Delivering a Domain-based Bb Implementation with Central Administration to a Multi-Institutional University
Ron Pristin and Kim Steele
ron_pristin@mail.cuny.edu and kim_steele@mail.cuny.edu
Needed to move off Bb version 6.3;
19 campuses
Decided to move to version 8 together.
Needed central administration yet preserve local identity.
Formed CUNY Upgrade Project Team - coordinating of campus upgrade activities/additional implementation decisions as needed.
Campus Project Teams: Design & execute upgrade planning; define campus communication plan, business process adjustments, campus branding decisions, training, etc.
Campus Bb Administrators - share best practies, coordination training
Came together to make decisions together, building the configuration, relationship building, different school processes, plug-ins, etc.
Started May 2008 for Fall 2008 launch.
Coordinated 17 project teams:
Discuss business process, project plans, communication plans, training plans, shared materials.
Content migration batched to version 8.0
For each school - One day for archiving and one day uploading
Document management
Domain Admin (LMS Admin) Training
For Phase 2
Application Problem Resolution
Posted an issues log, discussed at team meetings and using a LISTSERV, prioritized the issues.
Preparing for Spring Load, monitor to expand PROD environment.
Bb did performance testing for them.
Created a Technical Readiness Criteria to track system performance, application and operational readiness before going live with phase 2 at each campus.
Delivered Campus Readiness Criteria for a go/no-go decision.
Post Implementation Issues
Performance Problems - slowness (system and certain tools)
Hot fixes, monitoring, performance reports
Series of outages - Oracle dbase and Sun cluster
SWAT Team with Bb, Oracle, Sun and CUNY
Largest Bb 8 Domain client
Custom Authentication
High volume of updates to database and content store
Over 6 million documents
Very large volume of existing Bb Content
Root cause of performance issues still not definitively identifed
Configuration changes applied to the file system improved performance and stability.
Moved to a Bb Hosting Environment - successful
Lessons Learned...
Dedicated testing group
Testing environment that's a good replica of production environment
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Gilfus Education Group - Social Learning (Stephen Gilfus was a founder of Blackboard Inc. and left in 2007)
ReplyDeleteOur team just released a white paper on the current misperceptions of Social Learning that should be helpful to practitioners implementing learning management systems
"Social Learning Buzz Masks Deeper Dimensions Mitigating the confusion surrounding “Social Learning”
The Article is by Frank Ganis, one of our General Partners