California Panel Discussion:
Strategies for Success in Growing
and Managing Adoption
Moderator
Gordon Freedman
Vice President, Education Strategy
Blackboard, Inc
Welcome!
• Bb VP Based in California!
• Have experience in UC, CSU, CENIC, and K12
Adoptions and managing adoptions are very important!
-- Why?
• The modern campus is electronic
• If we only have some using, we can’t get the full effect
• Discussed this earlier in week with large CSU gathering
• Managing the whole institutional experience consistently
• Our mutual and ultimate end users (students) want it
• It allows a full network learning environment to evolve
Panelists
Jim Gaston, Associate Director, Information Technology
South Orange County Community College District
James Frazee, Director, Instructional Technology Services
San Diego State University
Otto Khera, Learning Technology Manager, University of Southern California
Andrew Haglund, Manager, IT User Services, Loma Linda University
Steve Bowles, Director, IT Production Services
Los Rios Community College District
Bob Edelbrock, Dean, Academic Information System, Southwestern College
Amir Dabirian Chief Information/Technology Officer, CSU – Fullerton
South Orange County Community
College District (1)
Jim Gaston
Associate Director, Information Technology
MANAGING GROWTH WITH SMALL SUPPORT STAFF
South Orange County CCD
• Background
– Two College District in South Orange County, CA
• Saddleback College in Mission Viejo
• Irvine Valley College in Irvine
– Total Headcount: 35,000 students
• Technical Background
– Strong Propensity for In-House Development
– Minimal Support Staff
• Blackboard Relationship
– Customer Since 1998
– Hosted Site since 1999
– Enterprise Customer Since 2004
South Orange County CCD
• Problem
– Increased use of Blackboard was placing large
burden on small support staff
• Solution
– Integrate Blackboard with MySite – our
homegrown enterprise web portal
– Two Integration Points
• Course/User Creation
• Single Sign-On
– LDAP and Custom Login Component
Course/User Creation
Instructor Requests
Course Account
Generate Shell
Account and Set Up
Automatic Roster Load
Single Sign-On
Thank You!
Jim Gaston
South Orange County Community College District
San Diego State University (2)
James Frazee
Director, Instructional Technology Services
HIGHLIGHTING FACULTY STARS
San Diego State University
• Educate
– SDSU: 35,000 students, Doctoral/Research – Intensive
– Spring 2006 data: 933 faculty using Bb in 1,777 courses
• Innovate
– SDSU’s TechStars program has the dual goal of
highlighting best practices and encouraging the
sharing of ideas among faculty
– See http://its.sdsu.edu/techstars/index.html
– Course templates for faculty – under construction
– Planned Summer ’06 Upgrades (OS, application,
database, building blocks – Horizon Wimba,
Respondus, SAN)
Supporting Bb @ SDSU
• Hands-on Bb workshops for faculty (list)
– Underlying focus on pedagogy, not technology
– Online intro workshop – under construction
•
•
•
•
Hands-on Bb workshop for students
Hands-on Bb workshop for Help Desk
Blackboard Users Group (BUG) for faculty
4-Day Developing Your Course Using Bb
summer workshop (faculty work on their own
courses for the fall with ITS eLearning designers)
– Under Construction
Thank You!
Dr. James Frazee
jfrazee@mail.sdsu.edu
University of Southern California (4)
Otto Khera
Learning Technology Manager
COMMUNIITIES OF PRACTICE
Blackboard Community of Practice:
University of Southern California
USC is a decentralized campus
with a federated model of IT
support and organization.
• 17 professional schools
• College of Letters, Arts, and
Sciences
• Graduate School
• 17,000 undergraduates
• 16,000 graduate students
Blackboard Community of Practice:
University of Southern California
Communities of
Practice (CoPs)
• ‘Clickers’ PRS (Personal
Response Systems) – 60
members
• Blackboard – 40 members
• Social Software – Blogs,
Wikis, ePortfolios – 50
members
• Podcasting – 40 members
Blackboard Community of Practice:
University of Southern California
Purpose of CoPs
• Foster multidisciplinary,
universal approaches and
solutions that work
• Gather information of
actual use
• Informal, unstructured
forum for sharing ideas
and observations
• Understand disciplinespecific applications
• Anticipate the next wave
Blackboard Community of Practice:
University of Southern California
Examples of Inter-CoP
Real-World
Developments
• PRS JiTT strategies applied to
Bb
• Podcasting/iTunes U* and Bb
• Wiki connectivity to Bb for
collaboration, group work, peer
instruction strategies
• Wiki connectivity to Bb for
ePortfolio projects
• Bb Building Blocks,
enhancements, and trends
such as RSS feeds into Bb
Thank You!
Otto Khera
University of Southern California
Loma Linda University (5)
Andrew Haglund
Manager, IT User Services
FOSTERING GROWTH
The Environment
• 7th Day Adventist - Health Science
• 7 Schools + Faculty of Religion
•
•
•
•
3300 FTE
800+ Active Courses (rolling)
110+ Active Organizations
700+ Active Course
Directors/Leaders
Bb History
• Nov.1999 CourseInfo 4
(basic)
• June 2001 Bb 5.0.2
batch files (basic)
• June 2003 6.0.1 - 6.2.3
– Learning System
– Community System
(Enterprise)
• 2006 (April?) Bb7
– Content system
– Transaction system
The Integration
The Support Structure
•
•
•
•
5 School Facilitators
1 Project Manager
1 FTE Bb Application Support
.25 FTE Bb Sys Admin
• Lunch & Learns
• Faculty Showcases
• Portal/Community
Thank You!
Andrew Haglund
Loma Linda University
Los Rios Community
College District (6)
Steve Bowles Director, IT Production Services
SCALABILITY & MONITORING
Los Rios Community College District
Sacramento, California
•American River College
•Cosumnes River College
•Folsom Lake College
•Sacramento City College
Session Focus:
Information Technology Perspective
• General Los Rios Information
– Nearly 80,000 Students in four Colleges
– Over 1,800 active Blackboard Course sites
– Over 50,000 Student-Course links
• Initial IT Expectation (early 2001 implementation)
– One central Blackboard system – Four College Bb Coordinators
– Shared IT/College responsibilities (system vs. functionality)
– Each year: Estimate growth/budget, approve, acquire/upgrade equipment
• Reality (very soon after)
–
–
–
–
–
Pre-planning, pre-budgeting not successful – needed another approach:
Build System Architecture to be able to quickly adapt
Build monitoring tools to quickly identify problems (Site Scope)
Utilize low-cost equipment for quick incremental growth
Plan as well as possible – Adapt as quickly as possible
Configuration
•
•
•
•
F5 Load Balancer – private backend network
5 Web/App servers (HP DL360 G4, 3 GHz, 4 GB memory)
Content/Chat server (HP DL580 G2, 2.5 GHz, 8 GB memory)
DB server (HP DL580 G3, 2.5 GHz, 8 GB memory)
Remaining Issues
• Database server scalability (limitations of size - one server)
• Size of database is very large by Blackboard standards
Sample Monitoring
Sample Monitoring
Sample Monitoring
Sample Monitoring
Thank You!
Steve Bowles, Director of IT Production Services
bowless@losrios.edu
(916) 568-3161
Southwestern College (7)
Bob Edelbrock
Dean, Academic Information System
NOVEL USE OF Bb TRANSACTION SYSTEM
Adoption Growth and Management
at Southwestern College
Background
• Needed an automated student tracking system
– Students logged in manually on note pads
– Student employees paid to ensure logging in done - $
– Admissions manually entered data into system - $
– College unable to collect state funding earned - $
• Needed a pay-for-print system in open labs
– Students were not being charged for printing
– Expenses very high - $
• Needed a self-service copier management system
– No controls on adjunct faculty copying
– Expenses very high - $
Solution
•
Purchased Bb Transaction System
– Purchased EFM Student Tracking System
(referred to on campus as the Positive Attendance
Tracking system or PAT)
– Purchased Uniprint Pay-For-Print System
– Purchased Bb Copier Management System
Benefits
• Student Tracking System (PAT)
– Eliminated cost of student employees in labs - $
– Increased revenue from state - $
– Eliminated cost of manually entering data - $
• Uniprint Pay-For-Print System
– Significantly reduced printing expenses- $
• Bb Copier Management System
– Anticipate reducing self-service copying expenses - $
Thank You!
Bob Edelbrock, Ed.D.
Dean Academic Information Services
Southwestern College
bedelbrock@swc.cc.ca.us
CSU - Fullerton (8)
Amir Dabirian
Chief Information/Technology Officer
INTEGRATION THROUGH CAMPUS PORTAL
• Founded 1957
• 236 acres
• 35040 Students
– 1523 international students
• 1900 Faculty (full-time & part-time)
• 105 degree programs offered with 50 of
them at the graduate level
Campus Portal
• ASP.net portal
– Single Sign-on
– Full Integration to campus services
• Email and Calendar
• Blackboard (Suite)
– Populate all classes automatically
• Blackboard Virtual Hard drive (WebFolder)  Coming Soon
• Campus News
• Student Information System
– Registration
– Degree Audit
– Class List
– Etc.
• Others
– Every Student / Faculty / Staff automatically gets a portal account
– Customizable profile
Campus Portal Statistics 2005
Faculty/ Staff
Logins
Student
Logins
Daily
Average
Jan
27731
340842
11889
Feb
36214
438138
16941
Mar
35319
420626
14708
Apr
35176
446557
16058
May
36912
481807
16733
Jun
28514
345228
12458
Jul
26494
328843
11462
Aug
49731
463922
16569
Sept
59059
507242
18877
Oct
63055
547875
19707
Nov
58696
561121
20661
Dec
51651
472863
16920
508552
5355064
42379
446255
Totals
Avg.
16082
Thank You!
Amir Dabirian
CSU - Fullerton
THANK YOU!
GORDON FREEDMAN
GFreedman@Blackboard.com