As many of you are aware Service Pack 8 for Release 9.1 debuted a few weeks ago. Since December I have been working with about 100 clients who have been testing Service Pack 8. These clients have been working in the product, testing the upgrade and piloting it with their users so they have a very clear sense of what this Service Pack means in terms of how it will impact their users. Chris Bray, Blackboard Administrator from University of Arkansas-Fayetteville, and I spent some time discussing Service Pack 8 last week.
Chris Bray, University of Arkansas
Overall how do you feel about the upgrade process to SP8?
We participated in the SP8 upgrade experience beta and have been running SP8 on a test server for a couple of months now. I upgraded my pre-production/test environment from SP7 HF1 to the GA version of SP8 on February 8th. The upgrade process went really well, and I’ve been making my own notes of what I’ve done after the upgrade that’s different than my usual upgrades. I have my notes and a number of other resources for myself and my team at http://bbadmin.uark.edu/sp8 . This page might be helpful for other clients investigating SP8 and planning their upgrade.
The only difference from other upgrades I see is tweaking some settings in order to use the new SP8 functionality. I scrapped my previous theme customizations in favor of the Bb Learn ‘2012 theme’, which is what we started calling the new SP8 theme on the beta. I’m still researching and working on some items but pretty excited about the possibilities with SP8.
A few weeks back I blogged about our software beta programs for Blackboard Learn Release 9.1, Service Pack 8. Since then we wrapped up this program and made SP8 generally available to Blackboard clients. From that blog post, I received a number of inquiries about the Beta program from clients. Instead of just giving my perspective on the program I thought having one of our clients provide their experience would be helpful to any client thinking about joining future programs. I asked David Barrett from the University of York to provide his perspective on the SP8 Beta program and he kindly agreed. Thank you David!
Time well Spent for University of York.
Guest Blog post by David Barrett, Virtual Learning Environment Application Manager, University of York
David Barrett, University of York
I first learned about the SP8 beta evaluation program from a colleague who attended a Blackboard Roadshow event in the UK. It was a very smooth experience, after signing up for the BIE I was all set and was promptly given joining instructions for the webinar series that accompanied the program.
There were five webinars in all, delivered by Blackboard staff involved in product management and development. The webinars were hosted in Collaborate which provided an easy way to ask questions to the presenter and to other beta program participants.
On the whole, I found the experience to be a very positive one. During each webinar there was an opportunity to review any installation problems, or issues tester institutions had uncovered. The open nature of the webinar facilitated some interesting discussions and it was beneficial to hear other people’s thoughts on new features. Having one webinar per week (either side of the Christmas break) was useful in focusing my attention on the beta program and testing features in advance of the webinar.
I just moved into a new role at Blackboard, working with clients on the awesome Empower Programs we have developed to get clients heavily involved in our design and development process. In the last month of 2011, I was lucky enough to work with over 100 Blackboard clients, partners and developers as we kicked off our Beta Programs in preparation for the release of our newest software Blackboard Learn Release 9.1, Service Pack 8.
These beta programs are important because they allow us to get feedback on the client’s upgrade experience, test the quality of the installer, as well as help developers and partners test out their building blocks with the new release – allowing us to help them resolve any issues prior to general availability of the software.
Hi Blackboard Users! I am one of the Blackboard Learn Product Marketers and am back to share more about how educators are using the Content Collection in Blackboard Learn to make life easier and save time.
I started this conversation at the end of last year and after having my son and being away from the office for a few months I am finally picking it back up. For the first two tips I shared please check my previous blog.
Before I dive in, I want to share a great introduction video for people just getting familiar with the Content Collection (or Content Management module). This was created by Melissa Kern, our Lead Designer for the Content Management module, and is good to share with new users or any educators that haven’t had a chance to check out the content management tools in Blackboard Learn. This product video is on Release 9.1, SP6. Take a look and pass along!
Hello and Happy Thanksgiving for those of you in the U.S. My name is Klaire Marino. I work on Blackboard’s Product Marketing team and spend my time focused on the Content Management module (which some of you probably still fondly refer to as the Content System). In this role I get to spend a lot of time talking to clients about what they are doing with these cool tools in Blackboard Learn. I also talk to clients about new ways they can leverage these tools and get even more value out of them. While these one-on-one conversations are great, there’s a lot to share so I wanted to bring that discussion to the blog so others could chime in as well. Let’s see how it works.
