Note sent to Students about Blackboard 7.1 Upgrade on 7/17/2006

To: All Students
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 access to some information will be interrupted.

 July 11 the University Office of Information Technology announced 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 now.

 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 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 sophisticated content management inside of Blackboard and more flexibility with external tools we connect to the system.  One of the immediate benefits of this new license is access to the very often requested "What's New" channel on the bb.rhsmith.umd.edu front page.  This will show you at a glance activity that has taken place in your course sites.

• 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:

• There will continue to be local support for the system for Smith users and we will still have all the administrative system control we had before to solve your issues.

• 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 Monday, July 17

Summer II Courses

Summer II courses were available immediately when the system was switched over.

Summer I Courses and EMBA Courses

On Monday morning, after we cut over to the new server, we immediately began 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.

Spring 2006 and Fall 2006

As soon as the Summer I and EMBA courses are moved, we'll begin on Spring and Fall 2006.  These courses should be available by the end of the day Tuesday, July 18.

Everything Else

As soon as Spring and Fall 2006 are up, we'll begin with the rest of the content from the old server.  ALL old course materials are being moved.  We expect this could take as long as the rest of the week, depending on how fast the data loads.

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.

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 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 and incur that cost.  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, and we weren't really sure it would all come together until the end of the day on Friday, July 14. 

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

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.  Students really shouldn't have any problems, since they tend to be more web-savvy than the faculty.

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.