Ithaca College Finds a More Viable Solution for Migrating to its New Learning Management System (LMS).
In September 2020, as most universities were grappling with the challenges of remote learning due to the pandemic, leadership at Ithaca College knew its learning management system (LMS) was in need of an upgrade. After spending the better part of the past decade on Sakai, an open-source platform, Jenna Linskens says its drawbacks were becoming more apparent.
As Director of Learning and Innovative Technologies, Linskens was hearing from some of the college’s 5,000 students that they wanted a more modern system. Her team was also no longer large enough to manage the many support issues that emerged from using what she calls a “very archaic system.”
The Ithaca College Vice President for Academic Affairs partnered with the Chief Information Officer to ask Linskens and her team to embark on a discovery process that involved input from faculty, students, and other campus constituencies. The result: a migration of 3,500 courses to a new LMS. Linskens and her colleague Jeff Trondsen, LMS & eLearning Applications Administrator, shared key insights from their experience.
Get buy-in across the university
Ithaca’s leadership formed a series of groups to search for a new LMS in September 2020. Students, faculty, and staff helped with everything from putting together an RFP to reviewing potential providers through open town halls and meetings, where committee members and others could share ideas and needs for the new LMS. After conducting demos and reviewing submissions, the Ithaca community chose Canvas by Instructure.
Linskens and her team continued to work with the committees after selecting Canvas—gaining input and important recommendations for the timeline and how to manage the shift from one LMS to the next. Having these committees “made a huge, positive impact,” Linskens says. “Whether it was the committee researching the different LMS options or the governance committee that worked for a year to put everything in place. This digital transformation changed the way the faculty was using LMS platforms.”
Gaining input and support at the outset was also helpful for faculty onboarding, says Trondsen. “Faculty from different departments who had been on some of the committees were champions of Canvas, and they went back to their colleagues and helped show them some of the new features and benefits,” he said. “I found it interesting and rewarding that they were excited about it.”
Develop a realistic, yet rapid timeline
Based on the committee’s recommendations, Ithaca pushed to launch Canvas for the fall 2021 semester. That gave the institution just 8 months to migrate from one system to the next. “We decided to rip the Band-Aid off,” she says. Such a tight timeline meant that a significant portion of Ithaca’s courses needed to be ready by August 15, so faculty could begin to use all the new features before students arrived back on campus. It also meant Ithaca didn’t need to run two systems concurrently, something that would have been costly, confusing to the user community, and draining on the team’s resources.
Don't try a DIY
Many LMS providers offer institutions a variety of migration options, including both a do-it-yourself plan and one that involves an outside vendor. Ithaca initially tried a manual export from Sakai to Canvas, “but not a lot came out of it,” Trondsen says. “And it didn’t come over in a useful way.”
Instructure introduced Ithaca to K16 Solutions, which offers migration and archival services to institutions moving from one LMS to another. “It really was a night and day difference,” Trondsen says. Ithaca’s team did not have to make many manual changes to the courses after they moved to Canvas, giving instructors the chance to focus on improving their course content rather than fixing bugs. “They had the opportunity to redevelop their courses and use new tools in Canvas,” he added.
K16 Solutions’ migration projects typically only last about 90 days per institution, though Ithaca preferred an 8-month timeframe for its move to provide its faculty with more time to identify and convert courses they did not teach every semester. And had Ithaca migrated courses themselves manually, it would have wreaked havoc on that timeline–and potentially forced them to continue to use Sakai for another year, adding cost.
Beyond those factors, Linskens also questions whether Ithaca would have actually saved any money going the DIY route. Linskens says Ithaca would have had to put resources toward the manual migration—potentially hiring consultants to do the work.
The training needs for faculty would have also focused more heavily on the migration itself, as opposed to instructional design. Now they can focus on “building up” their courses, instead of copying and pasting. “They’re thinking about how they want to organize their courses, creating more accessible materials and improving the experience,” Linskens says.
Consider a batch migration
For Linskens, one of the benefits of working with K16 solutions was their batch migration offering, SystemMigration. Instead of doing one massive course migration over a matter of weeks, they broke it up into three different groups. Faculty provided fall courses in May 2021, while they waited until fall to tackle the spring 2022 offerings. Because instructors don’t teach the same courses every semester, it lightened their load. It also allowed Linskens’ team the opportunity to focus on special requests and provide additional support to those faculty members who needed it.
“When we saw the K16 Solutions SystemMigration process and the results from it, it really was a night and day difference."
“It gave the faculty some options and allowed us to help those faculty who needed a little extra support. It’s one of the benefits of working with K16 Solutions—they were very flexible with us.”
Test—then test again
Few LMS administrators expect migrations to be perfect at the outset—even with a vendor. Having the opportunity to test how courses translate into their new platforms will give staff and vendors the time and opportunity to spot bugs.
“Make sure when working with a vendor to constantly review and test and provide feedback—or ask for help,” Linskens says. “That was key, because we realized there were certain things that we probably should have had our faculty do in preparation.” Try both your most robust and your most basic courses, she says. “Check every tool to see what it looks like when it comes over,” she adds.
Trondsen adds that asking faculty to look as soon as the courses migrate can help later down the road. “A lot of the instructors didn’t look until it was too late,” he said. “If you have the luxury, ask them to please thoroughly check the courses while you’re still working with your vendor, so you can work with them to resolve any issues.”
Very few complaints
Ithaca’s faculty has completed their first full academic year using Canvas, and Linskens and Trondsen say they’ve heard few complaints. “We’ve had major acceptance of faculty utilizing the new tools,” Linskens says. The process has prompted many professors to redesign and put more thought into their courses. “It’s really helped them think about what students need,” she says.
This content was paid for and created by K16 Solutions. The editorial staff of The Chronicle had no role in its preparation. Find out more about paid content.
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