Beyond Bells and Whistles: Migration Considerations

1. Beyond Bells and Whistles: Migration Considerations Emily Richardson, University of North Carolina Wilmington Chris Baxley, Western Carolina University

3. UNCW Section Statistics: Fall 2009 Course Sections in Vista: 4,428 Fall 2009 Course Sections w/content: 1,107 Spring 2010 Course Sections in Vista: 3,963 Spring 2010 Course Sections w/content: 1,335 34% of all university courses in Spring 2010 have some type of content in Blackboard Vista

4. Introduction Western Carolina University More than 9,000 students Blackboard Vista (originally WebCT CE) Will begin teaching in Blackboard 9.1 in Fall 2010(early adopters)

5. WCU Section Statistics:Spring 2010 Spring 2010 Course Sections: 2,550 Spring 2010 Course Sections with content in Blackboard Vista: 1596 62% of all university courses in spring 2010 have some type of content in Blackboard Vista

6. Making the Transition Will you implement a �hard-stop� overnight transition into Bb9, or a phased approach? UNCW is implementing a phased approach, with our first 9.1 pilot beginning this Fall. We will have a larger �pilot� in the Spring 2010 semester. All courses will be transitioned over into 9.1 by Summer Session 1, 2011. Notifying Students? How long will you need to keep your previous courses available to your users? UNCW is maintaining Vista 8 hosting services with Bb Managed Hosting for 1 year following our transition into 9.1 (costs were too high to maintain 2 servers in-house)

7. Pilot Considerations Gather a list of innovative faculty who are willing to participate in a pilot of the Bb Learn. These users should be proven as self-sufficient in Vista, with some complicated content and/or progressive tool-use so you can really test out the new system. Try to max it out! Create a clear project plan, with well-defined deadlines. Share the plan with all involved departments, as well as the pilot Faculty, so everyone will know what to do or expect, and when.

9. Looking Beyond Bells and Whistles Migrate Course Content from Bb Vista Unification of Vista/Learn environments Single sign-on application for support purposes Business processes for funneling support services Differentiated training

10. To Rebuild, or Not to Rebuild What is your #1 mission while migrating to Bb 9? Smoothest possible transition for Faculty, or time to reinvent some processes and save space/money? Is this a good time for your Faculty to rebuild their courses? Database size: Managed Hosting or Self-hosted? Multiple migrations for some courses? ? Errors� New tool utilization ? Let�s get out of the box! http://mupfc.marshall.edu/~savillek/Bb9/comparechart.html

11. Migration Questions for Faculty Clearly Define the list of items you need from faculty, in order to migrate their courses. For example: Course Reference Number (CRN) / sourcedid.id for the source course, as well as the target course Course Name for both the source course and target course Instructor Name and email address for both the source course and target course The TERM that the source course was taught in, as well as the TERM for the target course Is the source course merged? If so, you�ll likely be looking in another place for it on the server. Will the target course be merged? If so, you�ll want to complete the merge prior to migrating the content. Was the source course previously migrated from another system into Vista (such as WebCT)? If so, you may see some strange occurrences taking place in the course when it is moved a second time into Bb9.

12. Back-up Section Content in Vista: GUI Challenges Slow Awkward and time consuming Slow

13. Back-up Section Content in Vista :Command Line Opportunity Much faster than GUI Versatile for automation purposes

14. What You Need� Specially formatted XML File containing course section sourcedid.ids(backup_request.xml) backupRestoreCLI (.sh or .cmd)

15. Sample XML <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?> <backup_request sections_only="true" include_tracking="false"><learning_context_query><query_item column_name="Source ID" condition="equalTo" value="12005.200910" operator="or" /> <query_item column_name="Source ID" condition="equalTo" value="80981.200880" operator="or" /> <query_item column_name="Source ID" condition="equalTo" value="50429.201050" operator="or" /> </learning_context_query><excluded_components><excluded_component name="tracking" /> </excluded_components></backup_request>

16. Additional Ingredients to Help Automate PHP Web Forms MySQL Database Create a shadow database of instructors� courses from Bb Vista Logs a record of migrated courses Blackboard Support Staff

17. Process for Creating

18. Login page

19. Section Selection Page

20. More Info More info on the Vista backup process in the �Vista 8 Enterprise Operations Guide� on page 59.

21. Support and Training Who will be supporting the migration process? Will you outsource, or hold in-house? How will you define support roles? Will you need to create new roles? There are a plethora of system roles you can choose from, and edit each privilege you want them to have access to! Who will need training, and what types of training? Online GUI Admin Training On Demand Learning Center: http://ondemand.blackboard.com/

22. Get Plugged In Get involved in a Blackboard-led cohort group that has weekly meetings! These people are highly intelligent, and can help you resolve issues as you move along in the migration process.

23. Freebie! Be sure to define your Default Folder Creation settings BEFORE populating 9.1 with users and courses! It will save you some headaches� ?

24. Chris Baxley Western Carolina Universitycbaxley@wcu.edu Emily RichardsonUniversity of North Carolina Wilmingtonrichardsoned@uncw.edu Please provide feedback for this session by emailingBbWorldFeedback@blackboard.com. The title of this session is: �Beyond Bells & Whistles: Migration Considerations�