General Information
George Mason has contracted with a vendor to migrate Blackboard courses to Canvas. While there are other options to move course content, this method provides the highest quality migration. Migrations will only be performed in large batches. There will be several course migration windows through the summer of 2025.
Migration waves timeline:
- May/June 2024. Complete – courses now in Canvas
- September 2024. Request form now available. See September 10 email for link.
- December 2024
- 2025 TBD
A migration will perform a snapshot copy all instructor added content in a Blackboard course to a course in Canvas. This includes all course content such as files, content areas, assignments, tests, test banks, etc. No student data (submissions, grades) will be migrated to Canvas. The course will need some cleanup. Please read through our Migrated Course Cleanup Guide which explains which areas you may need to spend time looking over.
It is also important to note that an archive of Blackboard courses will become available after access to Blackboard ends (summer of 2025). The courses in the archives will include student information (submission, grades, etc.) so faculty can request specific student information upon request AND request these courses be migrated to Canvas if the need arises.
Accessing your migrated course in Canvas
Once the deadline passes for a migration wave, it will take up to four week for the courses to become available in Canvas. You will be notified by email when the course is in Canvas. All migrated courses begin with the name “Bb Migrated” and then the name of the Blackboard course. When you first access a migrated course, a pop-up guide will walk you through the course and explain basic information about where content is located and some differences between Blackboard and Canvas. You should also open the Migrated Course Cleanup Guide which will provide detailed tips, notes what did not copy into Canvas (the migration log), and specific areas that may need your attention.
Course Migrations FAQs
Do I have to teach in Canvas now that my course was migrated?
No. The courses that were migrated are there for when you are ready to begin exploring Canvas with your own courses. The migrated courses are just for you to see your course data and has no student or student submissions in them. If you continue to teach this course in Blackboard in future semesters, you can ask us to migrate a future version of your Blackboard course to Canvas (information on later course migrations coming soon). If you want to teach in Canvas in the fall, you still need to complete the Fall 2024 Canvas Opt-In form.
Will the migrated course still exist in Blackboard?
Yes, when your Blackboard course is migrated to Canvas it is a one-time snapshot of the course. For the first migration wave, this will be a snapshot during June of 2024. The course is still in Blackboard and can continue to be used there as needed. Any future changes to the Blackboard course will not be reflected in Canvas.
What will I need to do with a migrated course in Canvas? How do I use it?
The migrated course is for you (and other instructors you may choose to share it with). It is a source course for you to use to copy content into your live semester course when you choose to begin using Canvas.
The course will need some cleanup. Please read through our Migratied Course Cleanup Guide which explains which areas you may need to spend time looking over.
Who is in my migrated course?
If more than one person requested the same course to be migrated (usually for sandbox/master courses), those people will be listed together as instructors in the migrated course. But only the people who requested the course were added to the course in Canvas. You can add your colleagues to your course using the People link in the course menu. Student enrollments or student work was not copied to Canvas.
What do I do if I need another course migrated to Canvas?
The migration process can only be performed in discrete batches. You will need to wait until the next window opens (to be determined soon) or you can manually move your Blackboard course content to Canvas.
How did you pick which courses were migrated to Canvas?
There were two types of courses:
Pre-Selected Courses
Each instructor’s most recently taught section of a course, taught between Summer 2022 – Spring 2024, will be migrated. This includes a basic accounting for different course modes:
- Your most recent course in a Fall/Spring semester in both an online and in-person format
- Your most recent course in a Summer term, both an online and in-person format
Only the instructor of record according to Patriot Web will see the course in the Pre-Selected list.
We understand there are many other potential course formats, but this method accounted for the large majority. Instructors can use their “Your Choice” courses to ask for additional courses to be migrated.
The Pre-Selected list was created to ensure all instructors would have some courses in Canvas, even if they did not specifically make a request. This ensures faculty can decide on their own when to move to Canvas over the next year, whether in fall 2024 or later.
The Pre-Selected list balances the courses needed and the cost of migrated courses.
The list does not include:
- Blackboard courses that have no content
- Courses which are part of a Wiley masters program (these courses will be migrated separately)
- Courses for faculty who have officially left Mason (resigned/retired)
- A small number of course coordinators asked that their courses were not migrated in order to build a standard Canvas course for future use
Your Choice Courses
All other courses you see in Blackboard that were not on your Pre-Selected list, are on the Your Choice list. This will include courses you were not the instructor of record for and may include non-term courses such as sandbox sites, master courses, alternative formats of a course, etc. Courses that were empty in Blackboard are not on the list.