Exporting, Converting and Importing Between Learning Management Systems

Abstract

Learning Management Systems (LMS) are ubiquitous in higher education. In addition to the traditional LMSs used inside schools, Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) platforms, such as Coursera and edX, are forming a new generation of LMSs. The ongoing changes in platforms force instructors to frequently migrate their course content from one LMS to another. In 2015-2016, Rice University migrated content of open-enrollment online courses on Coursera to on-campus courses hosted on Canvas. Such migrations are not easy tasks. There is neither a standard structure for LMSs, nor a standard format for content stored in an LMS. Different LMSs have different features and data formats. This research presents a migration tool that automatically downloads and migrates the whole course, including wiki pages, videos, quizzes and assignments, from Coursera to Canvas.