Scaffold Migration

Rutgers University

After assembling an internal committee focused on improving the student experience, Rutgers ultimately decided that a consolidated migration to Canvas was needed.
rutgers university migrates to canvas

Accelerated Transition to Canvas

As the eighth-oldest college in the U.S., Rutgers University has established itself as a leading research institution. With three locations throughout New Jersey, Rutgers is headquartered in New Brunswick with a total student population of over 50,000 and almost 9,000 faculty members. Supporting a widespread educational network, Rutgers was operating with multiple learning management systems, including Blackboard Classic and Sakai, that intersected across departments and colleges. After assembling an internal committee focused on improving the student experience, Rutgers ultimately decided that a consolidated migration to Canvas was needed.

Challenges

Stakeholder Buy-In

With so many departments and colleges, Rutgers struggled to get widespread approval of a consolidated LMS migration.

Departmental Requirements & Expectations

Being siloed in different LMS platforms, the school’s migration had to meet hefty requirements and expectations for all schools, faculty, and departments involved.

Faculty Expectation & Instructional Design Support

While some faculty had access to instructional design experts, many had to design and build their own courses. Because of this, Rutgers had to consider the staff members they were tasking to learn a new tool.

“When K16 Solutions joined us at the table to discuss the unique challenges around our LMS transition to Canvas, they did not come with a quick-fix to sell us, but rather an offer to partner with Rutgers in identifying the issues, developing a solution, and implementing it in a way that would meet the needs of all our stakeholders. Throughout the experience, the K16 team showcased their technical prowess, willingness to collaborate, and most importantly, empathy for our faculty and students.”
Charles A. Collick Jr.
Associate Director, IT Accessibility & Instructional Technology

Solution

As a large institution with many staff and faculty members, Rutgers decided to forego a complete, one-time migration—opting instead to take a step-by-step approach. Rutgers involved numerous faculty members throughout the collaboration process to ensure they met and achieved all expectations and objectives.

Driven by the need to reduce faculty workload and simplify the student experience, Rutgers and K16 Solutions created an overarching gameplan to successfully migrate a few courses at a time. Today, K16 Solutions is able to migrate courses at an automated rate of 1,000 courses per day. With consistent touchpoints, Rutgers and K16 Solutions continue to remain well aligned throughout the process, ensuring courses continue to meet all faculty and departmental expectations.

Moving forward, Rutgers and K16 Solutions continue to migrate courses alongside a batched timeline. With a pre-determined completion date, the project is a full semester ahead of schedule.

  • Continued collaboration to support faculty and departmental requirements
  • Batched timeline to support an ongoing migration
  • Accurate automated migration that requires little-to-no content revision from faculty
  • Automated processes that accelerated an initial timeline of multiple years to a few months

Results

Customized Tool Development

K16 Solutions optimized its automated Scaffold Migration tool to support a seamless, accurate migration with Sakai and Blackboard Classic.

Transparent Committee Involvement & Collaboration

Knowing that students and faculty would be most impacted, Rutgers was dependent on consistent collaboration and overhead approval from its internally appointed committee.

Batched Course Migration

With so many institutional complexities, K16 Solutions and Rutgers developed a migration timeline that supported the school’s need for a batched approach.

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