How did we ever survive without the Blackboard Content System?

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How did we ever survive without the Blackboard
Content System?
Buckinghamshire Chilterns
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE

• Dr Helen Fletcher
• Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College
• Narayan Prasad
• Blackboard Global Services

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Outline of this presentation

• Examples of issues concerning BCUC
• Working with the Blackboard Global Services Team
  on the planning for, and implementation of, the
  Blackboard Content System
• Examples of how we are addressing issues at BCUC
  using the Blackboard Content System

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Issues concerning BCUC

• Students need to hold a record of their Personal
  Development Plans
• Paper, MS Word
• Faculty staff need to publish their research
  profiles
• HTML, Faculty webmaster,
• A module may be taught by several lecturers
• Difficult with Bb LS 5.5
• A module might be used by students at BCUC and
  at our Strategic Partner FE Colleges
• Difficult with Bb LS 5.5

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More issues concerning BCUC

• Keeping track of digital copies is becoming
  difficult
• Multiple unconnected records?
• Searching for anything is difficult
• Re-inventing cataloguing?
• Difficult to ensure everyone is working to the
  same version of a document during the course
  validation process
• Multiple paper and MS Word versions?
• Need to ensure the approved course documents are
  available on the Web
• MS Word to HTML then Webmaster?

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Rapid Planning Implementation of Content System

• Objective
• Satisfy BCUCs vision to manage enterprise
  content using the Blackboard Content System
• Blackboard Activities
• Through systematic and structured discussions,
  the
• fundamental concepts of unified content strategy
  were examined
• Getting a better understanding of BCUCs content
  lifecycle various phases of content development
  such as creation, review, management and delivery
• Analysing the content lifecycle to identify the
  players (content producers, reviewers and
  consumers) and issues

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Rapid Planning Implementation of Content System
(Cont.)

• Performing a substantive audit of BCUCs content
  and determining the business requirements to
  understand the organisations goals and needs
• Comprehensively reviewing BCUCs use-cases to
  perform an in-depth analysis
• Deriving directory structures and content
  authorization to identify access rights for all
  the content based on identified roles for all
  players
• Designing appropriate metadata to enable proper
  processing and searching of content elements.
• Outcomes
• A full implementation of the content system
  complete with directory structures and
  permissions model appropriate for the BCUC
  environment

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Deliverable Project Implementation Plan

• Project Implementation Plan
• BCUC Background
• Content management vision
• Tasks Milestones
• Resources and hardware capacity planning
• Operations policies and procedures

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Deliverable Content Planning Implementation

• Methodology Approach
• Review of all use-cases
• Modeling and analysis
• Producers, reviewers and consumers
• Products
• Permissions
• Directory Structures
• Metadata analysis and design
• Mapping to Blackboard Learning, Portal and
  Content System functionalities

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Personal Development Planning (PDP)

• Students need a record of their personal
  development plans for
• job hunt
• lifelong learning
• E-portfolio in PDP
• Simple to write to, with Academic Tutors
• Passes used as references for employers or
  universities
• Alumni take it away as a web page

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Staff Profiles

• Faculty staff need to publish their research
  interests on the web
• This is too hard with our normal web
• E-portfolio can be used and easily publish direct
  to the web

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Sharing Content

• A module might be taught jointly by several
  lecturers
• A module might be taught across our Strategic
  Alliance
• This collaboration was hard work with Bb LS 5.5
• The Content System allows easy sharing from a
  tray of files

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Management of the e-library

• The library is responsible for the legitimate
  copying of digital materials
• This is easily managed with e-Reserves
• Use of Dublin Core metadata ensures easy access
  to learning objects later

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Course Validation Process

• Ownership of course development documents by the
  faculty during development
• Ownership of the formal documents by the
  institution (Academic Registry) once validated
• Simple publication of necessary documents (eg
  programme specifications) on the web for FOIA and
  TQI

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Organisations

• One for each faculty and department to share
  local documents
• Design, Technology, Health, etc
• Learning and Information Services, Academic
  Registry, etc
• One for each committee or working party to share
  formal documents across BCUC
• Senate, Academic Audit Committee, etc
• Information Strategy Steering Group, Technical
  Working Party, etc

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Plans

• Two faculty champions initially using CS with LS
• LIS to use the Content System for departmental
  procedures, etc
• Information Strategy Steering Group and Technical
  Working Party to use for papers for meetings
• E-portfolio to be used with academic tutors
  through SCPE for PDP

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Issues

• Network files versus Bb CS files
• Traditional website versus Bb CS
• Training requires careful planning
• Learning system is easy to use for all
• Content System is more difficult
• Policies and procedures to be agreed