Comprehensive e-Campuses: Academics and Commerce Trina Spaeth, e-Learning Specialist Nancy Lilleberg, Manager of Instructional Services

About North Dakota State –Current enrollment at NDSU is approximately 12,100 students –The student/teacher average ratio is 19/1. –The campus is about 258 acres or 30 city blocks. The NDSU main campus includes 90 major buildings. –NDSU was established in 1890 as a land- grant institution

NDSU’s e-Community Initiative NDSU purchased the Community and Content systems to enhance their Learning System with: –e-Portfolio capability –Student file storage –e-Commerce capability –Portal function Our challenges included: –Problems with our custom authentication working with the new systems. –Aggressive implementation

Quick Implementation at NDSU Changed to PeopleSoft Fall 2005 Secured funding from Student Technology Fee for Community and Content System in Nov Purchased and received hardware in Dec Onsite Community System training 12/20-22 Upgrade to Bb7 12/27-29 Set up basic portal 12/28-29 Went live for faculty 12/29

Why it worked Small expert staff, very committed Excellent dynamics between server and instructional services groups –Grad Student started in Instructional Services and over the year, started doing server-type support. Now he’s full time server group, but housed with Instructional Services Tried to do formal project management …

Why it worked Now all we need is that plan …

How was Community Deployed? Bb onsite training jump-started us New portal greeted faculty and students upon return for spring semester –Used portal modules to guide users through change –Added tab for “Blackboard Help” –Started simple, with the tabs and modules

How we survived start of semester Grad student coded tools to help get spring courses created / copied / migrated –Course naming conventions with admin tool –Course request form populated with individual course information –Use of Help Desk Remedy tickets

How was File System Deployed? Turned off for everyone except pilots Bb onsite training last week – included some faculty and did demos to large group Used pilots to discover –Effect on system load –Amount of storage space needed –What training, support and documentation is needed

How was File System Deployed? Ran into WebDAV glitch Storage calculations – half of a half is not enough! New method of file storage –4.5 TB instead of 1 TB –Using SAN (Storage Area Network) –Mirrored storage with separate, duplicate sites –Saved the Director’s job

What about e-Commerce? Custom Authentication problem What’s the plan once that’s solved? NDSU printing initiative Big seller – Ability for parents to add to students’ Bison cards Requests from departments for other e- commerce applications (Distance & Cont. Ed., Pesticides DB, Bookstore….)

Getting “buy-in” across campus Pilots involve most colleges / departments Innovative uses for President’s Council members and staff ITS serves as role model -- uses Bb departmentally Governance groups to be started

What did we learn? Be very careful how you word things on portal! (Example: “If you don’t see your spring courses…”) Beware of student opinion polls! Even after sending out detailed s to faculty, expect 1-on-1 help and last-minute requests Blackboard responsive to solving barriers

What’s next? Expand from pilots to campus-wide usage –Implement e-Portfolios across campus –Implement e-Commerce with Bison cards –Open up file system to everyone by fall –e-Reserves?

What’s next? Create module using inbuilt API’s to allow instructors to create their own courses for fall: New shells and copies of previous courses Create module to automatically enroll students into Bb courses using Peoplesoft data

What’s next? Use the official NDSU web site for external PR, and use Bb portal for internal needs –Departmental / College / Organizational communications –Link to important web sites outside of Bb, like WebMail, PeopleSoft portal –Institutional & Organizational file storage for campus-wide sharing of files –Institutional & Organizational discussion boards

Thank You! Trina Spaeth, e-Learning NDSU Nancy Lilleberg, Manager of Instructional NDSU Rosi Kloberdanz, Director of Client NDSU