Virginia Tech's Transition to Sakai John Moore, Senior Director Strategy and Planning Teggin Summers, Assistant Director ePortfolio Intiatives Will Humphries, Director Learning Application Development Amber D. Evans, Training and Documentation Coordinator David McPherson, Scholar Product Manager

Introduction John MooreSenior Director Strategy & Planning Teggin SummersAssistant Director ePortfolio Initiatives Will HumphriesDirector Learning Application Development Amber EvansTraining & Documentation Coordinator Online Course Systems David McPhersonScholar Product Manager Online Course Systems

We are Virginia Tech Comprehensive Research I Institution Land grant 60 bachelors degree programs 140 masters and doctoral degree programs ~28,000 total FTE ~1,700 full-time teaching faculty

History of LMS at VT “Cyberschool” web-course initiative WebCT Courseinfo (Blackboard) Current semester load: ~4000 course sections, ~1500 faculty & TAs, students WebCT phased out in 2002 Open Source Portfolio Forward-looking concept for Faculty study groups, task forces, and administrators Our introduction to open source arena

History of LMS at VT Significant outage of Blackboard in January 2005 showed need for alternative High impact clearly showed the need to have much more control over our software platforms and our services As Sakai Project begins, VT establishes internal goal to provide an integrated LMS/Portfolio/Collaboration system based on community source software

History of LMS at VT Sakai pilot (“Scholar”) begins Fall 2005 Early focus on Collaboration Filled strategic tool gap without initially competing with Blackboard Built brand awareness and familiarity with product Gained experience supporting platform Sought high profile projects to gain visibility and show range of application SACS & NCAA reaccreditation, research, committees Quickly adopted, mostly word of mouth

History of LMS at VT Scholar Fellows established Course pilot sites begin in Spring 2006 Waiting for tool enhancements and overall stability and performance before targeting a date Sakai as platform for consolidated workspace starts to gain mindshare Training workshops begin AY emerges as production goal Staffing and infrastructure resources ePortfolios included in University Strategic Plan

ePortfolio Growth

Current eP Numbers 471 participants in eP projects in every College on campus, including a number of Academic Support Groups 23 new projects starting over this summer alone (almost as many as the entire year of 2008)

ePortfolio & Scholar “My experience working on the ePortfolio initiative certainly got me thinking about how to transition to Scholar…earlier versus later. An advantage to this is that I have more familiarity (comfort level) with navigating Scholar tools as I now migrate my courses from Blackboard to Scholar.” ~ Susan Clark, Director, Didactic Program in Dietetics

Scholar Advisory Board The Board functions to provide: Input to our process Feedback and guidance Credible spokespersons in their colleges Comprised of faculty and administrators from all colleges and includes staff, graduate and undergraduate students

Scholar Advisory Board The Board includes faculty who teach not only traditional face-to-face instructors but also blended classrooms and completely online classes We try to fold feedback into our development of the system on our campus They have helped us develop our communication plan

Communication Plan Campus-wide announcement about Scholar and Blackboard This announcement was signed by our Provost and CIO and was widely published It appeared in our Daily often and we feature it on our main portal page and Transition site page

Communication Plan We have plans to continue to publish updates about Scholar throughout the summer and next year The intention being to highlight the growth of the system, new features, user stories, and survey results The messages will include some targeted messages to groups of faculty Faculty with tests in Blackboard

Blackboard --> Sakai Content Copy bFree to extract archives bFree Web interface, scripted backend On demand + long-term archive storage Demo! Demo

Copy Statistics Completed migrations: 1031 Manually migrated content: 1 Users who have made a request: 314

Copying Tests and Quizzes This posed another thorny issue The copy tool cannot copy those We have a small team that handles moving these manually

Test and Quiz Procedure We use Respondus to connect to Blackboard Then we download the test to Respondus Finally we print the test to a Word file If you investigate the settings on the printing, you can get Sakai Quick Create to come out

Who has moved? Summer 1 Courses 45 BB had 383 Summer 2 Courses 16 BB has 20 Fall Courses 75 BB shells have not yet been created

Training Growth

Awareness, Training, & Support Two models used Roger’s Diffusion of Innovations (macro) Concerns Based Adoption Model (CBAM) Stages of Concern (micro)

Awareness, Training, & Support Summer / Fall 2008: Innovators / Early adopters Awareness of Sakai Benefits of the system (Task) Management Spring 2009: Early adopters / majority Benefits of the system Planning for use (Task) Management

Type of Workshops Offered (Summer/Fall 2008)

Actual Workshops Offered (Summer/Fall 2008) Summer 2008 Introductory / Overview Scholar Everyday (Part 1) Scholar Encore (Part 2) Fall 2008 Introductory / Overview Scholar for New Users (and How it Differs from Blackboard) Task-based focus Scholar: Student Assessment (Tests & Quizzes, Gradebook, and Feedback) Scholar: Planning Lessons and Using Assignments Pedagogy-focus Scholar: Connecting Students with Content Scholar: Reflective Learning Activities ePortfolio for Learning ePortfolio for Assessment / Accreditation ePortfolio for Professional Development

Type of Workshops Offered (Spring 2009)

Actual Workshops Offered (Spring 2009) Spring 2009 Introductory / Overview Scholar: Overview & Introduction ePortfolio: Virginia Tech's ePortfolio System within Scholar Task-based focus Scholar: Moving Materials from Blackboard to Scholar Scholar: Collaboration Tools (Blogs, Wikis, Podcasting, and more!) Scholar: Lessons & Assignments Scholar: Tests, Quizzes, Feedback, & Gradebook Track C - Using the Web for Instruction: Scholar and Other Tools (2 days) Pedagogy-focus Track C - Using the Web for Instruction: Scholar and Other Tools (1 day) Faculty Panel Discussion: Teaching with Scholar One-on-One Help

Training Refocused (late Spring)

Awareness, Training, & Support Summer/Fall 2009: Early Adopters / Majority (Task) Management Scholar Advisory Board Real-life Examples Late Majority Awareness of Sakai Benefits of the system Planning for use

Type of Workshops Offered (Summer 2009)

Actual Workshops Offered (Summer/Early Fall 2009) Introductory / Overview Scholar Quick-Start Series: Overview Scholar: Overview & Introduction (in all 3-day Tracks) Scholar: Something for Everyone (An Overview) ePortfolio: Virginia Tech's ePortfolio System within Scholar Task-based focus Quick Start Series: Site Setup, Course Resources & Syllabus, Assignments, Tests & Quizzes, Gradebook Scholar: Unpacking After the Move from Blackboard Scholar: Creating Your Course and Content (Which Tools do I Use?) Scholar: Collaboration and Communication (Which Tools do I Use?) Track C - Using the Web for Instruction: Scholar and Other Tools (2 days) Scholar Group/Departmental Training Pedagogy-focus Track C - Using the Web for Instruction: Scholar and Other Tools (1 day) Scholar: The Instructor's Tools for Teaching Faculty Scholar Showcase: Among the Best Scholar: ePortfolios and eFolio-Thinking Scholar Group/Departmental Training One-on-One Help

Post-Training Support 4Help, KnowledgeBase, Documentation Video-Recorded Workshops Buddy Systems Special Interest Groups / Dept. IT Adobe Connect Pro / Elluminate One-on-One Consultations

Future Plans We are looking at our workshop feedback to determine where training needs exist We are looking at our help desk questions to determine where training needs exist These two areas will help shape how we train our faculty to use the tools

Future Plans We are planning on continuing to go to departments that request directed training We are hoping that our Advisory Board will continue to give input as to focus areas for our development work We are optimistic about meeting our deadline of December 2010

Contact Information John Teggin Will Amber David