The roll-out of information and training as we as an institution move from Blackboard to migrate our VLE to Canvas has begun. The main Canvas site for the University is now live (link here) with all academic staff having access to an orientation course their own “sandbox” module to practice with. In addition the Canvas training sessions which will be running from April to June are now available to book (link here).
In addition to the orientation course and the face-to-face training, staff also have on the LTDS Digital Learning site (link here) a large number of highly useful help resources (link here), with in particular excellent written Canvas guides (link here). In addition there are also a large number of extremely detailed and high quality video guides (link here) on all sorts of common features.
This is all backed up with 24/7 help from Canvas itself via live chat within the platform, phone or email for all of your ‘How do I’ questions. I would encourage you to engage with the Canvas help team if you have any platform queries as I’ve found them to be very helpful and quick to respond. Finally if you are interested in using Canvas more creatively I would encourage you to look into the Canvas Communities (link here). The Higher Education Canvas community discussion group for example (link here) is a fast moving discussion group with HE academics and worth looking into.
Within Newcastle University Business School our priority is to support our teams exposure to LTDS training opportunities and access to Canvas support. Starting in mid-May and continuing weekly through to July we will be holding small group and 1-2-1 drop-in sessions start led by David Grundy. These are sessions for those who have received the LTDS training and would like some further advice and 1-2-1 support in.
We also want to make the most of this opportunity to enhance our learning provision with this exciting new platform, and so we hope to be contacting you soon with further details of enhancement orientated sessions in May and June.
If you have any queries or questions please do either drop in to have a chat or e-mail me at david.grundy@newcastle.ac.uk or if you have any questions for the Canvas team themselves please contact canvas@ncl.ac.uk