Quinnipiac University’s students and faculty will soon say goodbye to Blackboard, as the university courses will migrate over the next academic year into Canvas. 

Canvas is an innovative learning management system that offers a seamless, user-friendly platform for teaching and learning. Built with flexibility and collaboration in mind, Canvas provides faculty with robust tools to design engaging courses, integrate multimedia and foster meaningful student interactions. Its intuitive user interface makes it easy to manage assignments and assessments, integrate third-party tools and communicate for in-person, hybrid or online classes, according to the QILT website. 

This was a collaborative project between the Quinnipiac Innovations in Learning and Technology, Teaching and Classroom Technology team from Information Technology, Faculty Senate and an LMS evaluation committee made up of faculty across the university, that started in spring 2024. 

The choice was between Blackboard Ultra and Canvas. 

“Any time an institution is coming to an end to an end of a LMS contract, it tends to be a good thing to periodically evaluate,” said Adam Nemeroff, director of instructional design and technology, who also oversees the Office of Learning Design and Technology. “Our team thought a lot about where the LMS is working or not working right now. We had a lot of methods for evaluating that. At the end of that we had about 70% people say they preferred Canvas over Blackboard.”

But why Canvas?

“The user experience and accessibility of Canvas is just so much better and provides a lot more flexibility for faculty to customize the student experience based on the modality of the course,” said Joel Vanner, assistant director of learning, media and emerging technologies. “We are really excited about that. Online and on-ground courses have different needs within and LMS and we wanna make sure that faculty can tailor their courses. The course management is a lot easier, grading, setting up assignments, it’s just a lot easier when they use Canvas.” 

One of the advantages Canvas offers is the transfer of documents into a desired format by a teacher. In the past students might not have been able to submit their assignments in Google Pages, for example, if their teacher did not have access to that site. In Canvas, the teachers can view the document regardless. 

Canvas also offers 24/7 support by phone, chat or email. 

“I’ve actually used Canvas at my last institution,” Nemeroff said. “It’s very intuitive. Students don’t tend to get tripped up as much, there aren’t as many quirks as with Blackboard, things are more consistent across it. The ability to use it on mobile is better.”

Canvas mobile apps (Canvas Student or Canvas Teacher) are free and available for download, both for IOS and Android. 

Some classes in the Masters of Social Work program have already been moved onto this platform, while the rest of the university is set to follow in opt-in phases and completely transition by fall 2026 — which means there is a possibility that students will have classes on both platforms at the same time. 

“I’ve gotten a really positive feedback from our designers and faculty so far,” Vanner said. “We also have a lot of faculty that have told us that they have taught with Canvas on other institutions in the past, which we are really excited about, so it’s not a platform that I think a lot of people are unfamiliar with, a lot of people have either heard of it or used it.” 

Not everyone has a Quinnipiac account in Canvas yet, but links to Canvas will be posted onto MyQ in the future, once needed. 

Blackboard is the daughter company of Anthrology, which is used for other Quinnipiac websites like Transact for example, and will continue to be even after Blackboard is no longer available for use. 

The QILT will hold Zoom sessions where they will introduce users to Canvas if needed. Registration is required. 

The files in Blackboard will not transfer into Canvas. 

“If you’ve used any modern website, WordPress, etc., a lot of the design things carry through into Canvas,” Vanner said. “The student experience, I know it will get a lot better in terms of use, because the issues of using Blackboard sometimes come up because of the confusing way things have to be set up on the faculty side. Because things are so easy to set up for faculty on the platform, I think that will trickle down to students just having a much better experience using it.”