Recap of December Incident
• Upload/download problems - during last week
of classes/exam week
• Result of a hardware failure that corrupted
our content data tables
• Deeply impacted and frustrated faculty and
students
• Culminated in note from Provost asking for
leniency for students
Thank you for your feedback!!
• Town hall meetings
– 12/10/08 (Fairfax)
– 12/12/08 (Arlington and Prince William)
• Faculty forum (4/21/09)
• Faculty Senate Technology Policy Committee
(special thanks to this committee and Stanley Zoltek for their
work with DoIT this past year)
• courses@gmu.edu
What we heard
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•
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•
•
•
The 12/08 outage severely impacted teaching and learning
Unplanned outages are frustrating
The LMS needs to be reliable (available) and robust (fast)
Some teaching and learning tools desired are not in the LMS
Correct annoying functionality issues
Class rosters need to be correct
Blackboard is a valuable tool
Reconsider using Blackboard products for Mason’s LMS
What we’ve done
• Class rosters: Dynamic integration and daily scripts
• Student support: Student guidebook
• Communication and engagement: placed more information
on http://courses.gmu.edu, including information on incident
reports, planned outages, SafeAssign, etc. ; Academic
Technology Advisory Council (ATAC)
• Support: Requested additional support resources; Timepertinent tips; Tips based on analyzing help request trends;
Coming soon…Gradebook help.
• Blackboard, Inc.: December “post mortem”, phone calls,
emails, listening sessions @BbWorld 09, Client Strategy
Council
Academic Technology Advisory Council
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•
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Nada Dabbagh, CEHD, ATAC Chair
Mark Addleson, SPP
Charlene Douglas, CHHS
Rebecca Ericson, COS
Jesse Guessford, CVPA
Chi-Hyon Lee, SOM
Glenda Morgan, Technology across
the Curriculum
• Kammy Sanghera, IT&E and Faculty
Senate Information Technology Policy
Committee
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•
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Scott Watkins, Libraries
Alok Yadav, CHSS
Jennifer Flagel, Office of the Provost
Laura Phelps, ITU, ATAC Co-Chair
Jennifer Korjus, ITU
• Brenda Mueller, CEHD
http://gmucommunity.blackboard.com/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab=community&url=%
2fbin%2fcommon%2fcourse.pl%3fcourse_id%3d_1079_1
Bb Client Strategy Council Members
• Adrian Powell, University of Sheffield
• Brian Finnegan, University System of
Georgia
• Cable Green, Washington State Board
of Community and Technical Colleges
• Darrell Huish, Maricopa Community
College
•
•
•
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David Ernst, California State University
Fred Siff, University of Cincinnati
Jerry Yu, City University of Hong Kong
Joan Cooper, University of New South
Wales
• Joel Hartman, University of Central
Florida
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•
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John Harwood, Pennsylvania State
Jon Mott, Brigham Young
Keith Koch, Capella
Leen Van Tentergem, KU Leuven
Liz Pape, Virtual High School
Luis Caraza, Instituto Tecnologico y de
Estudios Superiores de Monterrey
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•
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Serge Goldstein, Princeton
Sharon Pitt, George Mason
Tom Ashbrook, Bridgepoint Education
Tom Ryan, Albuquerque Public Schools
How Blackboard has responded
• Datacenter reliability: Upgraded infrastructure, external
auditor to investigate making 99.9% uptime as standard
• Reliability of Mason services: Added servers for capacity
and stability; “Back to school” application and database
audit.
• Latency: Daily restarts, after hours monitoring of
networks, daily network health checks, advanced level
latency monitoring
• Communication: Vacation moratorium 8/17 – 10/16,
revised internal escalation policy
• Support: Marketing and sales no longer report to BB
Learn
Your feedback is needed this year
• courses@gmu.edu
• Faculty Senate Technology Policy Committee
• Academic Technology Advisory Council
– Fall 2009 survey
• What other paths?
Next slides may be of interest, but
were not presented
#of Course Folder Requests per FY
WebCT 4.1
Campus Edition 6-8.x
Total
FY 2006-07
FY 2007-08
FY 2008-09
1,492
936
0
0
777
3,295
1,492
1,713
3,295
#of Support Contacts per FY
2006-07
2007-08
2008-09
ITU Support Center
92
185
715
courses@gmu.edu and
DoIT staff
638
2,022
5,895
SCHEV-defined Peer Use of LMS
Peer Institution
ASU
Boston U
GWU
Georgia State
Indiana U
IUPUI
Northeastern U
SUNY - Albany
SUNY - Buffalo
Syracuse
U Arkansas
U Cinn
U Conn
U Houston
U Kansas
U Louisville
U Maryland
U Memphis
U Missouri
U Nebraska
UNLV
UN - Reno
UNM
U Oklahoma
Wayne State
Blackboard Classic Blackboard CE
ver. 8
ver. 8
ver. 8
Blackboard Vista Sakai
Desire to Learn
ver. 8
x
x
ver. 7
ver. 6
ver. 8
ver. 8
ver. 8
ver. 8
x
x
ver. 8
ver. 8
ver. 8
x
ver. 8
ver. 8
x
x
x
x
ver. 9
Virginia Public Institutions – Use of LMS
University
LMS
Christopher Newport University
Bb Classic 8
College of William and Mary
Bb Classic 8
George Mason University
Bb CE8
James Madison University
Bb Classic 8
Longwood University
Bb Classic 8
Norfolk State University
Bb Classic 8
Old Dominion University
BB Classic 8
Radford University
Bb CE 8
University of Mary Washington
Bb Classic 8
University of Virginia
Bb Classic 8
University of Virginia's College at Wise Bb Classic 8
Virginia Commonwealth University
Bb Classic 8
Virginia State University
Bb Classic 8
Virginia Tech
Sakai (Scholar)