Chalk-to-Canvas

By Paige Paulsen

My past week has been largely focused on troubleshooting the process of moving course materials from Chalk to Canvas. We are still in the process of testing various strategies and settings, but some best practices are becoming clear.

If at all possible we recommend starting from a fresh course. The switch from Chalk to Canvas will require a reorganization of course materials, and we have found that it is almost always easier to do this in one step, by uploading files into their new locations, rather than try to unravel the previous organization method.

The Chalk (Blackboard 9, Service Pack 13) export process is not fool-proof. We aren’t yet sure why (working on that this week!) but it appears that many classes lose files during the creation of the export package. The lost files are often uploaded or attached documents and media files. This lack of certainty means it is necessary to check each individual file in the course, which dramatically reduces any time savings from importing the course materials.