Course Management System Progress Report
In April 2003, Bill Anderson was invited by the Curriculum and Educational Policy Committee to “explain the nature of a common course management system as a medium term goal for the College”. At that meeting, the Committee discussed the degree to which such technology would engage educational policy. (Minutes, CEPC, 3/25/03).
In addition, Bill’s reports to the Trustees have included the course management system explanation three times a year for the past two years. The project has also been presented in various meetings of the Tech Steering and Ed Tech committees over the past year.
Task Force
Members of the Task Force, which was formed in September of 2003, are:
Faculty Reps
Doug Green, Biology
John Hughes, Political Science
Christine Bauer-Ramazani, SIS
M. Birger Benson, Business
Greta Pangborn, CS
Library Rep
Steve Burks
IT Reps
Bill Anderson
Sue Breeyear, ITC
Cynthia Kelley, ITC
Jim Millard, ITC
Erin Slattery, IT (Datatel)
The Task Force was originally formed from the faculty mentors group. In an attempt to get a greater amount of input, an invitation to join the Task Force was also sent to a group of other faculty members who were identified by the original members.
CMS First-Round Selection
The following criteria were the basis for selection:
1) Ease of use for both faculty and students
2) Seamless integration with campus student information system (Datatel)
3) Flexibility for blended learning as opposed to distance learning
4) Vendor hosting and support
5) Pricing
The Educause “EduTools” website was used to determine which of the myriad products available would be most likely to work in the St. Michael’s College environment. The following products were chosen as likely candidates, and have since presented either live or web-based conferences on campus:
BlackBoard – August 2003 (live presentation)
Campus Cruiser – December 2003 (teleconference via web)
Desire2Learn – January 2004 (teleconference via web)
WebCT – February 2004 (teleconference via web)
E-College – February 2004 (live presentation)
Activities
August 2003: Blackboard demo by Darren Schmautz, Blackboard Rep.
September 2003: Task Force meeting.
October 2003: Barbara Sargent presented her distance learning course to the nine other laptop workshop participants as a part of the AfterCare program.
Faculty from UVM and Champlain College presented a panel discussion on the benefits and drawbacks of course management.
(See flyer, attached). The panel session was announced by Bill Anderson at the Faculty Assembly. All faculty were invited both via paper flyer and email.
A trial BlackBoard course was set up for use in the LLRC.
November 2003: Vendors were contacted for tentative pricing of their systems.
An e-mailing was sent to all faculty inquiring about any past experience they may have had with course management systems.
December 2003: e-Companion accounts were set up for 14 faculty users for the spring semester and a two-hour training session was held to get them started. This was seen as an opportunity to get some feedback from faculty who don’t normally jump on the technology bandwagon.
Campus Cruiser was demonstrated in the Alden Lab via the web.
Investigation of Moodle, an open-source CMS.
January 2004: Task Force meeting
Datatel student information was integrated with, and manipulated for, e-Companion courses for the add/drop period.
Desire2Learn was demonstrated in Cheray 111 via the web. All faculty were invited via email.
Annual ITC Faculty Survey included questions about course management systems.
Five-year plan for course management system implementation developed for Title III Grant.
February 2004: WebCT was demonstrated in the Farrell Room via the web. All faculty were invited via email.
e-College was demonstrated in the Farrell Room, live. All faculty were invited via email.
An online survey was developed and disseminated for the e-Companion users to determine usage and perceptions.