At Intelvio, we're not just delivering training; we're preparing career-focused learners with workforce-ready skills, and we make sure the platforms behind that training are ready to support them.
So when we came across Canvas Career, we knew right away we wanted to try it, test it, and see how it could support our organization’s and our learners’ needs.
Today, we're excited to share our migration journey, what we've learned along the way, and how Canvas Career is helping us create a more connected, streamlined, and career-focused learning experience. We would like to emphasize that the experiences and observations shared in this blog reflect our experience and the platform capabilities available at the time of writing.
Why Canvas Career
Canvas Career offers a distinct learning experience, one that's learner-centered, skills-first, and workforce-driven. From the moment we started testing, a few features stood out right away: the simplified interface, the course progress tracking, Skills Manager, Learning Library, and the AI-powered tools woven throughout the platform. For us, this wasn't going to be a like-for-like migration. It was time to rethink how to maximize the new platform's capabilities and build a plan that worked for both our existing and new content.
Where We Started Our Migration
We began with an internal pilot. This gave us a clear view of what copying existing content actually looked like, how learners would navigate the new platform, how our integrations and third-party tools behaved, what stakeholders we needed to involve in this process, and, most importantly, what we'd need to change as we scaled the migration.
From there, we moved into the audit phase. What content do we have? What do we prioritize? How do we balance migrating active courses, where learner impact is highest, with the timing of new course and program launches?
Throughout this initial process, we tested the learner experience and the content migration experience, which helped us identify needs and build an action plan. This is also where we got honest about what was working and what needed to shift.
An Honest Look at the Migration in Motion
No migration is perfect, and ours is no exception. We've had our fair share of wins and friction in this process.
What's working well
- The biggest win has been course copy. Moving content from Canvas to Canvas Career has been seamless; courses come over almost exactly as they were organized, with little to no adjustment to content pages, assignments, or quizzes. Even with our many third-party integrations (Cengage, EHRgo, H5P, Canva, Synthesia) and formatting elements like graphics, audio, video, and tables, the formatting has held up. We've also seen continuity with other Instructure products like Catalog and Parchment Digital Badges (formerly Credentials). For a migration of our size, that's been a meaningful relief.
- Another amazing win has been the learner experience itself. We've seen real improvements in access, navigation, and platform usage with little to no onboarding, which speaks volumes about how intuitive the platform is.
- The Learning Library has also been a standout. It offers enhanced course organization and filtering options that make it easier to manage our growing offerings. The Syncable Objects feature, which lets us update shared content in one place and push changes through to every course that uses it.
- The AI-powered content generation tools are another great feature we recommend exploring for content development and item creation.
- As for the mobile app, we've seen our courses display cleanly with little to no adjustment.
Where we've hit friction
A few areas where we've seen gaps or had to consider workarounds:
- No bulk file upload. Uploading files one at a time adds up quickly when you're migrating at scale.
- Honorlock isn't yet fully integrated with Canvas Career. We're using a workaround that routes learners to their exams through a Canvas link. It makes it functional, but not the seamless experience we want long-term.
- No duplicate or copy-to-module options from the module list. A small thing, but a step we used often in Canvas.
- Page previews require "Act as User." A minor friction, but it adds clicks to a workflow we use constantly.
- No homepage option. We've worked around this by placing our homepage content in the course's Overview section.
- Fewer quiz types than Canvas. Graded and ungraded survey options aren't currently available, which limits some of our assessment design choices.
- Items must belong to a unit to appear in the learner progress menu. This limits some of the structure in some courses, so we had to rethink some content organization.
Canvas Career is still actively evolving, and several of the gaps we've encountered are on the product team's radar. We've also found the team genuinely responsive when we surface issues, which has been one of the most reassuring parts of this whole journey. Bonus: every workaround you document today becomes a great suggestion for future improvements as the platform grows.
Tips and Recommendations for Migration
Here are the practices that have made the biggest difference for us so far. None are flashy or new, but together they've made the difference in our migration journey.
- Pilot before you scale. An internal pilot surfaces integration issues, formatting quirks, and any learner experience gaps.
- Audit your existing content. Inventory what you have and what's still relevant.
- Build a migration plan that prioritizes learner impact. Active courses need a different approach from new ones. A strategic plan helps you minimize the impact on active courses and learners.
- Collaborate across teams as needed. Migration touches more than instructional design. Loop in any relevant stakeholders early, and help everyone stay in the know.
- Evaluate your content organization through a skills lens. Map your vision before you start tagging. A thoughtful structure improves skills alignment, accuracy, and transparency.
- Use AI-assisted tools, but review their output. AI accelerates content creation and skills extraction, but treat it as a strong first draft you validate, refine, and approve.
- Document your workarounds. When you hit friction, and you probably will, document the workaround so your team isn't reinventing it every time.
- Update your instructions and navigation language to match the new UI. Canvas Career uses different labels and structures. Learners now navigate content through the My Progress screen; Modules are gone, and the Gradebook is now Scores. Small updates like these go a long way toward a smooth transition.
Rethinking Content Through a Skills Lens
Our healthcare training programs are designed with skills mapping in mind, and Canvas Career is giving us the ability to make those skills transparent, clear, and actionable for our learners in a way that simply wasn't possible before.
As we continue our migration journey, the two features that will be central to this process are the Skills Manager taxonomy, which lets us configure a custom skills framework that fits healthcare specifically, and the Skills Alignment feature with AI-driven skills extraction. We hope that this new approach will help us move faster than manual tagging ever could, while keeping the alignment between content and skills tight and accurate.
While we're at the early stages of this configuration, it's clear this is the shift we've been working toward, not just delivering training, but delivering workforce-driven learning opportunities our learners can carry directly into their careers.
Key Takeaways
Don't aim for perfection, aim for progress. It's hard to solve every challenge before migrating. Take the migration process in phases, learn as you go, and adjust along the way.
What's Next for Us
Our migration journey continues, and I'll be sharing more lessons learned along the way. If you're navigating a Canvas Career migration too and have questions about our experience, leave a comment below, and let's keep this conversation going.
