Migrate off Blackboard in two weeks — Original or Ultra.
Native .zip import for Blackboard Learn (Original + Ultra). Preserved roster, grade history, and test pools. White-glove engineering support — no separate migration SOW, no per-course fees, no surprise renewal escalation. One Tier-1 university migrated 42,000 students from two legacy systems in a single weekend.
Blackboard vs Cognaxa, at a glance.
Honest, narrow comparison — only the differences customers actually weigh during evaluation. See the full matrix →
| Capability | Blackboard | Cognaxa |
|---|---|---|
| Tenant isolation | Application-layer enforcement | PostgreSQL Row-Level Security at the query planner |
| AI proctoring | Third-party iframe (Respondus, etc.) | Native subsystem — one SLA, one on-call |
| AI essay grading + confidence | Partial — paid add-ons | GA — confidence bands + human review queue |
| On-prem option | Yes (legacy core) | Enterprise — private cloud / VPC |
| Trailing-12-month uptime (public) | Partial public reporting | 99.98% (all production tenants) |
| Direct engineer escalation | Tiered support | Yes — engineer-to-customer on Enterprise |
Two weeks, three phases, one weekend cutover.
Typical Professional-tier timeline. Multi-campus enterprise migrations land in 4–8 weeks; the phase shape stays the same.
- Export Blackboard course archives (.zip) for in-scope courses
- Pull current roster from your SIS — or use Blackboard's native export
- Identify 1–3 pilot courses for parallel run
- Genfinish engineer joins kickoff; we confirm SSO posture, exam volume, and FERPA / GDPR scope
- Bulk import Blackboard .zip archives into a staging tenant
- Roster + grade history mapped, dry-runs against historical attempts
- Visual fidelity QA on every module and assessment
- Faculty pilot group runs one full assessment in staging
- Faculty 90-minute training session (per-role runbooks shipped)
- Production cutover — most institutions run Blackboard + Cognaxa in parallel for one course cycle
- Monitoring on shared on-call for the first finals window
- Written post-cutover report: incident log, gradebook reconciliation, faculty feedback digest
What we migrate — and what we verify.
Course content
Modules, items, assessments, files. Blackboard .zip preserves structure; we verify rendering on every page.
Rosters + enrollments
Sections, groups, observers, TAs. Mapped 1:1 to Cognaxa roles with no manual cleanup needed.
Grade history
Cumulative GPA history and per-attempt scores preserved. Auditable diff before cutover.
Test pools
Question pools imported with metadata. Randomization and pool logic re-applied automatically.
Files + media
Course files migrated via signed URLs. Media references rewritten to Cognaxa storage.
Building Blocks / LTI
LTI 1.3 outbound is on the Enterprise roadmap (Q3 2026). Until GA, common integrations are bridged via the REST API.
Migrating from a different LMS? See the Canvas playbook or Moodle playbook — same playbook, different export formats.
Migration FAQ.
How long does a Blackboard migration take?
Two to four weeks for typical Professional deployments. Multi-campus enterprise migrations land in 4–8 weeks. Parallel running for one course cycle is the recommended cutover pattern.
Will my Blackboard course look the same on Cognaxa?
Structurally yes — modules, items, assessment specifications, and pool logic carry over. Cosmetic differences (theme, fonts, navigation chrome) will be visible. We do a side-by-side visual fidelity QA before cutover.
What about Building Blocks and LTI tools?
LTI 1.3 Advantage is on the Enterprise roadmap (Q3 2026). Until then, integrations are bridged via the REST API or replaced with Cognaxa-native equivalents — most notably native AI proctoring, which removes the Respondus / Honorlock relationship.
Do you handle Blackboard Original *and* Ultra?
Yes. Both export formats are supported. Ultra courses tend to migrate more cleanly (Ultra Documents map directly to Cognaxa modules); Original courses occasionally need light cleanup for embedded HTML.
What does the migration cost?
White-glove migration is included with all Professional and Enterprise plans — no separate migration SOW, no per-course fees. Contact sales to learn more.
Bring your Blackboard .zip to the demo.
A 45-minute working session with a Genfinish engineer. We'll import a real course on screen, walk through the gradebook reconciliation, and scope your specific cutover window — including faculty training and parallel-running plans.