Get Started Teaching in Canvas

Overview of the transition to Canvas for College of Education Instructors

Fall 2024 Update: Canvas is now the default LMS

As of Fall 2024, Canvas is the only LMS option available for course requests in SPIRE. During the 2024-25 school year, Moodle is only available on request and with permission from the dean, and Blackboard is no longer available for teaching. 

Back up or convert all Moodle and Blackboard classes now. Moodle and Blackboard will be turned off in June 2025. If you will be going on sabbatical, or have courses you teach only once every few years, make sure to request a conversion or download the course content so that you will have access when you need it.  

When you are ready to get started using Canvas, the best place to start is the Canvas Support Options and Resources page from the IDEAS team in the provost office. 

Below, you will find a some key tips about using Canvas. If you have questions, or need assistance with Canvas, contact Fred Zinn in the College of Education, or the Instructional Media Lab on campus (413-545-2823, instruct [at] umass [dot] edu).

Learning about Canvas  

If you want to practice with Canvas before building a "real" course, go to this page: Canvas at UMass Amherst and select “Log In to Canvas.”  Once in Canvas, you explore the self-paced training materials in the “Canvas Training and Resources” class, and try out the features of Canvas in your personal "Sandbox" class. 

If you prefer the structure of a live workshop, the IDEAS group offers live, hands-on training sessions. These include short “Quick Preview” demos, and longer hands-on “Practice Sessions.” To see a schedule and register, go to this page: Technology Training & Webinars. 

If you want to sit with someone and work one-on-one to learn Canvas, contact Fred Zinn in the College of Education to make an appointment. The IDEAS group is also available for consultations and support calls.  

Requesting a Canvas course 

Once a class is listed for registration, you can use SPIRE to request a Canvas site for it. See instructions on this page: Request a Canvas Course Through SPIRE. Only Canvas courses requested through SPIRE can be populated automatically with students.

If you want to begin working on a course for a future semester that is not yet available in SPIRE, you can request a conversion of a previous course (see below) or contact instruct [at] umass [dot] edu (instruct[at]umass[dot]edu) to request an empty development course. Courses developed this way will need to be copied into the SPIRE-requested course when it becomes available.  

Remember to request a new Canvas course every semester. Every semester you teach a course, you will need to request a new Canvas site. If you have taught the course before in Canvas, you will be able to import the content from the previous course into the new course (see below for instructions.)

Importing content into a new Canvas course 

Students are only enrolled in Canvas courses that have been requested through SPIRE. If you have prepared a course using a sandbox, requested a converted course, or taught a course before in Canvas, you can copy that course (whole or in parts) into the new course.

This IDEAS video demonstrates the process: Import Migrated Content into Your SPIRE Course (3 min)

A summary of the steps:

  1. Open your SPIRE-requested course (the semester will appear on its card on the dashboard.) 
  2. On the Home page, upper right, select "Import Existing Content" to go to the Import Content page. 
  3. From "Content Type" drop down menu, select "Copy a Canvas Course". 
  4. From "Search for a course" drop down menu, select the course you want to copy. 
  5. To copy everything from one course to another, under "Content" select "All content". 
    (NOTE this will replace everything in the SPIRE course. If you want to copy parts of another course, select "Select Specific Content".)   
  6. If you know you want to convert quizzes or dates, select these options under "Options". 
  7. Select "Import" -- the process may take a few minutes. 

Migrating Moodle and Blackboard courses to Canvas

NOTE: Past Moodle and Blackboard classes will be unavailable after June 2025. If you have courses that you may not be teaching until after 2025, make a point to convert them as soon as possible. 

If you want to rebuild a course from scratch, or are designing a new course, you can request an empty Canvas shell via SPIRE for the upcoming semester, or by contacting instruct [at] umass [dot] edu for a future course not yet listed in SPIRE. Instructions for Requesting a Canvas course through SPIRE

If you want to have content moved from Blackboard or Moodle to Canvas, you can still request content-copy migrations. This process can be done any time and takes 2-3 business days to complete. Fill out the Content Migration Request Form and select “Content-copy Migration”.  Note that not all elements copy, or may not copy as expected, so leave time to review and rework your course. 

Only courses requested through SPIRE can have students enrolled. When you are finished adapting a converted course, you will still need to request the "official" course in SPIRE for that semester and copy the content from the converted course into the SPIRE course. 

Preparing a migrated course for teaching

The migration process will still require some clean up before your converted course is ready for students. A few steps you should expect to take (See the Canvas Course Checklist for a detailed list):

  1. Customize the standard Home page (if using*) with contact and course information.
  2. Customize the standard Syllabus page (if using*) to add syllabus text and/or a link to the syllabus in PDF or other format. 
  3. Review the Modules page (if using*) and reorder and re-label content as needed. 
  4. If you had modules in Moodle that displayed instructions, content, and links in the same weekly block, they will have been split into separate items within each module in Canvas.  The best way to recreate these blocks in Canvas is to create Pages that collect all this content in one place, then add these pages to the appropriate Modules in Canvas. 
  5. Review other tools, such as quizzes, to make sure they are set up the way you need them to be. The IDEAS group can help if you run into something you are not sure how to recreate.  
  6. Copy the converted course content into a SPIRE-requested Canvas course. Note that the converted course is not where your students will be. Once you configure your converted course, access the SPIRE course you requested (the course with the semester listed on its card on the dashboard), select Import Existing Content, and select the converted course. 

For details and instructional videos about the above processes, visit After Migration: Working with Content Migrated from Moodle or Blackboard. 

(if using* - note that any page in Canvas can be used as a home page, and most pages can be hidden from students. Use this power responsibly.)