the starting point...Understanding the migration: A man on a ipad with pathways to laptops, computers, and a phone

From B to C: PGCC is Moving from Blackboard to Canvas

Through extensive discovery, research, outreach, and evaluation of our college’s Learning Management System (LMS), we are making the next step in moving from Blackboard to Canvas.

Canvas was selected by the college after an extensive evaluation process starting in 2018 and concluding in October 2021. This process included input from students, faculty and staff with product demos, hands-on opportunities, and surveys. The LMS recommendation committee prepared a report of the findings and a recommendation prior to COVID, and that recommendation was presented to other campus governance groups, including the Student Government Association for feedback.

This change comes with many benefits to our students. Canvas is the LMS of choice used by UMCP, AACC, Morgan State, Howard CC, PGCPS, and many other academic institutions across the nation. Providing our students with the best possible LMS was paramount to this decision. The cloud-based platform provides an environment for growth and stability of our online coursework while still supporting the same integrations with all our instructional technologies. This includes Respondus, VoiceThread, Zoom, Panopto and publisher integrations. In the future, the integration with Office 365 and Microsoft Teams will increase the capacity of students to work from anywhere.

Students will now have access to 24/7 global support for Canvas including phone, chat, and email. This will ensure students will have access to questions and support regardless of when or where help is needed. In the coming weeks, students will have access to numerous Canvas Overview sessions provided by the SGA (Student Governance Association) and eLearning as well as resources within the Canvas environment including a student tutorial on Canvas built into the course template as well as a self-paced training course for students to enroll.

This transition to Canvas brings some challenges, but we are working hard to provide support every step of the way. We know you will have questions and feedback and we invite you to share those with us at elearning@pgcc.edu.

From B to C: Migration Timeline

The following timeline shows the detailed journey to fully implement Canvas as the new learning management system(LMS).

A timeline with a notepad, laptop, widget, student, magnifying glass, and a computer with lms floating in front of it.