Working with LTS During the Transition
Page Description
This page provides details for colleges and departments collaborating with Learning Technology Solutions to migrate course content from Blackboard to Canvas.
On This Page
- What to Expect During the Transition
- Departments Working with LTS and Timeline
- Liaison Contact List
- Colleges Working with LTS
- Colleges Managing the Transition Independently
What to Expect During the Transition
When LTS begins working with your college or department, faculty can expect a structured three-step support process:
Faculty Needs Survey and Course Migration
Faculty Needs Survey
LTS Learning Design’s Canvas transition process starts by reaching out to faculty (via a Qualtrics survey) to identify which courses they’d like copied from Blackboard into Canvas. Once courses are moved over, we offer two levels of support:
- Self-paced — Faculty who prefer to work on their own have access to a range of documents and videos to guide them through the process.
- Hands-on — For those who want more direct support, our learning design team can help restructure and clean up course content, improve accessibility, and get everything ready to teach in Canvas, including one-on-one consultations.
Creating your ‘Source’ Course in Canvas
LTS will move your requested Blackboard courses into a Canvas ‘source course.’
In Blackboard, many instructors copy over a course from a previous term into the active term and update their course content from there. Since we don’t have previous versions of many courses in Canvas yet, LTS will copy over your course content in a Canvas course shell in the Default Term—this version of the course will not expire and will not have any students in it. You can identify your source courses by the naming convention: ABC.123.source.NetID (i.e., the course code, the word “source,” and the instructor’s Net ID).
We recommend that instructors work on their course content in the source course. The source course serves as a staging area where you can build, revise, and test your materials without students present. It’s a safe place to make changes and keep materials for future use.
A few weeks before the semester begins, instructors will see active, empty, Banner-linked courses on your Canvas Dashboard. The active courses will be named with the course code, title, and the CRN in parentheses. They will live in the active term (e.g., Fall 2026) rather than the Default Term. As the beginning of the semester approaches, you’ll see that these courses have students in them.
Once your source course is updated for the new semester, you will need to copy the content into the active term, just like you would copy a previous semester’s content into the new term in Blackboard.
LTS will copy over your course content in a Canvas course shell in the Default Term—this version of the course will not expire and will not have any students in it. You can identify your source courses by the naming convention: ABC.123.source.NetID (i.e., the course code, the word “source,” and the instructor’s Net ID).
Organizational and Accessibility Updates (Hands-on Support Only)
Depending on the level of support indicated in each survey response, a dedicated team of Instructional Designers (IDs) and Teaching Assistants (TAs) will do the following:
- Restructure: Suggest and implement structural improvements to align your course with Canvas best practices.
- Update: Identify and update inaccessible materials using YuJa Panorama (PDFs, images, documents).
- Collaborate: Offer one-on-one consultations to ensure the Canvas environment meets your teaching needs.
Review and Handoff (Hands on Support)
Faculty who requested hands-on support will receive a summary of the revised course structure and a report on accessibility improvements. Faculty are responsible for:
- Reviewing the updates in the Canvas environment.
- Verifying that all links, assessments, and settings are functioning as intended.
- Determining if any final manual adjustments are needed before the course is ready to be taught.
- Copying or requesting that their course content be copied from the default term to the active Banner course.
Please Act Now
Note: Even if you do not plan to teach in Canvas immediately, we encourage completing the survey while LTS resources are dedicated to your college.
Colleges and Departments Working with LTS
To monitor the course migration process, our LTS will collaborate with multiple colleges simultaneously to restructure the courses in Canvas for each college. The table below outlines the semester when each college will be contacted and the estimated duration for migrating the college’s courses.
College Transition Timeline
| Institution Name | Fall 2025 | Spring 2026 | Summer 2026 | Fall 2026 | Spring 2027 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Liberal Arts Sciences | x | x | x | x | x |
| Engineering | x | x | x | x | |
| Applied Health Sciences | x | x | x | x | |
| Nursing | x | x | |||
| ArchitectureDesign the Arts | x | x | |||
| Education | x | x | |||
| Urban Planning Public Affairs | x | ||||
| VP for Global Engagement | x | ||||
| Honors College | x | ||||
| Social Work | x | ||||
| Graduate College | x | ||||
| SVP Acdmc Prgrms Stdnt Succ | x | ||||
| Library | x | ||||
| VP Undrgrd Affrs Acdmc Prgms | x | ||||
| Armed Forces | x | ||||
| Provost VC Acad Affairs | x | ||||
| College of Medicine | x | x |
Liaison Contact List
Below is the contact information for departmental liaisons. This list is divided between units working directly with LTS and those managing the transition with their own internal teams.
Colleges working with LTS
Colleges Working with LTS Learning Design
LTS provides instructional design (ID) and teaching assistant (TA) support for these units.| Institution | Contact | |
|---|---|---|
| Applied Health Sciences: BHIS | Fe Williams Leah Lebowicz Kristin Mount Laura Mills | feleciaw@uic.edu laklein2@uic.edu mount@uic.edu lmills16@uic.edu |
| Applied Health Sciences: Disability and Human Development | Carrie Sandahl | csandahl@uic.edu |
| Applied Health Sciences: Kinesiology and Nutrition | Kevin Hogan | khogan@uic.edu |
| Applied Health Sciences: Physical Therapy | Tanvi Bhatt | tbhatt6@uic.edu |
| Applied Health Sciences: Rehabilitation Sciences | Yemi Akinola | oakinola@uic.edu |
| Architecture Design the Arts | Jahnvi Patel | jpate201@uic.edu |
| Education | Claire Grimmenga Courtney Luedke Mark Giles | claireg@uic.edu cluedke@uic.edu mgiles@uic.edu |
| Engineering | Simona Narubin Durbin Jim Kosmach Zhinan Wang | snarub2@uic.edu kosmach@uic.edu znw@uic.edu |
| Graduate College | Jonathan Art | jart@uic.edu |
| Honors College | Michele McCrillis | mmccrill@uic.edu |
| Liberal Arts Sciences | Lead: Victoria Bolf | vicbolf@uic.edu |
| LAS: Anthropology | Brian Bauer | bsb@uic.edu |
| LAS: Biological Sciences | Kate Warpeha and Andrew McDevitt | kwarpeha@uic.edu and amcd@uic.edu |
| LAS: Black Studies | Darius Bost Ainsworth Clarke | dbost@uic.edu ac57@uic.edu |
| LAS: Chemistry | Samuel Figueroa | sfigu@uic.edu |
| LAS: Communication | Diem-My Bui Princy Daniel Ishani Mukerherji | dbui@uic.edu pdanie7@uic.edu imukhe2@uic.edu |
| LAS: Criminology, Law, and Justice | William McCarty | mccartyw@uic.edu |
| LAS: Earth and Environmental Science | Fabien Kenig | fkenig@uic.edu |
| LAS: Economics | Stephen Kim Foteini Tzacharista | skim88@uic.edu foteini@uic.edu |
| LAS: English | Mark Bennett Karen Lieck | mbenne2@uic.edu kleick@uic.edu |
| LAS: Gender and Women's Studies | Cindy Tekobbe | ctek@uic.edu |
| LAS: Global Asian Studies | Mark Chiang Karen Su | mchiang@uic.edu karensu@uic.edu |
| LAS: History | Kevin Schultz | schultzk@uic.edu |
| LAS: Latin American and Latino Studies | Jonathan Inda | jxinda@uic.edu |
| LAS: Literatures, Cultural Studies, and Linguistics | Claudia Fernandez Patrick Fortmann Susanne Rott | cferna5@uic.edu fortmann@uic.edu srott@uic.edu |
| LAS: Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science | Danko Adrovic Martina Bode Billy Jackson Jennifer Pajda-De La O | dadrov1@uic.edu bodem@uic.edu bjjack06@uic.edu jpajda2@uic.edu |
| LAS: Philosophy | Kei Hotoda | khotod2@uic.edu |
| LAS: Physics | Ryan Hazelton | ryanhaz@uic.edu |
| LAS: Political Science | Kate Floros | kmfloros@uic.edu |
| LAS: Psychology | Kate Zinsser | kzinsser@uic.edu |
| LAS: Sociology | Lisa Berube | lberub2@uic.edu |
| Library | Quincy McCrary | qmccrary@uic.edu |
| Nursing | Jason Richards Dawn Sarginson | jasonr@uic.edu dsargins@uic.edu |
| Social Work | Cassandra McKay | cmckay@uic.edu |
| Urban Planning Public Affairs | Ning Ai Jiaqi Liang | ain@uic.edu liangj@uic.edu |
| UIC Tutorium | Dave Onufrock Jason Romano Vit Vanicek | onufrock@uic.edu jroman8@uic.edu vanicek@uic.edu |
Independent Transition
Units Managing Transitions Independently
These colleges proceed at their own pace, supported by their own internal instructional designers and planning teams.| Institution | Contact | |
|---|---|---|
| Business | Trischa Duke Michael Michela | tduke3@uic.edu mmichela@uic.edu |
| Dentistry | TBD | |
| Extended Campus | Nicole Messier | nmessier@uic.edu |
| Graduate College | Jonathan Art | jart@uic.edu |
| Law | Christopher Bevard Anthony Jeswald David Whelan | cbevard@uic.edu ajeswal@uic.edu wheland@uic.edu |
| Medicine | Cheryl McKearin | hitosis@uic.edu |
| Pharmacy | Mary Kopale | mkopale@uic.edu |
| Public Health | Derrick Stevens Mike Yen | dmsteve2@uic.edu myen@uic.edu |