Scot-BUG

 A healthy discussion took place about training and the development of new training materials. The following points were raised:

• Develop different types of training materials
  • “beyond pdf” – screencasts, a series of on-line lessons
  • material to support migrated courses and also courses built from scratch
  • 15 minute guides
• A collaboration approach to creating training materials
  • institutional agreement re IPR/ownership and sharing of materials
  • creative commons for openess?
  • central repository with version control- hosted by RSC?
  • related best practice materials and case studies
• Student input – possibility of the creation of content by students and their assitance during training events
• Should we be developing digital literacy materials and programmes?
  • more generic materials, less specific to a VLE
  • less updating of materials when new versions of VLE come on-line
  • staff are educated in digital literacy rather than being trained in a particular piece of software – better approach?
• Can we change the free Blackboard training materials and make them freely available? – Representatives from Blackboard indicated that they were willing to discuss a proposal on this matter.

Please feel free to post your comments using the link below.

Steven Bruce & Raymond Moir

The general feeling from people who participated in the discussions at the Other Choices corner was that since Learn 9 will represent a big change, it is timely for institutions to review their needs and eLearning strategies and to consider what VLE/LMS/other mix of software would be best for the next ten years.  A key suggestion was that the Scot-BUG group should invite presentations from other vendors and, in the case of open source solutions, from staff at institutions where these have been adopted.

Please feel free to post your comments using the link below.

Joan Fisher

As outlined in the previous post, one of the themes which formed part of the discussion about the process of upgrading to Learn 9 was Infrastructure.  This did not receive a lot of interest on the day.  This may have been because of the audience and the fact that it is probably not the foremost element of the decision process.  However, it does need to be considered carefully, especially by customers currently using the Campus Edition or Vista products because Learn 9 is based on Tomcat technology (rather then WebLogic).  Some of the issues involved are:

• update to Tomcat 6 (which may have subtle implications especially for Building Block developers)
• supported combinations of application and database servers
• different port numbers used have implications for firewall settings
• changes to client requirements: supported browsers, versions of Java
• database size and file space requirements
• scripts for synchronising data with other systems

Blackboard has some useful documentation in the Reference Center and Knowledge Base (accessible from Behind the Blackboard) to get customers started with some of these issues; for example:

• Virtualizing the Blackboard Reference Architecture
• Sizing Guides for Dell and Sun hardware
• Optimizing Blackboard Learn Deployments
• Setup Guide
• Advanced Integration and Data Management
• Supported browser information

and also check out the webinars being run by the Bb 9 Upgrade Team.

If you have any comments, questions or issues to raise about this aspect of the Learn 9 upgrade decision process feel free to add a comment to this post or send me an email.  Scot-BUG plans to collate views from the community and pass them on to Blackboard to assist with their prioritisation and deployment processes.

Stephen Vickers

A “roundtable” session at our event held last week in St Andrews discussed issues relating to the upgrade to Learn 9.  The discussion was organised around four main themes:

• infrastructure
• functionality
• training
• other choices

A summary of the discussion from each of these themes will be posted to this blog and you are invited to add you own comments, especially if you were unable to attend.  The plan is to pass this information on to Blackboard in early July so that they are aware of the concerns and priorities of our community with respect to this upgrade.

Raymond Moir