Note sent to faculty about Blackboard 7.1 Upgrade on 7/11/2006

To: All Faculty and Staff
From: Smith IT
Subject: IMPORTANT: Upgrade of Blackboard system at Smith THIS WEEK; UMCP switching entirely to Blackboard

(Our apologies if you get more than one copy of this message; we want to be sure you get this important information.)

This information will affect you. Blackboard service will be interrupted. Please read it carefully, especially if you are teaching a Summer II course.

Today the University Office of Information Technology is announcing that they are going to be phasing out WebCT in favor of Blackboard as the campus’ enterprise course management system. Though Smith IT has been involved in this process since the beginning, due to the sensitivity of the state purchasing process and the complexity of the negotiations between UMCP and Blackboard we have been unable to discuss this change until today.

Here is how this change will immediately affect all Blackboard users at Smith.

The Same, But Better

As a part of the campus’ decision to move to Blackboard, Smith will join with OIT on a common Blackboard system used by the entire campus. This has many benefits, some of which include:
 

• Users will have only one place for the whole university to find their online course sites. Previously many users might have some of their courses on Blackboard and some on WebCT. Users will only have to know how to use one kind of system.
• We’ll be running on a higher license level than we were previously, which will allow for content management inside of Blackboard (for easier reuse and sharing of course materials) and more flexibility over external tools and users we connect to the system.
• We’ll be running on the latest version of the software, version 7.1.
• The technical weight of the whole University will be behind the implementation, so the scale of the system for very large courses, integration to back-end campus systems, and technical support options across departments will be coordinated.
• Our positioning with Blackboard as a customer will be much improved, from being one of their smallest implementations to one of their largest. Additional details of the new partnership between UMCP and Blackboard should be available shortly.

At the same time, we’ll be preserving the things we hope you appreciated about the Smith Blackboard installation:

• Alice and Ernie will continue to support the system for Smith users and will still have all the administrative system control they had before to solve your issues.
• The procedures you’re used to using to deal with course requests and obtaining help will still be in place—at least until the campus builds systems we think are better than the ones we have developed.
• We will continue to do our own in-house training.
• Business school affiliated users and courses will continue to see their Smith branded and supported version of the system at the same old address of http://bb.rhsmith.umd.edu.

The Hard Part

We need to use this new system for our Fall, 2006 semester. Smith IT does not want to use it for a major semester without some real-world use, so we have an incredibly compressed (but achievable) implementation schedule. We will be switching to the new server on Monday, July 17, the first day of the Summer II semester.

Rolling Blackboard Migration starting Wednesday, July 12

Summer II Courses

On Wednesday, July 12 we will migrate Summer II courses from the old server to the new server. ANY CHANGES MADE TO SUMMER II COURSES AFTER 9AM ON WEDNESDAY WILL NOT BE MIGRATED. We would have to manually reconcile any changes, so please do not make changes. We expect we’ll be able to provide access for Summer II users again Friday morning. We will email Summer II instructors directly with more detail on this process.

Summer I Courses and EMBA Courses

To avoid disruption during the end of the Summer I semester and the non-semester EMBA courses, we will leave those courses in place through the weekend. On Monday morning, when we cut over to the new server, we will immediately begin to move the Summer I and EMBA courses to the new server. They will roll on to the server during the day, and should all be available by mid afternoon for student and instructor access.

Everything Else

As soon as we get Summer I and EMBA courses moved, we will begin moving all other course sites from the old server to the new server. Moving the remaining content could take as long as three or four days. We will prioritize as best we can, trying to move courses more likely to need to be accessed (Spring, 2006 and Fall, 2006, in particular) first.

Answers to some questions:

What's happening to the existing Blackboard system?

It will be kept online until September 30, 2006. If you discover a problem with a migrated course please contact us as soon as possible so we can go back to the original system to get your data.

What about the Fall 2006 courses I've already requested?

Fall 2006 courses already requested will be migrated to the new server and should be available again no later than July 24, and probably much sooner than that.

Why do the upgrade from version 6 to 7 at all? Isn't it a risk to do an upgrade of something that worked?

To minimize the risk of doing the upgrade we have waited a year and a half since the release of Blackboard 7 to let other schools shake out the major bugs, and the software has been revised several times during that period. Another factor is that we will continue to have Blackboard themselves run the new system for UMD and Smith; nobody will know better than them how to make the system fast, stable, and secure.

What’s the rush? Why upgrade right now?

Smith’s (extremely expensive) Blackboard license expired at the end of June. By going in with campus, in addition to the benefits outlined above, we won’t have to renew our license. We also are very eager to get to the upgraded license version, as we think it will provide some important new functionality to our users. We wanted to run some classes on it before the big fall rush at the end of August to make sure everything would go as we had planned, so we're doing the upgrade between the last day of Summer I and the start of Summer II. Finally, we just heard the afternoon of Monday, July 10 from Blackboard that they could have the new system ready for us to use for Summer II.

I liked the old system! I don't want to learn something new!

As was the case in Blackboards version 5 and 6, in nearly every case any new or old feature you might not want to utilize can be turned off for your course. We'll be initially keeping some new features turned off by default to ensure a smooth ramp-up on the new system, and will provide upgrade training in August so people can learn about the new features.

But we do want to make the point that unlike the mainly cosmetic change between 5 and 6, the new content management system could provide you with some really exciting and useful functionality. We really do encourage you to attend some training.

(After the migration…) Where are my courses?

The short answer is that they’re on their way, and will all be on the new system by Monday, July 24.

More detail: ALL of the courses from the old system are being migrated, though they won’t all be available at 9AM on Monday morning. Here is the expected schedule:

Summer II 2006: Monday, July 17 at 9AM
Summer I 2006 and active EMBA courses: Monday, July 17 by mid-afternoon
Fall, 2006 and Spring, 2006: Tuesday, July 18 by the end of the day
Fall 2005: Wednesday, July 19 by the end of the day
Everything before Fall, 2005: Monday, July 24

Where can I ask other questions?

You can send them to bbhelp@rhsmith.umd.edu, or stop by to see Alice Zhang or Ernie Soffronoff in the Smith IT suite (3520).