[CCoE Notice] New Blackboard Learn is here! And... ready for faculty to request Summer and Fall 2012 coursesites.

[Boyer, Debbie]

To All Engineering Faculty & Staff,
It's here!  The latest version of Blackboard - Blackboard Learn 9.1 - is here and ready for Summer 2012!
As you may know, the university has hosted the WebCT course management system for a number of years.  During this same time, the Cullen College of Engineering has hosted Blackboard Academic Suite.  In February 2006, Blackboard, Inc. purchased WebCT and changed the name of the current version - "WebCT Vista" - to "Blackboard Vista".  Blackboard's plan has been to combine the two platforms into a single, integrated system which is Blackboard Learn.
The Cullen College of Engineering will migrate all Engineering coursesites to the new university-supported system by the end of summer.  The university will migrate all Blackboard Vista coursesites to Blackboard Learn over the next few semesters.  This Spring, four Engineering faculty - Reagan Herman, Suresh Khator, Stan Kleis, and Chad Wilson - are participating in the Blackboard Learn pilot, and the pilot is going well.

WHO does this affect?  All Engineering students, faculty, and staff who use Engineering
                Blackboard (Bb-E).
WHAT can you expect?  Blackboard Learn 9.1 offers a number of new tools and enhancements,
                AND the great news is that the "look and feel" of Blackboard Learn 9.1 is very similar to
                our current version of Blackboard 8.0
WHEN will this happen?  Beginning Summer 2012 all Engineering academic coursesites will be
                hosted on Blackboard Learn (BbL).  We will work with all other coursesite "owners"
                (departmental, research, production, special programs, test, and student organizations)
                to move their coursesites to Blackboard Learn over the summer.  The goal is to have
                all Engineering Blackboard coursesites moved to Blackboard Learn before the Fall 2012
                semester begins.
WHY do this now?  There are a number of reasons...

                1. When Blackboard announced the plan to integrate the two systems, Engineering made
                    the decision to converge with the university when a common system became available.

                2. The current version, Blackboard 8.0, used by Engineering will not be supported
                    after Fall 2012, so we would be required to upgrade to Blackboard Learn at that time.

                3. Engineering's current license for Blackboard 8.0 expires this summer; moving to the
                    university-supported system will save the college the cost of the yearly license fee.

                4. Blackboard 8.0 runs Small Scale Oracle 10g on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 which has
                    reached end-of-life.

Faculty, if you would like to use Blackboard Learn for your Summer and/or Fall 2012 course(s), please submit your request through the EERC website http://eerc.egr.uh.edu<http://eerc.egr.uh.edu/>.  Click on the Summer/Fall 2012 Blackboard Learn Course Request Form link in the center of the page.
Please complete the form and click the Submit button when you're finished.  A receipt page will appear with a link to request an additional coursesite, if needed.
Special Note to Faculty:  In the next several days, you will receive an email from blackboard at uh.edu<mailto:blackboard at uh.edu> - the "Blackboard Team" - about how to request a Blackboard Vista coursesite.  Please be aware that Blackboard Vista is a completely separate system (and very different) from the Blackboard Learn system that Engineering will be using.
If you have questions about either system, do not hesitate to contact me.
Sincerely,
Debbie
Debbie Boyer
Blackboard Administrator
Education Production Specialist
Engineering Education Resource Center
dboyer at uh.edu      713-743-1347

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