Coming from Canvas
Migrate from Canvas: your Common Cartridge, rebuilt as editable content
Common Cartridge is the IMS interchange format every major platform can produce — which makes this the same route out of Blackboard and Brightspace. Export one course, upload it, read what could not come across, then edit what did.
How to export a Canvas course
The first step happens entirely inside the Canvas you already run.
- 1
Open the course and go to Settings → Export Course Content.
- 2
Choose a course export and download what Canvas produces — a single Common Cartridge, .imscc, one per course.
- 3
Upload that .imscc here from Courses → Import course → Import a course package.
One file per course, up to 2 GB. Blackboard and Brightspace produce the same format, so everything below applies to them too — only the export menu differs.
What a Common Cartridge carries across
Common Cartridge 1.3 is the IMS standard for course-structure interchange, so it carries the shape of the course — and what lands is native, editable content rather than a frozen archive playing in a frame.
Comes across
- Course structure — sections and activities become modules, lessons and pages, one section per unit in the cartridge
- Pages, files and links, gathered into a Learning Materials activity for each section
- Assessments, as editable questions across seven common question types
- Images and links inside questions and pages
Named and skipped
A cartridge carries what the standard describes, and a course usually contains more than that.
- Hidden activities — the retired drafts and instructor-only copies the course kept out of students' sight
- H5P and similar interactive embeds that need their original engine. A label mixing text with an embed keeps its text
- Question types that cannot be marked without your old platform behind them
Whatever cannot be resolved is listed by title rather than dropped in silence — on the preview when you previewed, and in the completion email when the import ran in the background. An import that reports success while quietly dropping a dozen items is worse than one that hands you a list: the list is how you find out before a student does.
Two paths, by package size
Up to 100 MB the import is previewed and committed while you watch: you see the module → lesson → activity tree that would be created, item by item, and nothing is written to your courses until you commit. A package as large as 2 GB goes to the background pipeline instead — the upload runs with a progress bar, there is no on-screen preview because the reading happens after you have closed the tab, and you are emailed when the course is ready.
Grounded in your curriculum — only if you say so
Reading the package and building the course out of it use no AI at all. Grounding is asked outright, as a question in the import itself — ground this course in Curriculum Intelligence? — with no answer pre-selected. Say yes and the imported material becomes that course's knowledge base, so the tutor answers from your content and the generators write in your curriculum's language from day one. Say no and nothing is embedded; the course still imports, and you can ground it later.
An imported quiz is authoring material
Each quiz in the package arrives as questions you can read, edit and decide about — not as something a learner can walk into. Review them, keep the ones worth keeping with Save to Bank…, then choose what that bank becomes: an ungraded practice set shared to learners, or a graded quiz built from it. Nothing an import brings in reaches a learner until someone has looked at it.
What is already here when the course lands
The import is the boring half. This is the half that decides whether the move was worth making — platform features rather than a shopping list of add-ons to licence separately.
26 AI tools, built in
Course generation from a syllabus, quizzes, rubric-based grading, slides, study guides and worksheets — all grounded in your own materials.
Cog, on every page
An Ask Cog bubble that already knows the course, lesson or quiz in front of you: the tutor for learners, the assistant for instructors. It does not surface quiz or answer-key material before or during an attempt, so it is safe to leave on during assessment — and it is switched on for every tenant.
Live video sessions
Scheduled from a course, a classroom or the calendar, and joined in the browser — with no separate account and no third-party video subscription.
Certificates that verify themselves
QR codes, a public verification page in your branding, Open Badges 3.0 credentials, validity windows and recertification.
Your brand, your domain
White-label branding resolved before anyone signs in — down to the notification emails and the certificate page — with role-based dashboards and one learner's whole record on a single page.
An LTI 1.3 platform of its own
The specialist tools you already licence launch here too, with OAuth2 security, grade passback through Assignment & Grade Services and roster sync through Names & Roles.
And the way back to Canvas
Judge a platform by its exits. Whole courses export as Common Cartridge 1.3, Moodle .mbz, SCORM 1.2 or SCORM 2004; question sets export as QTI 2.1, which Canvas reads straight into its own question bank. No penalty and no support ticket — the door you came in through stays unlocked.
Canvas migration questions
- Does this work for Blackboard and Brightspace too?
- Yes. Common Cartridge is an IMS standard rather than a Canvas format — Blackboard and Brightspace export it as well, and a cartridge from any of them imports the same way. Only the export menu differs.
- How big can a Canvas export be?
- Up to 2 GB. Up to 100 MB the import is previewed and committed while you watch; above that it goes to a background pipeline, the upload runs with a progress bar, and you are emailed when the course is ready — with the same skip list you would have read on screen.
- What happens to our question banks?
- Assessments import as editable questions, and they can leave the same way — as QTI 2.1, the IMS standard for interchange of questions and assessments, which Canvas reads straight into its own native question bank. Moodle XML is available too.
- Do we have to leave Canvas in one weekend?
- No. EduGears AI LMS is an LTI 1.3 platform in its own right — it hosts external tools with OAuth2 security, returns grades through Assignment & Grade Services and syncs rosters through Names & Roles — so you can run alongside Canvas through the transition and move a program at a time.
Coming from somewhere else?
Read further before you export anything
Try it with a real course
Export one course from where it lives today and import it. The skip list will tell you more about a migration than any sales call can — ask us to set you up on the free evaluation tenant. No card, no commitment.