In advance of our migration from Managed Hosting with Blackboard to Saas (Software as a Service) hosting in the Amazon Cloud during December Break 2017, we are reviewing the possibility of upgrading during the week between Summer 2017 and Fall 2017 terms.

Why upgrade? We are currently on the Spring 2016 release of Blackboard that will be supported through Spring 2018. To minimize disruption, we plan to migrate on the same version we are on when we migrate in December. We’d like to have a bit more time to evaluate new versions as well as the new Ultra user interface available in the SaaS environment. To give users time to learn about the new options, we are considering an upgrade in August to either the Fall 2016 or Spring 2017 releases of Blackboard giving us more time to roll out changes in the new environment.

Additional considerations are the new features available in the two releases since our last upgrade. Instructors have been asking for drag and drop file upload capability and this feature is available starting in the Fall 2016 release and extended to more parts of the interface in the Spring 2017 release. Another needed feature is the availability of submission receipts for students in the new releases. These two features are significant changes that have been requested and we would like, if possible, to deliver them sooner rather than later.

During the month of June we will test the Fall 2016 version of Blackboard in our test environment and then in July test the Spring 2017 version. Once we have completed testing, we will decide on which version we will upgrade to during the week between summer and fall terms. LIT as well as a few CPCE staff will be testing the new releases. We have a few faculty volunteers testing as well. LIT testers have a script to follow which we hope catches most of the bugs but there are always a few different ways of doing things (and a few creative ways as well) that we don’t always check every way a task can be accomplished. Faculty testers will help us identify additional testing steps for incorporation in to our test scripts as well as catching bugs we would not find otherwise.

If you would be willing to test the new versions please contact me (cookel@wit.edu) and I’ll set you up with an account and sandbox course on the test server. All we ask of faculty is that you do the things you do to set up a course in Blackboard and let us know if you have any problems.