Click here to receive your FREE subscription to Campus Technology
Current News
What to Tell Your Campus About the Blackboard-WebCT Merger
11/1/2005
So on one hand, your task is easy—you can support your own opinion with the opinions of others. There is no inarguable closure on the issues. On the other hand, this is probably dress rehearsal for other consolidations--Adobe-Macromedia, anyone?
Recommendations for Survival
Here’s what I would recommend you do:
First, calm the troops. The announcement came at a good time in the academic planning cycle. Major impacts, whichever way they may come, are one, two, or three academic years away--adequate, if not abundant, time to prepare for change--if you begin tracking developments now.
Return to EduTools (www.edutools.info/ ), a service you may have used in selecting your current CMS. One would expect EduTools to re-visit their core expertise here and assimilate comparable answers to questions of interest throughout the academic community. Respond to the surveys, talk with others using your CMS, and with those who use other systems. Share insights with colleagues, within consortia, and across systems. Collaborate on shared infrastructure and co-fund test beds. Distribute the cost of obtaining information.
Use the merger news to heighten awareness of the growing nature of eLearning as critical institutional infrastructure. Attention is the scarcest resource in any social system. Use this interest to your maximum advantage--for about one month folks might listen.
De-couple, to the extent you are able, the pieces of course creation, access and delivery. Research content management systems that can be called from any course management system, place a campus level authentication system in front of the CMS authentication system. What a great opportunity to begin developing a solid single-sign-on approach to campus authentication--unplug one service, plug-in the next.
Experiment with open source CMS. Open source CMS still is toddling, but its immaturity augers well for those who would like to participate in training an adolescent (not a task for the faint-of-heart, but potentially very rewarding).
Heed Scott McNeeley’s (Sun Microsystems’ CEO and Educause keynoter) formulation of the total cost of ownership. It’s not just the cost of acquisition, nor only the cost of acquisition plus the cost of operations. Total cost of ownership includes the cost of exiting. Those of us who have been through a CMS migration can attest to the fact that exiting is expensive, complicated, and never automated. Some may need to prepare for this again; all should seek processes to minimize exit costs in the future.
With a focus on cost of exit, press your CMS provider to build a reference model for course export, encourage that reference model to be standards-based, open, and not proprietary.
Get something in writing from your current vendor about your future together. There will be three levels of certainty in the response--contractual commitment (e.g., price increases < x% for y years), intentionality (our corporate vision and its implementation is this), and roadmap (we will accomplish these things in this order). Move what you can to contractual commitment, but plan to live with ambiguity.
Recommended Reading
- IT Trends :: Thursday, August 28, 2008
:::::: CAMPUS WIFI
:: Saint Joseph Builds Out Wireless Network in Multi-year Upgrade
:::::: IT NEWS
:: California Community Colleges Partner with Waterfall Mobile on Statewide Emergency Notification Coverage
:: King's College and ASU Add e2Campus for Improved Emergency Notifications
:: Vista Ramp Up Is Happening Now, Study Says
:: Talisma Launches New Version of CRM with Built-in Application Management
:: Ferrum College Enrolls Juniper Networks To Extend 10 Gigabit Ethernet
:: California Community Colleges Adopt SunGard Banner Software
:: Ball State U Web Sites Now Managed with Sitecore - C-Level View :: August 27, 2008
:::::: EXECUTIVE VIEW
: Let the Games Begin! Google vs. Microsoft
:::::: WORTH NOTING
: California Community Colleges Adopt SunGard Banner Software
: McGill U Library Scanning Rare Books with Kirtas
: Ball State U Web Sites Now Managed with Sitecore
: Report: Green Efforts Improving on Campuses
: Oracle Releases Student Administration Integration Pack - SmartClassroom :: Wednesday, August 27, 2008
:::::: COLLABORATION
: Bringing Composers into Classrooms Through Skype
:::::: NEWS and PRODUCT UPDATES
: Columbia U Going Live on iTunes U
: Tiffin U's New Online College to Use Pearson's eCollege for Course Management
: Luidia Releases eBeam Interact 2.1 for Interactive Whiteboards
: McGill U Library Scanning Rare Books with Kirtas
: Ball State U Web Sites Now Managed with Sitecore - SmartClassroom :: Wednesday, August 27, 2008
:::::: COLLABORATION
: Bringing Composers into Classrooms Through Skype
:::::: NEWS and PRODUCT UPDATES
: Columbia U Going Live on iTunes U
: Tiffin U's New Online College to Use Pearson's eCollege for Course Management
: Luidia Releases eBeam Interact 2.1 for Interactive Whiteboards
: McGill U Library Scanning Rare Books with Kirtas
: Ball State U Web Sites Now Managed with Sitecore - News Update :: Tuesday, August 26, 2008
:::::: NEWS
: Report: Green Efforts Improving on Campuses
: Polytechnic Institute of NYU Deploys Array Networks Equipment for Access Control
: Oracle Releases Student Administration Integration Pack
: Red Hat Hacked, Company Issues Security Advisory
: Sun Open Sources Mobile Toolkit LWUIT
: Vulnerability Management Needed for Security, Study Says
: Microsoft Details SharePoint-SQL 2008 Integration
: Higher Ed Growing into BI, Data Warehousing
: LectureShare Updates Free Course Management System - Campus Security :: August 22, 2008
:::::: CASE STUDY
: Corralling Identity Management
:::::: CAMPUS SECURITY NEWS
: Vulnerability Management Needed for Security, Study Says
: Wayne State Deploys Q1 Labs QRadar to Manage and Secure Network
: KU Medical Center Installs Real-time Beacon System
: Virginia Tech Tries 'Compliance Sheriff' To Improve Web Site Accessibility
: Microsoft, BearingPoint Team Up To Provide Risk-Based Compliance Solution
: Collaboration Key to Security, Microsoft Says
: IBM Unveils New Software Designed To Streamline eDiscovery
: Security Woes Up, as PHP and OSS Make the List
