A Systemwide Approach to Learning Management Systems

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A System-wide Approach to Learning Management
Systems
Kathy Fernandes Director of LMS System-wide
Initiatives California State University
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What will you learn in this session?

• Yes
• What are the Calif. State University (CSU) LMS
  Initiatives?
• How are the 23 CSU campuses working together?
• How is the CSU strategically planning for the LMS
  Futures?
• No
• Magic to solving all your LMS institutional
  issues
• No crystal ball on the future of the next
  generation LMS
• Getting all campuses in one system to agree on
  one LMS

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California State University Largest HE System
in the World

• 23 Campuses throughout California
• Bachelors and Masters degrees
• Residential and Commuter and Polytechnic and
  Maritime and
• Large and Small
• No two campuses are structured the same
• Students 450,000
• Faculty and Staff 47,000

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Who is Kathy Fernandes?

• Masters in Instructional Technology
• Two bachelors Computer Science and Mathematics
• Director of CSU Chicos Academic Technologies
• 20 years at Chico
• Managing 35 people
• Report to the CIO and Vice-Provost of Information
  Resources
• TLP (includes LMS), Classrooms, Distance
  Education, Web, Media, Graphics, Grants and
  Contracts

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Who is Kathy Fernandes? (contd)

• Director of CSU LMS System-wide Initiatives
• 3 years working for CSU Office of the Chancellor
• 1 assistant full-time
• Report to the Senior Director of Academic
  Technologies Services
• Collaborate with the Directors of Academic
  Technologies (DAT)
• Monthly meetings
• DATs report to different people on each campus
• LMS Coordinators - designated by the Provost of
  each campus

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What are the CSU LMS System-wide Initiatives?

• 1 Vendor Relationship and Contract Management
• System-wide LMS RFP
• Ongoing discussions with Vendors
• LMS Sandboxes
• 2 Moodle Consortium
• 3 Integration
• SIS Integration
• IMS Integration
• 4 LMS Best Practices
• Rubric for Online Instruction
• Transforming Course Design

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Vendor Relationship Contract Management

• Once Upon A Time
• All 23 campuses were either Blackboard, WebCT or
  both!?!
• Good tension to keep both companies on their toes
• Campuses managed their own contracts which lead
  to issues
• So Chancellors Offices took on system-wide
  contract with both WebCT and Blackboard for
  contract and fiscal consolidation

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Vendor Relationship Contract Management

• Blackboard buys WebCT
• 2 campuses go Moodle Humboldt and SFSU
• Contract with Blackboard for both systems
  overextended
• RFP is a requirement
• More discussion amongst CIOs and DATs about LMS
  issues ranging from fiscal concerns to support
  issues
• CSU sends 3 representatives to Washington DC to
  talk with Bb
• Currently bi-weekly meetings of CSU reps and Bb
  reps

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Vendor Relationship Contract Management

• System-wide RFP
• Intention Provide LMS Enterprise options to the
  campuses
• CSU RFI constructed with feedback from CIOs and
  DAT
• After RFI is completed, assemble CSU LMS RFP team
• Blackboard, WebCT and Moodle experts
• CSU RFP Team assembled (approx. 12 people)
• Co-authors of assembling the RFP
• Evaluators for both written portion and
  demonstrations
• Round 1 Completed in March 2008
• CSU Contracts offered to Angel and MoodleRooms
• Issues Not enough selection for 23 campuses
• Round 2 Completed in January 2009
• CSU Contracts additionally offered to D2L and
  Blackboard
• Two Regional LMS Workshops (North and South)

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LMS RFP Categories

• Business and Partnership
• System Architecture and Viability
• Feature Set and User Intuitive Interface Design
• Support and Services
• Monitoring, Reporting and Assessment
• Product Roadmap and Vision for Products Future
• Open Questions, Comments and Suggestions
• For a copy of the CSU RFP
• http//dat.cdl.edu/
• LMS menu

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Vendor Relationship Contract Management

• Advantages of System-wide RFP
• Ownership in the process
• Campus cross-communications
• Big Picture view of the LMS Market
• Discussions at many levels based on SAME
  information
• One system-wide contract (MEA) for each vendor
• Not wasting campus resources each doing an RFP
  process/contract
• Pushed Accessibility Priority (ati.calstate.edu)
• VPAT must be included and must pass accessibility
  tests
• Campus Selections?
• They use their own governance structures to
  determine their process for choosing an LMS
• Pilot Testing the Options

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Vendor Relationship Contract Management

• CSU LMS Sandboxes
• Angel and Desire2Learn
• Coordinated CSU online sessions to get campus
  demonstrations
• Worked with companies to create CSU sandboxes and
  manage enrollments
• MoodleRooms
• Created a CSU Moodle sandbox (moodlepilot.calstate
  .edu)
• We are system administrators and sign up campus
  enrollments
• Offered CSU Moodle Training online
• SFSU created Moodle QuickGuides that CSUs can
  use
• Whitepaper on SIS Integration with Peoplesoft
• Other possibilities?
• Blackboard version 9.0 (ASP hosted)

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CSU Moodle Consortium

• Who is the CSU?
• Humboldt small and constrained
• SFSU large with need to re-align resources
• Monterey small and mighty hosting others in
  Moodle
• Maritime smallest campus, joined in the last
  few months
• What?
• All self-hosted with discussion of hosting one
  another
• Common code-base
• Who has what strengths and/or resources? Leverage
  that
• Meet regularly on support, systems, projects,
  Moodle Moots
• Chancellors Office involvement

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Integration - SIS and others

• System-wide licensing for Respondus
  TurnItIn.com
• Campuses use or will migrate to Peoplesoft
• Due to common code-line changes, we call
  Peoplesoft
• Common Management System (CMS)
• Moving the ERP is no small job
• LMS is not seen uniformly across the CSU as an
  Enterprise System where some see the LMS as the
  4th module to the ERP resources vary
• Integration has therefore been done 23 times with
  different business rules
• We need the IMS LIS standard to be active
• This initiative requires more time/resources

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LMS Best Practices (Pedagogy)

• Rubric for Online Instruction
• http//www.csuchico.edu/celt/roi
• 95 Institutions World-wide are using this rubric
• Folded into the CSU Academic Technology Baseline
• Transforming Course Design
• CSU variation on NCATs Course Redesign projects
  and principles
• Campuses engaged

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LMS Futures Group

• 4 CIOs, 4 Provosts, Chancellors Office staff
• Met bi-weekly online from January to June
• July face-to-face meeting
• Creating a Roadmap to the future
• LMS Services
• LMS Environment
• Investigating System-wide Strategies
• Laying out options
• Determine Communications Plan
• Make recommendations to the CSU campuses
• Gather feedback

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What have we learned?

• Campuses learning to manage the LMS as Enterprise
  System
• Organizations prepared?
• System Admins arent usually strategic planning
  thinkers and are not budget authority
• Statistics
• Planning for growth
• Managing demand vs budget
• Provosts have not traditionally managed an ERP
  system
• Educause Quarterly, Jan.-Mar. 2008, SATO
• Budgets drop as LMS usage increases
• My CO job is facilitate, facilitate, facilitate

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Contact Information

• Kathy Fernandes
• kfernandes_at_csuchico.edu
• University State-wide LMS Strategies?
• Online Webinar
• WICHE Western Cooperative for Educational
  Telecommunications CIG

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Want more? Be green!

• Who wants to print out a handout? Instead, check
  out my posts on the BbWorld 09 Discussion Board
  at Blackboard Connections (http//connections.blac
  kboard.com). Ive posted
• My PPT
• Handouts
• Rubrics/Tools/????
• Discussion board posts on this topic