dRobinson

The Nine One Chronicles

I made a pitch for 9.1 volunteers today. I presented during the Hybrid Faculty online Wimba session. Will follow up in an email tomorrow. I am hoping for maybe five “courageous Faculty” who are willing to pilot Bb 9.1 in the Fall. It’s gonna be fun!

The cool thing is that I was able to restore a backup of their Hybrid Faculty Bb Vista course on a Bb 9.1 demo account and show them the course they have been working in as a 9.1 version. Most of the pieces came over just fine. The Learning Modules, quizzes, Discussions, etc. all migrated well. They were impressed by the Grade Center and the mashups and other web 2.0ish features.

The session was a good one and the audience was interested. Wonder what tomorrow will bring…

The Nine One Chronicles

Well GGC’s Blackboard 9 Test server is down, …  and that’s a good thing. Over the next 36 hours the server will be upgraded to Blackboard Learn R 9.1 on new, more robust hardware. In addition, our beloved Learning Environment Connector (LEC) will be disconnected until we and Blackboard can determine how to best do co-production of Bb9.1 and Vista, in a post-LEC world.

This upgrade of Test, to Blackboard’s newest release is the next step in the process of keeping our LMS best-of-breed. Of course, for it to work in production, we do need to figure how we’ll authenticate between Bb Vista and Bb Learn, and how we’ll deliver Vista courses via a post-LEC "Courses" module. Blackboard is intent on supporting us well, but Fall semester starts in 61 days, yet I fully expect we’ll be ready in plenty of time. I’m hopeful because we’re GGC and that’s what we do. 

The Nine One Chronicles

Georgia GwinnettCollege is just beginning the process of piloting Blackboard Learn R 9.1. In these posts, I will share my experience with the process from the Admin and Project Leader point of view.

Disclaimer: I want to immediately mention that GGC is NOT pushing Faculty to move to 9.1 quickly. It’ll be a year before any campus-wide migration. However, we do want to offer 9.1 as an option to a small, courageous band of Faculty early adopters to road test its tools and features.

Background: Georgia Gwinnett College is a new, fast-growing college in the University System of Georgia.  In fall 2008, we began investigating co-production of Blackboard Vista courses and Blackboard Learn R9 while Bb9 was in Beta. (General Availability of Bb9.0 was in January 2009.)

GGC piloted teaching a small number of (production) Vista courses in co-production in Spring and Summer 2009. Over the Summer — a year ago — we did an initial build-out of our Bb9 Community Engagement portal modules. At the same time we moved most Fall 08 and all Spring 09 Vista courses from the USG to Blackboard hosting. In August 2009, GGC went live, in full production: 600ish Vista courses delivered via Bb9′s by way of Blackboard’s  Learning Environment Connector (LEC).