorly different. The big thing that I noticed was that while Blackboard is centered around the files you upload, Canvas is centered around the Modules and even more the Pages you create with those files embedded within it. This is particularly useful for online classes, but works as an organizational scheme for in person as well.

Think of each "Page" as a webpage of resources for that days class/ weeks class/ project etc.  With the page you can create a series of instructions that utilize multiple, files, web links, YouTube videos etc. So for a particular class day you can have one page that directs students to embedded links to a pdf to read, a video to watch, and then  to the assignment they need to complete. And you have the ability to add annotated text in between these elements telling them what to do. Just uploading files doesn't work nearly as well because the Canvas file organization on the back end is horrible, or massively time consuming to set up. And good luck ever deleting files! I have a canvas page for my research lab, and I am forever cleaning out files (that I thought I had already deleted off the server) to open up more space.

I agree that the announcement function is a bit wonky, especially if you have "canned announcements" that get deployed on a standard schedule. I also agree that having to remember to create an assignment for things like "Final course Grade" is minorly annoying. Tip- always make the final course grade worth zero points. Otherwise students will email you and be confused. It's also very difficult, but not impossible to turn off the running grade average. Overall, I like Canvas much more, but it has also been several years since we ditched Blackboard so I'm not sure how much they even tried to keep up.

[sandgrounder]

We migrated in the middle of Covid - it was not fun. I preferred BB for the comparative flexibility in course design and unlike others did not find Canvas intuitive at all (the lack of training and support offered by the university because of the pandemic was part of that though).
I think you do have to work with the module structure even if it means a course redesign. But as the import of BB files ruins any logic they had before, you have to start over anyway. It looks nicer than BB at least. The biggest issues we found, although this might be because it's not been set up well, were that the Canvas email system doesn't not link to our main email accounts, so you have two inboxes to check, and if you continue to use non-Canvas grading tools (as we have to) the functionality is far worse than it was in BB.

[AmLitHist]

The biggest issues we found, although this might be because it's not been set up well, were that the Canvas email system doesn't not link to our main email accounts, so you have two inboxes to check, and if you continue to use non-Canvas grading tools (as we have to) the functionality is far worse than it was in BB.

Actually, you CAN set the Canvas emails to deliver to your main email account.  In Canvas, go to your profile  - then Notifications - then scroll down to Conversations. You'll want a green bell (Notify immediately) to ensure the messages are sent to your email account.

At least, we can do this on the version at my school--I don't know if other places might be able to shut off access to this function.

[the_geneticist]

[. . .]

It's also tricky to set up the grades the way you want them unless you go by a straight point system. 

[. . . ]

I use a point system. The more points earned by the end of the course, the higher the grade. No fiddling with how much different categories of assignments are weighted.

If anyone knows how to hide the gradebook columns that contain percentage figures, please let me know here. No matter what I do, students fixate on the percentage instead of total points.

If your university has enabled it, this may work.

If not, this used to work for me: Put in a stealth assignment worth one point with no due date and set the posting to “manual”. Give everyone a point but (and this is key) don’t post the ‘grade’. Since they have a graded assignment that they can’t see, canvas (at least used to) disable the final grade column.

Yes, that's where you can hide grade column totals.  Scrolling up is the option for "Launch SpeedGrader Filtered by Student Group", which the default for us is "off".  I turn it on.
And under that is "Enable course grading scheme".  If it's "on", then the students will see a letter grade even if they have only turned in 1 assignment.  I'd say either turn it off or customize to the grading scheme used in your courses.  Our school offers an "A+" grade, but anything below 60% is just an "F".

[sandgrounder]

The biggest issues we found, although this might be because it's not been set up well, were that the Canvas email system doesn't not link to our main email accounts, so you have two inboxes to check, and if you continue to use non-Canvas grading tools (as we have to) the functionality is far worse than it was in BB.

Actually, you CAN set the Canvas emails to deliver to your main email account.  In Canvas, go to your profile  - then Notifications - then scroll down to Conversations. You'll want a green bell (Notify immediately) to ensure the messages are sent to your email account.

I was briefly very excited but they've disabled it...I've put a query into IT asking why though, now I know it is a possibility, so thank you!
At least, we can do this on the version at my school--I don't know if other places might be able to shut off access to this function.

[spork]

[. . .]

It's also tricky to set up the grades the way you want them unless you go by a straight point system. 

[. . . ]

I use a point system. The more points earned by the end of the course, the higher the grade. No fiddling with how much different categories of assignments are weighted.

If anyone knows how to hide the gradebook columns that contain percentage figures, please let me know here. No matter what I do, students fixate on the percentage instead of total points.

If your university has enabled it, this may work.

If not, this used to work for me: Put in a stealth assignment worth one point with no due date and set the posting to “manual”. Give everyone a point but (and this is key) don’t post the ‘grade’. Since they have a graded assignment that they can’t see, canvas (at least used to) disable the final grade column.

Yes, that's where you can hide grade column totals.  Scrolling up is the option for "Launch SpeedGrader Filtered by Student Group", which the default for us is "off".  I turn it on.
And under that is "Enable course grading scheme".  If it's "on", then the students will see a letter grade even if they have only turned in 1 assignment.  I'd say either turn it off or customize to the grading scheme used in your courses.  Our school offers an "A+" grade, but anything below 60% is just an "F".

I don't use letter grades in Canvas. Everything is points. I set the right-most gradebook column to show cumulative points earned. When I input final course grades into the SIS, I convert the point totals to letter grades.

Immediately to the left of the column for cumulative points earned is a column of percentages, which is some kind of calculation of average performance on all assignments submitted. This is what I want to hide/disable.

[lightning]

Today, I was cruelly reminded about a Canvas feature that I did not have to deal with in BB.
When I update a quiz question, I have to remind myself constantly that I have to save the changes locally within the question ("update"), and then I have to click a global "save" in order to save those local changes. IOW, in Canvas, you have to save updates to quiz questions TWICE.

If you don't remember to save twice, you could end up updating 20 questions, thinking that you saved the changes, but actually you didn't because you didn't scroll down to the very bottom and save changes globally. So, you could end up losing all your updating work, or worse, deploy a quiz that you thought was updated, only to find out later that all the students bombed the final quiz assessment because the students didn't take the correct version of the quiz, because you didn't save the changes twice . . . . . . .

[hmaria1609]

For some odd reason, I kept thinking of Canva, the popular free tool design website. (https://www.canva.com/) They're separate websites but one is a letter short.

[apl68]

Today, I was cruelly reminded about a Canvas feature that I did not have to deal with in BB.
When I update a quiz question, I have to remind myself constantly that I have to save the changes locally within the question ("update"), and then I have to click a global "save" in order to save those local changes. IOW, in Canvas, you have to save updates to quiz questions TWICE.

If you don't remember to save twice, you could end up updating 20 questions, thinking that you saved the changes, but actually you didn't because you didn't scroll down to the very bottom and save changes globally. So, you could end up losing all your updating work, or worse, deploy a quiz that you thought was updated, only to find out later that all the students bombed the final quiz assessment because the students didn't take the correct version of the quiz, because you didn't save the changes twice . . . . . . .

Given the scope for things like this to happen, I can see why students express the kind of paranoia and double- and triple-checking of instructions that are so often reported on the "Teaching" threads.  No wonder they constantly expect things to go wrong, or second-guess themselves and their instructions.

[lightning]

Today, I was cruelly reminded about a Canvas feature that I did not have to deal with in BB.
When I update a quiz question, I have to remind myself constantly that I have to save the changes locally within the question ("update"), and then I have to click a global "save" in order to save those local changes. IOW, in Canvas, you have to save updates to quiz questions TWICE.

If you don't remember to save twice, you could end up updating 20 questions, thinking that you saved the changes, but actually you didn't because you didn't scroll down to the very bottom and save changes globally. So, you could end up losing all your updating work, or worse, deploy a quiz that you thought was updated, only to find out later that all the students bombed the final quiz assessment because the students didn't take the correct version of the quiz, because you didn't save the changes twice . . . . . . .

Given the scope for things like this to happen, I can see why students express the kind of paranoia and double- and triple-checking of instructions that are so often reported on the "Teaching" threads.  No wonder they constantly expect things to go wrong, or second-guess themselves and their instructions.

<sarcasm>Yeah, I should just use the same damn quiz every year and the same damn lesson plans, so they can learn obsolete stuff and get to cheat on the quiz, to boot. I get paid the same either way . . . . . </sarcasm>