The Blackboard (Bb) migration project occurred on schedule and without any significant problems. Faculty were given instructions about how to extract the content from their courses and migrate it to the Enterprise server. They were also told how to archive their courses, for re-use in future semesters. Instructions for student access were drafted in consultation with ITS and made available before the start of spring semester classes.
As of February 15 there were 277 active courses on the new system, with 2,038 active users and 11,494 average page views per day. There are also three campus-wide groups using the Organizations feature of the new Bb Enterprise system. Plans are in the works to grow this particular area of Bb, with the assistance of Student Life. Our goal will be to include as many clubs and student organizations on the system as possible.
Dr. Sylvie Richards trained the ITS faculty support personnel in the new Enterprise Bb system, and she and Mark Gold met several times to develop a faculty/student support plan that has since become a model for other CUNY campuses. After Sylvie presented the model at the annual Blackboard Users Conference in April, she was contacted by the Virginia Commonwealth system, the Penn State system, and the ITSM system in Mexico for advice on large-scale support models for course management systems.
Vice-President Little approved a Blackberry for Sylvie, enabling her to handle and triage support issues raised by Brooklyn College constituents (faculty, staff, students, support desk personnel, registrar, HR, ITS, etc.) around the clock. The Blackberry gives her email wherever she is and allows her to respond to messages either by return email or by telephone. She can post to the listservs referenced above and communicate with Blackboard administrators from other CUNY campuses. She is also able to solve problems, answer questions, or instantly move the issue up another level (CUNY CIS, CUNY Portal, Blackboard Inc.), ending by informing all concerned about steps taken and steps to be taken.
Brooklyn College is CUNY's Blackboard leader. Dr. Richards chairs the 19-campus Bb Administrators' Committee; she also serves on the steering committee of the NY-NY Bb Users Group. This spring Sylvie made Bb-related presentations at several conferences. These include two international conferences in Zurich and in Compiègne, France in March, and the Blackboard Users Conference in April in Baltimore. Her topic was Creating a Collaborative Community with 19 Colleges of the City University of New York. (She is fluent in French.)