Welcome! You have found our Summer 2023 blog series on making the transition from Sakai to Canvas. Throughout this series, our goal is to break down the major elements involved in switching over to Canvas, the University’s Learning Management System. Follow along throughout the summer as other topics include specific migration instruction, locating your migrated content, and basic Canvas how-tos. This particular blog post identifies course sites you can already expect to find in Canvas as well as how to prepare your Sakai course sites in the event that they need to be copied to Canvas.
Why Now?
Summer 2023 (this summer) is the last summer that Sakai is available for use. Actively teaching while moving content over to a new management system can wreak havoc on your moving process causing additional stress and work for you. Moving now gives you the ability to spend more time developing your course in Canvas while having full access to all your old content in Sakai.
For more information about why we are moving to Canvas, scroll down to the ‘Why Canvas?’ section of our Canvas page.
What’s Already in Canvas?
If you are looking for an official University course you taught in Sakai (or had the role of instructor) during a 2022 term or Spring 2023, your site is already in Canvas waiting to be unpacked. If you need a course taught prior to 2022, keep reading.
Do I Need my Old Sites?
Whether you have been at UNC-CH for one year or 15 years, you have probably accumulated several Sakai sites. For courses that you have taught over and over, consider working from one main site.
To work from one main site, choose the most recent or a more relevant version of the course. Your goal is to find the version of the course with as many of the tests/quizzes, assignments, slide decks, etc. that you are going to use in the future.
Migrating multiple course sites will make it more difficult to locate the right site under the Dashboard and clutter your All Courses list found under Courses > All Courses in Canvas. Additionally, in the event that you request migration assistance, it will only be allotted to one course site.
Which parts stay and which parts go?
Take a moment to examine the site(s) that you want to migrate over to Canvas and remove anything that you know you are not planning to use. Again, we want to keep your Canvas space as clutter free as possible so anything you can clean out of your site(s) before migration will be beneficial to you. Canvas is not an archival space, but rather a learning management system that administers active instruction and communication between instructors and students.
Moving To Do List
• Log into Canvas and check your Courses > All Courses section to determine whether you need to move course sites
• If so, decide which course sites to move
• Look around our Canvas pages as we will be using this resource all throughout this series