I. Background:
After a thoughtful and lengthy deliberation, we are convinced that UMass Lowell’s
award-winning faculty development training program, our course development model,
and administrative processes that we have customized specifically for the Blackboard
LMS, represent the best business solution for the Lowell campus.
Please find below a summary of why we feel Blackboard remains the best long term
solution for the Lowell campus:
Minimal retraining for faculty - BB Learn 9.1 interface is familiar and easy to use for
faculty coming from BB Vista. Two of our faculty members migrated their Vista courses
to Blackboard 9.1 sandbox environment and found that they didn’t have any trouble
finding where things were despite the updated interface.
New faculty with previous experience - new faculty members coming to UML from
other institutions are most likely to have previous Blackboard experience because it has a
large portion of the LMS market share, therefore allowing for easier transition to teach
with Blackboard at UML.
Web 2.0 integration - Blackboard 9.1 has integrated many Web 2.0 tools, such as
YouTube, Wikis, Blogs, and many more Web 2.0 rich media tools referred to as Mashups
(SlideShare, Flickr, NBC News Archives, etc). Other Web sites such as Google and
Facebook can be easily linked to from within the course.
Improved Customer Service Model – since the time BlackBoard has acquired WebCT
and Angel, BlackBoard is working on continuously improving their commitment to
quality customer service by establishing Suggestion and Bug Squads and implementing
most important improvements and bug fixes that their clients vote on in each release:
http://www.blackboard.com/Communities/Bug-Squad.aspx
Commitment to Open Standards – Blackboard has promised to be committed to open
standards starting with their Blackboard Learn 9.1 product, which has an open database
and IMS, SCORM AND LTI open standards support:
http://www.rayhblog.com/blog/2010/11/an-ims-and-standards-update.html
Large Community of Users – support communities such as Dr. C and Blackboard admin
listserv offer a wealth of valuable advice and expertise. Users in these communities have
been on Blackboard LMS since its inception and have years of experience:
http://www.blackboard.com/Communities/Overview.aspx
The Blackboard Learning Management System represents the optimal business solution
to support the Lowell Campus’ online program for web-enhanced courses, blended
courses, and fully online courses.
We have been eliciting feedback from our full time faculty and adjuncts regarding their
satisfaction rates with Blackboard. In fact at a recent IT faculty meeting, our IT faculty
expressed overwhelming support for the Blackboard LMS and concerns about migrating
to another platform.
In summary, our decision is based upon two overarching requirements: that the solution
chosen provides the least disruption for our faculty and students and will not require our
faculty to redesign their courses. In addition, the LMS must allow us to immediately take
advantage of the latest technological innovations, while integrating seamlessly with our
current award winning faculty development training program. Staying with Blackboard
will require the least amount of disruption and provide the best long term solution for our
campus.
In the sections that follow we have listed our current LMS requirements along with
detailed case studies on Blackboard that illustrate our conclusions and recommendations.
II. UMass Lowell LMS Requirements
Course Design Requirements:
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The ability to control which tools are available for students to use.
The ability to import course content from publishers, test generators, or other
sources.
The ability to reuse previous courses as templates for future courses.
The ability to view course as students see it.
The ability to easily include collaborative tools such as wikis and blogs.
The ability to easily embed multimedia content.
The ability to export/import all course components (assignments, assessments,
files, learning modules, etc) from one course to another.
The ability to perform GUI drag-and-drop upload of files and folders directly
from desktop or other computer locations.
The ability to manage course layout using drag-and-drop.
Course Teaching Requirements:
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The ability to post announcements to the class.
The ability to link to materials in repositories and libraries
The ability to link to external tools that offer additional features.
A built-in email tool.
An assignment management tool
A text-based discussion board.
An audio-based discussion board.
A text-based, real-time chat tool.
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An audio-based, real-time chat tool.
Course blogs.
Course journals.
The ability to facilitate peer review of student work.
The ability to deliver online surveys, quizzes or exams.
A self-graded assessment tool.
An assessment management tool.
The ability to create and manage groups of students.
The ability to release content to students based on date/time, groups, members, or
grade criteria.
The ability to access course from hand-held devices (iPhone, Blackberry or other
mobile devices).
An early warning notification system.
Grading Management Requirements
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The ability to have grades for discussion, assignments and/or assessments
automatically transferred to the grade tool.
The ability to manually enter/overwrite grades in the grade tool.
The ability to view a variety of student data and tracking reports.
The ability to control the release of grades to students.
The ability to include feedback to students via the grade tool.
The ability to check student submissions for originality.
The ability to import grades from other systems.
The ability to export grades for use in other systems.
Have the system automatically calculate grades based on a grading criteria
Administrative Requirements
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Simple migration tool resulting in minimal post-migration cleanup.
Ability to perform bulk or scripted migration.
Minimal amount of time for faculty to learn new LMS interface. (Will not require
a major overhaul of UML’s award-winning faculty development training
program).
Accessibility: Must be section 508 and WAI compliant and certified
Ability to protect student data in accordance with FERPA regulations.
Must have a built-in content repository
Ability to control access to course content.
Ability to batch users and enroll/un-enroll users in courses.
Must retain student data when students are un-enrolled from courses.
Ability to reuse courses from semester to semester.
Ability to backup and restore courses (individually and in bulk).
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Ability to query courses.
Open database.
Ability to extend LMS functionality with seamless integration.
On-the-fly administrator access to courses.
Ability to control tool and feature availability at the institution level.
Ability to setup default grading schema at the institution level.
Ability to implement custom branding at the institutional and departmental levels.
Ability to setup courses with a consistent look and feel.
Ability to easily integrate with SIS.
Ability to be up and running with an LMS Solution within 18 months.
III. MIGRATION INFORMATION
The following are a few of the institutions migrating from a legacy WebCt version to Bb
Learn 9.1
Marshall University: Migrating from BB Vista to BB Learn 9.1—Firsthand Experience
Kathleen Saville from Marshall University has created a blog chronicling her experience
taking migrated Vista 8 course and what it took to get it ready for Learn 9.1. Her
perspective is from the teaching and learning side of the fence not the administrative. It
is an open and honest account of what she experienced that includes both the good and
the bad.
Her conclusion is worth quoting directly: “I am pleased! It isn’t perfect but for a
migration from one platform (WebCT) to another (Blackboard), it is better than good...it
is great!”
For more info see her blog here: http://muweb.marshall.edu/wpmu/vista8learn9
University of Arkansas: They have upgraded three separate campuses onto Bb Learn
9.1 including 20,000 students. According to the system admin it was a good migration
overall – no major issues.
Winthrop University: Good transition – no major fires or catastrophes. Use Bb
managed hosting – gave them copies of the course and they migrated the courses into
Learn 9.1. The results included only minor cleanup issues and received overall positive
feedback from the faculty regarding the new version. They run over 200 sections of
online & web-enhanced courses each semester.
Valencia CC: Migrating from CE 8 to Learn 9.1 – Spring 2010 – Summer 2011
Quote from their migration steering committee –
“Overall migration of course content from WebCT CE 8 to BB Learn 9.1 has gone well.
Initially faculty are taken aback by the new navigational structure and appearance of the
new system but quickly find reassurance when locating their migrated course content.”
Dudley College (UK): Performed the first migration from CE 8 to Learn 9.1 (Nov 2009 –
Apr 2010). Blackboard managed hosting migrated their courses over the course of one
weekend with minimal issues. Only had two courses fail and each course required a
minor amount of cleanup – primarily formatting. (15K students – 400 courses)
IV. Analysis of LMS OPTIONS
UML Specific Experience with Blackboard: Blackboard has provided a migration tool
which quickly and seamlessly migrates faculty course content into the new version
without requiring any major effort on the part of the faculty. As of today UMass Lowell
could in effect take this tool and migrate all our courses (over 800—including webenhanced) into the new version of Blackboard without the faculty having to learn an
entirely new Learning Management Platform. For the most part, we would really just be
moving from one version of Blackboard to another version. Blackboard is an established
company with a significant track record in supporting the online academic enterprises of
large public and private universities. In fact Blackboard still maintains the lion’s share of
the Learning Management marketplace. For UMass Lowell’s large online program this is
a huge plus instead of going with an open source company that may not have such a
significant track record.
As of 10/12/10 – Bb announced that they have reached a milestone – over
1000 clients have migrated to the Learn 9.1 platform making it the fastest
adopted platform in the company’s history. (According to the Web2.0
Journal http://web2.sys-con.com/node/1568110
Moodle and Sakai. Both of these options do not meet UMass Lowell’s core
requirement of a timely transition, as they will require all faculty to recreate their courses
using an unfamiliar Learning Management System. This time-consuming migration
process will severely hamper our ability to operate and grow our online program for no
apparent long-term benefits.
The lure of Open Source software such as Moodle and Sakai is that they are “free”.
However, research has shown that they require significant investments in software
development personnel and resources in order to achieve a viable LMS solution, resulting
in substantial costs to customize and support such systems. Does it make sense to go
through all of this change and disruption in the hopes of ending up with a product like
Blackboard, which already meets and exceeds our needs?
Other important considerations include:
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Migration Time to convert 800 courses
According to Cape Cod CC, the time to convert a Blackboard Vista course to
Moodle is estimated at 6-13 hours.
At UMass Lowell, we were able to import a course to Blackboard Learn in under
5 minutes. We estimate that it will take approximately an hour per course to
prepare it for teaching in Blackboard Learn.
In other words, to convert 800 courses using the above estimates it would take:
Up to 10,500 hours to go to Moodle versus approximately 800 hours to go
to Blackboard Learn.
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Setup and Customization of the Server:
Prior to migrating any course content to Moodle, the Moodle server needs to be
setup and customized to accommodate our large online program. This includes
hiring software developers to assist with the customization, development and
testing of the Moodle software. This could potentially add up to 6 months to the
migration timeline. Blackboard, being a fully mature developed product, would
not need to be customized and can be used out of the box.
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Accessibility:
On 8/20/2010, Blackboard Learn was Certified for Accessibility by National
Federation for the Blind, and is the ONLY LMS to achieve this level of
approval from the federation:
The National Federation of the Blind has certified the latest version of
Blackboard's learning management system (LMS), which means that blind users
can more fully interact with the application's functionality. Blackboard Learn
version 9.1 received "Nonvisual Accessibility Gold Certification."
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Open Standards
According to the Blackboard community of experienced users, known as “Dr. C forums,”
Moodle still hasn't embraced open standards, particularly IMS, as well as WebCT and
Blackboard. Lack of good IMS QTI support for use with Respondus and similar IMS QTI
compatible tools still make it difficult to move text questions around.
http://discussions.blackboard.com/forums/p/47586/145175.aspx
Adopting Moodle or Sakai will require a major overhaul of Lowell’s entire award
winning faculty development training program. Remaining with Blackboard will only
require minor modifications to the training.
Personal Learning Environments: The UMass Lowell campus agrees with the UMass
Amherst campuses’ assessment of Personal Learning environments. This solution is not
viable for faculty, staff or students. Complex education operations need a structured
platform in order to manage the campus online programs and ensure quality as well as the
ability to support faculty and students. This would be the most costly solution to
support as well as the most difficult to manage and therefore is not a viable solution.
Furthermore, personal learning environments have not been tested anywhere that we
know of. Faculty want an LMS platform that is integrated and structured so that they can
easily navigate the learning environment and focus on teaching and learning. Trying to
administer a “hodge podge” collection of tools will not work for the vast majority of our
students or faculty.
Best Business Solution: We are confident that the Lowell campus can be up and
running on the new version of Blackboard within 18 months with the least disruption of
our business processes and with minimal training required by the faculty. In fact, the
faculty are eager to take advantage of the new features and functionality of the latest
version of Blackboard. This solution will be the least risky and require the least amount
of resources while providing maximum functionality, support and training. Our
Continuing Education operation is very complex and serves hundreds of adjunct faculty
and thousands of students from all over the world. Blackboard represents the most stable
and tested solution for the campus. The Lowell campus would not have to invest in
additional resources for faculty development or technical support.
In closing, we feel that moving to another Learning Management Platform will be very
costly and disruptive to UMass Lowell’s business processes. Blackboard provides a
reliable, robust infrastructure that supports our campus needs for both full time and
adjunct faculty in the Day and Evening programs. This will provide the least impact on
our business and provide a level of continuous service to faculty and students. As we
have discussed on numerous occasions we would recommend that UMOL consider
offering the campuses two options: Staying with the Blackboard LMS for large mature
online programs such as UMass Lowell or the option of one open source solution such as
Moodle. In fact there are many examples of consortiums like UMass Online, notably the
Connecticut Distance Learning Consortium and SUNY that offer their members multiple
LMS options. Since each UMass campus has different needs and priorities as do the 15
Community College and State Colleges, offering two options to the campuses seems like
a reasonable approach to satisfying the requirements of so many different constituencies.