The University of Nebraska is making improvements to its Canvas digital learning management system, implementing a single, unified Canvas environment for students and faculty to use across all campuses at NU.
Led by Interim Executive Vice President and Provost David Jackson, PhD, and supported by NU ITS, the Canvas Convergence project will bring together the campuses of the University of Nebraska at Kearney, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, University of Nebraska at Omaha and UNMC into one integrated platform. The single Canvas instance will be a significant improvement for students, faculty and academic leaders who regularly teach, learn and engage across multiple NU campuses.
This new Canvas environment will be used for courses starting in the Fall 2026 semester. Many faculty like to begin building fall course content well ahead of time, so the new instance of Canvas was made available to faculty on March 23.
Faculty also will be able to access prior course material that is housed in the current instances of Canvas. The ITS technical team will copy six semesters of course materials into the new instance: Fall 2024, Spring/Summer/Fall 2025 and Spring/Summer 2026.
If there is a need to reference material outside of these terms or if faculty would like to copy over additional material, the current instances of Canvas will continue to be available for faculty to request the ITS technical team to move content on their behalf. A self-service option to move this older material is also available.
Current courses that are being taught in the Spring or Summer 2026 semesters remain in the current campus-specific instances of Canvas and are unaffected by this change.
Faculty support for the new Canvas environment is significantly enhanced with multiple options ranging from emailing the team directly, to making an in-person appointment on the UNK, UNL, UNO or UNMC campuses, to joining a live Zoom drop-in room (9 a.m.-4 p.m. weekdays) for real-time faculty support, screen sharing and troubleshooting.
Access opened on March 23 on this NU Canvas webpage for faculty to log in to current instances of Canvas for Spring/Summer 2026 and prior courses, to login to the new Canvas environment for Fall 2026 courses and to access helpful information about support resources, trainings, integrated tools and procedures.