VCCS Technology Projects Update

August 2, 2005


Greetings,

There are many critical projects that ITS staff members are working on at this time. The intent of this e-mail is to provide the colleges with updates on two of the projects that are nearing implementation.

Blackboard 6 Update

The upgrade of our Blackboard system is proceeding well and everything is on target for the August 15 upgrade to the version 6. With this new version, faculty and staff will have additional functionality, more flexibility and a greater capacity to enhance learning within the VCCS.

Preparations for this upgrade have been underway for the past year. ITS staff has been working with college Blackboard administrators, academic representatives and Blackboard consultants to optimize the configuration of the upgraded Blackboard environment so as to best serve our students, and to ensure a smooth transition.

There are three components to the upgraded Blackboard (version 6.2):

1. The Learning System: This is the core course management system that students and faculty are familiar with, but it comes with new capabilities and new features that make it easier to use and a more flexible tool.
2. The Community System: This is the entry way into Blackboard. With the addition of the Community System colleges now have the capability of branding the Blackboard environment with its own logo and color scheme. Additionally, colleges will now have the capability of personalizing the system display and targeting information to specific groups of users.
3. The Content System: This is a tool to ease simultaneous content use across multiple courses and enable easy file storage and integration into courses. It also provides for document collaboration, and sharing. Additionally, faculty will have dedicated space where they can store documents and other digital files. Content System planning is currently in process. A six-week pilot is scheduled to start this September. Colleges participating in the pilot are GCC, JSRCC, PVCC, NVCC, NRCC, RCC, SVCC, and VWCC. Deployment to all VCCS faculty is scheduled for mid November 2005 for full use in production spring 2006.
   To recap some key dates and what has happened thus far:

To recap some key dates and what has happened thus far:
February, March, & May – Blackboard System Administrator training was provided to every college’s Blackboard System Administrator and back-up
April – Blackboard professional training was provided to faculty at the New Horizons Conference
May – All course content was migrated from Blackboard 5 to the Blackboard 6 environment
June 1 – VCCS faculty were given access so that they could begin working with the new system and developing course content
June – Strategy sessions were conducted with college representatives to prepare for the deployment of the Community System
June – The Community System was demonstrated to colleges remotely
June - July – Workshops were conducted to help colleges prepare their branded sites within the Community System
July – Content System strategy session held with representatives from colleges and the System Office to plan the pilot and initial implementation
August 1 - Final requests for Community System setup due
Here are some critical dates yet to come.
- August 5 - Student accounts loaded into Blackboard 6
(accounts will be unavailable for use until the 15th)
- August 15 - Blackboard 6 available to students
- September 19 – Content System Pilot begins
Following the deployment of the upgraded Blackboard environment ITS will work with Blackboard Administrators and other college representatives to coordinate the deployment of additional features that are now available within the new version of Blackboard. An incremental implementation of the new features is being planned to ease the transition and to allow each college time to provide training and instruction prior to the release of each new feature.

Thanks to everyone at the colleges who has worked with us during the training, strategy, and implementation. College staff and administration have generously given of their time this summer to make this upgrade a success. This has truly been a team effort between the colleges and ITS staff.

VCCS Student Email - Mirapoint

The Student Email sub-committee of the VCCS Technology Council concluded their work in late April 2005 and recommended the purchase of Mirapoint as the replacement product. Based on this recommendation and excellent references received from several Universities where the product is currently deployed, the ITS Office entered into negotiations with Mirapoint in early May 2005. Those discussions concluded with VCCS issuing a purchase order to purchase Mirapoint. Mirapoint is a state-of-the-art e-mail solution providing a web based interface where our students will be able to access their email and related email services from any place where there is access to the Internet.

The Mirapoint project is proceeding on schedule with an expected "Go-Live" date of August 12, 2005. A small group of participants from the colleges and the ITS Office have been actively testing the new system since the week of July 11th with good results to this point. A larger group with representatives from each college will continue testing over the next two weeks to isolate and correct several minor problems encountered during the early testing phase. If any issue should be discovered that may affect the timeline we will notify you immediately. Also, work is progressing on completing end user documentation and training materials. Additional information regarding the release of training materials, the deployment schedule, and a “to do list” for the colleges will be available prior to the “Go Live” date. Please contact Karlin Sink (KSink@vccs.edu) or 804.423.5631 should you have any questions or require additional information.

Please feel free to contact me with questions or concerns,

Neil

H. Neil Matkin
Vice Chancellor, Information Technology Services
Virginia Community College System
101 N. 14th Street
Richmond, VA 23219

nmatkin@vccs.edu
804.819.4991 (Office)
804.918.4769 (Facsimile)