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Technology Solution Services Scope Document
1-May-2009 SR #:
Project Name: Course Management System Replacement Author: Andy Freed
Summary Section
Project Definition
To help define the project, answer the following questions.
WHO requested the work? John Sneed, Director of Distance Education WHAT is the main objective or problem to be solved? The purpose of this project is to identify and implement a new hosted course management system (CMS) before our current system, Blackboard CE8, reaches the its end of support in October 2012. WHEN must the project be completed? Our target date for completion is Fall of 2011.
Statement of Work
List the main tasks that must be completed.
This project has been divided in to several phases, each with a unique set of tasks. Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3 Phase 4 Phase 5
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Create timeline Information gathering o Tool usage o Feature set Identify stakeholders Evaluate similar institutions RFPs, plans Create evaluation criteria and RFP criteria
Identify steering committee Develop communication policy Create scope document for OTAC Determine stakeholder involvement
Get faculty and student feedback on criteria Finalize and announce RFP
Collect RFP Product demonstrations Evaluate RFP & Demo feedback Steering committee recommends product
Create contract Identify pilot faculty/courses Test migration options
Create training and migration material Enroll pilot courses in new system Develop course management policy
Implement integration with Banner Plan and offer training
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Train faculty Migrate courses Phase 6 Archive old courses
Technology Solution Services Scope Document
1-May-2009 SR #:
Implement changes from pilot
Decommission old CMS and end contract
Benefits
Briefly summarize the benefits. Include the number and types of beneficiaries. Include short and long term benefits. Explain what relationship this project has to the College’s goals.
This project will ensure we are best using our budget to provide a robust platform for online learning, improve PCC’s ability to deliver current, effective and relevant online courses. It will address shortcomings with our existing CMS, and better integrate online courses with PCC’s student information system for efficient management of online courses, enrollment and grading. Distance Education’s desire is to select a CMS that will allow us to develop courses and programs that meet the needs of students for the next 5-10 years. The CMS replacement will help Distance Education and PCC meet the institution’s goals regarding access, continuous improvement, partnership and community. Selection of a new CMS will improve access to quality education for students both outside the district, and for students whose lives inhibit them from attending courses in the classroom. Access will be improved by selecting a CMS that best uses proven and available technologies as well as emerging technologies to deliver quality education and training. Selection of a new CMS will also allow Distance Education to improve on the existing product in functionality, and by ensuring the proper use of limited funding. The CMS evaluation will seek to improve partnerships and build communities within the college by engaging various stakeholders such as online instructors, TSS staff, students, and potential vendors, as well as other regional schools who look to our decisions.
Feasibility Factors
What questions must be answered in order to determine the feasibility of this project? (I.e. costs, resources, technical issues, outcome of other projects.)
Can PCC afford to run 2 hosted CMS products simultaneously? Does this project dovetail with any other technical projects that may provide similar services (e.g. continuity planning, portal planning, e-portfolio, degree audit, MyPCC Gradebook, Course Evaluations, 3rd party authentication)? Should Distance Education be looking for a CMS for distance courses only, or for a platform for any courses that desire a larger online presence? Is this an appropriate time to start building departmental “master courses” that can serve as templates? What behavior do we expect with “integration” between the CMS and Banner? Do we compensate faculty for course migration? If so, how much? How quickly can we convert courses? Do we require training for all faculty? Do we compensate? Do we complete Quality Matters reviews before the migration or after? Should we include broader policy changes in this process (location of content)
Detail Section
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Technology Solution Services Scope Document
1-May-2009 SR #:
Definition of Project Phases
What are the phases in which this project should be done? Use outline styles when appropriate.
Phase 1:
The initial phase of this project includes developing a timeline for the project, identifying stakeholders, information gathering on current products, similar processes by other institutions, evaluating current technology and tool usage by both online and traditional courses, announcing intent to Distance Learning Advisory Committee, identifying interest in involvement by stakeholders, developing a communication plan, and creating a scope document for OTAC, and identifying a steering committee to ensure adherence to process and decide on a product. Distance Education will communicate the timeline and process plan to faculty and identify a way for stakeholders to respond with concerns or comments. Phase 1 is to be completed by the end of Spring term 2009
Phase 2:
Identify product criteria(required elements, functional elements) based on results of information gathering in Phase 1. Identify service level agreement requirements for hosted solution. Evaluate requests for proposal (RFP) from other institutions that have completed similar evaluations, get input on RFP criteria from stakeholder groups, compile RFP, Announce RFP. To be completed by January, 2010.
Phase 3:
Collect RFP responses and examine for top 3 options. Have top scoring providers demonstrate their product to groups of faculty users, student users, and staff. Demonstrations will be rated by each user group, and will be provided with a scoring guide for tools identified in Phase 1. RFP responses and demonstration results will be judged by steering committee, who will then recommend a best product to project manager. Distance Education will then start working with vendor of selected product to develop a contract for hosting (Service Level Agreement) and licensing for the pilot and migration phase. To be completed by April, 2010
Phase 4:
Once a product has been selected, Distance Education will develop training and migration materials for a small group of instructors who will volunteer to pilot their courses on the new CMS. The pilot phase will be for a single term, and will help identify larger training and migration issues, prepare appropriate documentation. A larger pilot may be possible the subsequent term. The pilot phase will also allow for the implementation of integration between other PCC systems. Pilot will start Summer 2010, will be completed by September, 2010.
Phase 5:
Distance Education will provide training for faculty and orientation materials for students. Distance Education will also provide migration service and assistance to faculty who wish to migrate to the new CMS early. Completed between Fall 2010 and Spring 2011
Phase 6:
The final phase will be the archival and decommissioning of the old CMS once all courses have migrated to the new CMS. To be completed by September 2011.
Financial Impact
Estimate all institutional costs - one time and ongoing. Also estimate any expected savings. Provide as many details as you can. Do not include TSS personnel costs.
Our current license and hosting costs for Blackboard are around $200,000 per annum. Any replacement will likely have similar costs, though we anticipate lower licensing costs. It is difficult to predict costs for both hosting and software licensing, though both will be ongoing costs. As our online student population grew, our licensing and hosting costs also grew.
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Given the difference between commercial and open sources software, there may be additional costs for programming or implementation services that could be ongoing or one time costs. These may come in the form of contracted services or personnel costs. Onetime costs: There will be one-time costs in migration services, on-site “train-the-trainer” sessions, or other setup fees. We might also choose to purchase training material or support material from a vendor as we have done in the past. Support costs may temporarily increase if we chose to support both CMS systems with our after-hours support services.
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TSS Personnel Resources
Technology Solution Services Scope Document
1-May-2009 SR #:
Estimate required resources from your department, the rest of ITS, and from the end users. (Change the heading “Dept Hours” to your department name and add/remove rows as necessary)
Phase Phase 1 Information collection
Step
DE Hours 80 40 40 10 Total 170
TSS Hours
User Hours 10
Total Hours 90 50 55 25 220
Proposal and communication Indentify stakeholders Steering Committee and Guiding Statement
5 5 5 15
5 10 10 35
Phase 2 Develop software criteria for RFP Get stakeholder input on criteria Submit RFP Total Phase 3 Collect and review RFP Product Demonstrations Select Product Negotiate contract with vendor Total Phase 4 Training & materials (for pilot) Migration (for pilot) Pilot courses SIS integration Total Phase 5 Training Migration Total Phase 6 Archival Training & Course updates Total Grand Total 60 200 260 1631 78 200 200 1258 60 400 460 2967 100 800 900 100 800 900 200 1600 1800 40 40 40 40 160 40 40 100 ? 20 80 40 60 120 80 300 40 6 10 10 66 6 1 1 8 6 6 10 1 23 46 18 21 12 97 60 10 5 75 5 5 5 15 65 15 10 90
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Technology Solution Services Scope Document
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Technology Assessment
List any new and existing technology that will be used to support this project. Identify the maturity of any new technology. Assess the amount of technical risk associated with the project.
The CMS is likely built on a stable web application platform that is either commercial (Java, .NET, Oracle, MSSQL) or open source (Apache, PHP, MySQL). This project will focus more on the overall products rather than the constituent pieces. The technical risk involved is the same as any web application; how responsive are developers to bugs and security vulnerabilities. Does the product update to keep in sync with web browsers and multimedia used with instruction? Since we will be evaluating hosted products, we will need to make sure that we select a vendor that is capable of providing reliable and fast access to online courses. We will need to establish a service level agreement for items such as uptime, bandwidth, disk quota, response time for incidents, etc. The host and product must be scalable to accommodate growth like we’ve seen in DL enrollment the past several years, which has averaged around 30%.
Relationship to Other Projects
What relationship does this project have to other current and future projects, if any?
This project may overlap with other PCC projects such as continuity planning, e-portfolios, website/content management and portal software. It is also worth identifying what other local schools (PSU, Mt. Hood, Marylhurst, Linnfield, and Chemeketa) plan on doing with regards to course management.
Management Issues
Explain any management, control, and/or security issues that should be addressed when this project is complete.
Ongoing management of the course management system will require some new policy development to address both technical requirements and limitations (disk space) and legal regulations (FERPA). Technical considerations will include account management, single sign-on, course creation, enrollment changes, course archival, backup and restore policies, disk quota, software compatibility and support. Federal and state regulations must also be met. Issues of information security, privacy, grade and record archival, ADA and Section 508 compliance must all be addressed as part of the project.
Legal or Regulatory Impact
Are there any regulatory or legal reasons why this project should be implemented? If so, identify the mandated deadlines, if any.
Any new CMS must be compliant federal and state regulations regarding access and security and would therefore be an improvement upon the existing CMS.
Ongoing Workload Impact
What is the ongoing impact to the workload of PCC staff if this project is implemented? Include impact to technology support staff and impact to other staff due to changes in business processes.
The ongoing impact would be similar to the current workload. Most of the Distance Education staff spend a significant amount of their time working with course management software and online tools to compliment the software. If we integrate the CMS with PCC’s student information system (Banner), it is possible that less staff time would be spent on clerical and administrative tasks such as course creation and student enrollment. This is a desired outcome.
Impact of Not Doing
Explain the impact on the institution of not doing this project.
The alternative would be to continue using the current CMS, Blackboard CE Enterprise through it’s supported life, which ends in October, 2012. It is unknown if Blackboard would continue to license or host the software beyond that date.
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