California Panel Discussion: Strategies for Success in Growing and Managing Adoption

California Panel Discussion:

Strategies for Success in Growing and Managing

Adoption Moderator

Gordon FreedmanVice 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

Jim Gaston, Associate Director, Information Technology South Orange County Community College District

James Frazee, Director, Instructional Technology ServicesSan 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 ServicesLos Rios Community College District

Bob Edelbrock, Dean, Academic Information System, Southwestern College

Amir Dabirian Chief Information/Technology Officer, CSU – Fullerton

Panelists

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 RequestsCourse Account

Generate ShellAccount and Set UpAutomatic 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 CaliforniaPurpose of CoPs• Foster multidisciplinary,

universal approaches and solutions that work

• Gather information of actual use

• Informal, unstructured forum for sharing ideas and observations

• Understand discipline-specific applications

• Anticipate the next wave

Blackboard Community of Practice:University of Southern CaliforniaExamples 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

• 3300 FTE• 800+ Active Courses (rolling)• 110+ Active Organizations• 700+ Active Course

Directors/Leaders

• 7th Day Adventist - Health Science• 7 Schools + Faculty of Religion

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 DistrictSacramento, 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 ServicesSouthwestern Collegebedelbrock@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

Totals 508552 5355064

Avg. 42379 446255 16082

Thank You!Amir DabirianCSU - Fullerton

THANK YOU!

GORDON FREEDMAN

GFreedman@Blackboard.com