A Method to Our Madness
What were we thinking? Why would a brand new college in the throes of creating a college culture, constructing a campus, and preparing for accreditation decide to pilot a still-in-beta product with live courses in an untested integration? When I put it that way, maybe we are crazy, or as was said of Hamlet, “Though this be madness, yet there is method in it.” As part of the University System of Georgia, Georgia Gwinnett College is a Blackboard Learning System (WebCT) Vista school. I’m the GGC LMS Administrator, and have been a WebCT user since 1997 and a Vista Admin since 2003. We like many Vista features, but wanted more flexibility. Because GGC is new and agile, we have the luxury of being in a position to envision how we want information to flow into and out of and between the systems we stand up. When at last year’s BbWorld, I heard about the openness and flexibility of “Project NG” and about the option of co-production with Vista, I just knew this was something GGC and our CIO, Lonnie Harvel would be interested in. So just after BbWorld, we started in with the what-ifs ... What if Blackboard could deliver NG by the end of the year? What if this co-production idea really works? What if we could get a pilot up and running with at least a few live classes in January? We of course had to also consider the negative side of these questions, like what if it all blows up on January 15? But we proceeded with the idea that it might just work and it was certainly worth trying. In late October, the Release 9 Beta Program was opened, and shortly afterward, we began discussions of being hosted by Blackboard for both Vista (for courses) and the Blackboard Learn platform. In January, five bold faculty began teaching live Vista classes via Bb9, and it worked so well that we are doing it again this summer. The plan is to move all our courses to our ggc.blackboard.com co-production environment for Fall. This may all indeed be madness, yet there is method in it. There are features of the WebCT Vista toolbox that we are not willing to part with, and there are aspects of the Blackboard Learn platform that may just make it our campus portal. I’ll be presenting GGC’s co-production experiences at BbWorld 09, in a Monday afternoon pre-conference seminar with Ben Wang of Blackboard Product Development, and in a couple regular sessions. Come check us out.About Georgia Gwinnett College:
Georgia Gwinnett College opened in August 2006 as the nation’s first four-year public college created in the 21st century, and the first new four-year public college in Georgia in more than 100 years.
GGC's Platform 8 3/4
In January, 2009, Georgia Gwinnett College decided to boldly go where no school has gone before. We began a pilot test of Blackboard Learn Release 9, while still in Beta, in co-production with Bb (WebCT) Vista Version 8. We dubbed the project Platform 8 3/4. As the LMS Administrator at GGC, I'm the project manager. This page will be a recounting of our Platform 8 3/4 experiences. Not a gripe page, as I have little to gripe about, but I will try to be honest about both the good and bad points in the project.
I'm beginning this "journal" six months into the project, but will offer a month by month recap to catch us up, then will give regular updates over the next year.