Blackboard Managed Hosting
During the spring 2008 semester, the Electronic Learning Advisory Group (eLAG) asked ITS to explore the possibility of moving the Blackboard Course Management System from the MCCCD infrastructure to a hosted service provided by Blackboard.  Numerous meetings took place, including those dealing with cost benefit analysis, service review and contract negotiations.  A plan was developed in collaboration with eLAG to move the hosted environment in time for the fall 2008 semester.

A contract was signed between MCCCD and Blackboard in late spring.  Blackboard assigned a Complex Hosting Manager and the ITS Blackboard team began working through the summer to ensure Blackboard was ready for the start of fall classes.  In early August 2008, all fall classes had been successfully migrated to version 7.3 and the hosted environment.

Using Blackboard, 2,373 faculty taught 6,357 courses in fall 2008.  These courses contained 108,343 enrollments.  Over 49,000 students were enrolled in fall courses.

A decision was made to leave EOLT classes and Open Entry/Open Exit classes, which began in the 2008 academic year, on servers housed in ITS.  The plan is to move these courses to the hosted environment in the summer of 2009.

The ITS Blackboard team continues to work with Blackboard to refine the loading of classes, enrollments and faculty assignments between SIS and Blackboard.  The team also continues to work on improving statistical reporting.  Overall, the move to the hosted environment has increased up time and has improved the reliability for students and faculty.

May 2009 Move to 8.0
Over the Memorial Day holiday (May 22-25, 2009) the hosted Blackboard environment will be moving to version 8.0. eLAG reached consensus during their February meeting that this would be a date that would cause the least disruption and inconvenience to students and faculty.  The new version offers a new and improved grade book for faculty.  To prepare faculty for the new version, eLAG’s training subcommittee is holding train-the-trainer sessions for College Blackboard trainers.  The training efforts are being coordinated by Ron Schilling, Scottsdale Community College and Randy Anderson, ITS Blackboard team.

Special thanks to Thom Saudargas, DO ITS, for contributing this article

Click here to see an Index of common ITS acronyms

MCCCD has launched a new College Identity Management System (CIMS) to support faculty, staff and students District-wide.  This project is a joint effort of District ITS and all colleges to create a common set of credentials (User Id/password) for access to technology services District-wide.  ITS is moving to support common credentials for all Enterprise and College Systems.  As people move among institutions, so does their identity.  One User ID/password will be used to access college and District-wide systems.  Upon implementation at the colleges, faculty, staff and students will be able to access services using their personal Maricopa Enterprise ID (MEID) and password combination.  Here are a few benefits that will be realized once this project is implemented:

Improved User Productivity

Users are no longer bogged down by multiple logins and they are not required to remember multiple IDs and passwords.  Support personnel answers fewer requests to reset passwords.  The more students, faculty and staff  to use these MEID/password combinations, the less likely it is that they will forget, which could result in fewer helpdesk calls.  This translates directly into both productivity and operational dollar savings to MCCCD at a time when budgets are being closely scrutinized.

Simplified Administration

 When applications leverage a single set of credentials, the burden on college administrators is significantly simplified.  A consistent MEID/password combination to access services at the college and District levels allows colleges to assign access to resources based on student enrollment.

Economies of Scale

Colleges are creating and maintaining ’shadow systems’ to support local authentication.  These shadow systems are plagued by synchronization issues, interfacing issues and timing issues when it comes to providing access to students.  The Centralized College Authentication project will not only continue to provide services to Enterprise Applications (SIS, HR, BOEXI, Blackboard, CFS - future etc., Google for Student - future) but it will extend these services to the colleges.  This translates into significant operational savings by avoiding duplication of work, using a consistent set of backup and management tools and enhancing services to faculty, staff and students.

Increase Compliance and Account Deprovisioning

As we serve more and more students and our faculty (adjuncts, in particular) and staff transitions in and out of Maricopa, it becomes increasingly important that we have a mechanism in place to turn off services (deprovisioning) as needed.  A single set of credentials (MEID) across Maricopa will allow us to remove access to all services from one place and/or set up rules based on SIS enrollment and HR records for access.  For example, as an employee leaves MCCCD, access to services is quickly and efficiently removed across the Enterprise.  This translates into significant savings to Maricopa in terms of support, fewer helpdesk tickets to turn off service, automation, better security and increased compliance.

Focus on SIS

SIS is ‘critical’ at the beginning and end of the semester.  Once a student registers in SIS, s/he moves on to experience MCCCD for the many weeks/months ahead until SIS becomes critical again for the student experience.  It is still the in-between of these critical end points that a College Authentication System becomes very valuable for MCCCD.  Helpdesk calls requesting access to systems, delays in accessing systems due to credentials issues and student/faculty frustrations tend to drive the post-SIS registration periods.  This project will improve the post-SIS student/faculty/staff experience by allowing consistent access to services.

Foundation for Future Enhancements

This project will establish the foundation for several future mission critical MCCCD Enterprise projects:
- New Enterprise Email system to replace MEMO in 2010-2011.
- Archiving of Enterprise Email.  As more local Email systems grow around MCCCD, the ‘legal’ need to provide an archiving solution becomes more important.  This project will create the necessary access points (trusts across MCCCD domains) to serve as the foundation to implement an Enterprise Archiving solution.
- Disaster Recovery for SIS and other Enterprise Applications.  This project will provide solutions that would allow MCCCD to continue servicing students in an emergency situation if we have to transition to a new 2nd data center.
- Learning Management System using MEID/password as foundation.  As integration with SIS and HR become more transparent via the College Authentication System, colleges such as GateWay have plans to experiment with new Learning Management Systems based on SharePoint.

Other College-specific Examples on Enhancing the Student Learning Experience

• Single method of sign-on to get into all college learning applications.
• Student network and file server logins consistent across colleges.
• Accessing specific instructional materials via iTunesU with single set of credentials.
• Utilizing instructional assessment tools with one ID.
• Reduce risk of exposure to personally identifiable information by having a single MEID/password rather than widely distributed multiple IDs/passwords.
• Increase availability by creating highly reliable and redundant systems to support college authentication.  These systems are backed up and supported using consistent sets of tools and methodologies across MCCCD.

Enterprise Authentication is the foundation for access to student services across MCCCD.  It sets the tone for what happens after a student registers in SIS and goes on to experience Maricopa and/or a new faculty/staff member is hired at MCCCD.  Today, many of our Enterprise Applications use EIMS authentication for easy and transparent access.  Students sign-up online using EIMS to get their MEID/password.  Within minutes, their EIMS MEID/password flows from wherever they are in the world to college shadow systems.  They go on to register in SIS online using MEID/password shortly after they register for a course.  This project will allow colleges to tap into the MEID/password credentials to provide services to students beyond Blackboard.  These services are critical for the student day-to-day classroom activities while at MCCCD.  There are significant savings associated with this project as explained above, both in terms of operational support services, administrative support costs and opportunities for new services.  This project moves us closer to the ‘One Maricopa’ solution when it comes to using technology District-wide to access services.

Additional information and current status of this project can be accessed at: https://dst.sp.maricopa.edu/DWG/STPG/CIM/

Special thanks to Miguel Corzo, DO ITS, for contributing this article

Click here to see an Index of common ITS acronyms

MCCCD has recently signed an agreement with Google to provide students with access to Google Apps, a set of four primary online applications: Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar and Google Sites. These applications provide the user with significant benefits, including:

• Maricopa’s official means of communicating with students.
• Email address of meid@maricopa.edu.
• A lifetime email address.
• Reliable, secure email service.
• 7GB of email storage and massive amounts of space for storing documents.
• Powerful anti-spam system.
• Access to calendaring, tasks and scheduling features.
• Instant messaging with voice and video.
• The ability to create your own website and collaborate online using Google Sites.
• Familiar, powerful Google search engine with advanced features.
• A new my.maricopa.edu portal that allows for personalization and customizations.
• Useful collaboration tools such as Google Docs, an online suite of office productivity applications featuring word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations.  Google Docs allows collaboration with others on the same documents in real-time.  Documents are saved online so you will always have access no matter what computer you are using.

How will it work ?

• Students will be able to access this new service using their already familiar MEID and password credentials.
• Google Apps will be available to any student that attended MCCCD in the last 3 years. Well over 700K accounts will be created at go-live.
• New students will receive a Google Apps account as soon as they apply for admissions either via SIS or using the Maricopa Account Wizard (MAW) at my.maricopa.edu.

MCCCD expects to launch this new service to students in the summer of 2009.  Stay tuned for further announcements.

Google App How-Tos:

Gmail information

Google Talk

Google Start Page

Special thanks to Miguel Corzo, DO ITS, for contributing this article

Click here to see an Index of common ITS acronyms