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More big steps on our move to Canvas - what colleagues need to know

25 Feb 2025

The first University courses using Canvas to start teaching are now live thanks to the hard work from the technical and eLearning teams involved.

Canvas

Two Transnational Education (TNE) courses successfully launched Canvas with students on Monday 17 February, with another course being prepared to go-live in March. This milestone is another achievement in our move away from Blackboard Learn.

What has happened this month?

As we prepare for the University-wide Canvas rollout in September 2025, here are some of the key activities from this month:

  • Technical Release - The second of three Canvas technical releases was successfully deployed on Friday 14 February. This allows automated student enrolments, making Canvas ready for teaching.
  • Migration of course data from the last 3 years has begun. Over 2000 Blackboard courses are being exported and reviewed before being imported to Canvas by the end of April.
  • Communications have been shared with students to raise awareness of the move to Canvas. Further messages will be shared to prepare students for the move.

What do I need to do as a member of staff?

If you currently work with Blackboard, you can now access your Canvas space to explore the platform and its features. Follow the link here https://canvas.manchester.ac.uk/.

If you don’t yet have a sandbox space, you can contact your local eLearning team for further support.

We encourage you to engage with the platform and access training, seeking support from your eLearning teams, when required through the links below:

What’s coming up?

From March, courses to be used for teaching in 2025/2026 will be available for colleagues to build content. The Canvas Template, created to meet University agreed Course Unit Standards, will be applied to all new empty course spaces to guide and support colleagues through the build.

Migration of Blackboard content is expected to be completed by the end of April, and we are expecting over 95% of semester 1 courses will be available to colleagues by the end of March. You can then build courses in Canvas with your appropriate migrated content from Blackboard. Guidance will be shared in the form of the UoM Course Template and Canvas Course Unit Standards to support colleagues.

Look out for more information coming to our online pages and being cascaded through you Faculties and areas of work.