Company

From David Robinson, LMS Administrator – Georgia Gwinnett College

What were we thinking? Why would a brand new college in the throes of creating a college culture, constructing a campus, and preparing for accreditation decide to pilot a still-in-beta product with live courses in an untested integration? When I put it that way, maybe we are crazy, or maybe as was said of Hamlet, “Though this be madness, yet there is method in it.”

As part of the University System of Georgia, Georgia Gwinnett College is a Blackboard Learning System (WebCT) Vista school. I’m the GGC LMS Administrator, and have been a WebCT user since 1997 and a Vista Admin since 2003. We like many Vista features, but wanted more flexibility.

Because GGC is new and agile, we have the luxury of being in a position to envision how we want information to flow into and out of and between the systems we stand up. When at last year’s BbWorld, I heard about the openness and flexibility of “Project NG” and about the option of co-production with Vista, I just knew this was something GGC and our CIO, Lonnie Harvel would be interested in.  So just after BbWorld, we started in with the what-ifs ...

What if Blackboard could deliver NG by the end of the year? What if this co-production idea really works? What if we could get a pilot up and running with at least a few live classes in January? We of course had to also consider the negative side of these questions, like what if it all blows up on January 15? But we proceeded with the idea that it might just work and it was certainly worth trying.

In late October, the Release 9 Beta Program was opened, and shortly afterward, we began discussions of being hosted by Blackboard for both Vista (for courses) and the Blackboard Learn platform. The servers were set up and successfully integrated and tested.  In January, five bold faculty began teaching ten live Vista 8 classes via Bb9, dubbed Platform 8 3/4. The Spring pilot worked so well that we are doing it again this summer.

This may all indeed be madness, yet there is method in it. The plan is to move all our courses to our ggc.blackboard.com Platform 8 3/4 environment for Fall.  There are features of the WebCT Vista toolbox that we are not willing to part with, and there are aspects of the Blackboard Learn platform that may just make it our campus portal.

I’ll be presenting GGC’s co-production experiences at BbWorld '09, in a Monday afternoon pre-conference seminar with Ben Wang of Blackboard Product Development. Ben will share the vision for Blackboard Learn and discuss how the openness and flexibility that attracted GGC to the platform can be a draw for other WebCT institutions. I will share our co-production environment in action from both the Institutional Admin and Instructor roles. We will discuss the steps needed to make the move to co-production from a functional and technical perspective, the decision-making process behind our move, and our vision for Release 9 as our "portal" environment.

If you can’t make the pre-conference session, I’ll be presenting Platform 8 3/4  on Tuesday at 10:30 and in a panel at 4:14 with Santo Nucifora and Daniel Szabo from Senica College, and Donna Wicks, of Kettering University. Check us out.