Blackboard has a basic range of processes that automate key administrative activities, such as the creation of student and staff accounts (logins), the creation of unit spaces ("courses" in Blackboard),and the enrolment of students onto courses based on unit enrolment data in SITS.
The current range of automated processes save staff a significant amount of time, however user feedback indicated that there were additional requirements that were not being met e.g. the creation of Programme spaces.
In addition there were some issues with the course lifecycle, and end and start of year administrative processes required significant staff time to manually resolve.
Finally the anticipated restructuring of faculty and staff who had a major role supporting Blackboard as part of Support Process Review brought forward the requirement to look again at what processes we could automate, or support in the central ESU and IS teams.
This project was rendered more complex by the need to support the objectives of the IeLS Project, namely the first re-request period for eReserves and the early wholesale deployment of the Content System.
Based on information from Blackboard Local System Administrators and feedback from an annual survey of Blackboard "power users" the automated archiving and re-creation of courses has saved at least 1 FTE.
It is expected that this project - in essence an ongoing service enhancement requirement will continue in 2011-12. Key requirements are:
Hilary Griffiths
