Deployment

The Plan

Utilization of WebCT has grown each year despite the limitations of this Course Management System. This is a tribute to the willingness (and tenacity) of instructors and students to extend the traditional classroom and take advantage of the capabilities of online instruction and interaction. The Desire2Learn application is - in the opinion of the faculty and students who participated in the selection process - “very intuitive, easy to use and full-featured”. As you have an opportunity to use this learning management system now named Springboard!, we are confident that you will share this opinion.

Migration of Current WebCT course content

  1. Identify all the courses to be taught in Spring 2008 that used WebCT in the Spring 2007 semester (or Fall 2007 if more current).
  2. Use the REQUEST FORM to select your courses. Your UANet ID and password will be required so only courses where you are listed as the designer will be displayed.
  3. Restore those courses so that instructors have an opportunity to work with support personnel to optimize the course content in preparation for migration to Springboard. Optimization includes reducing the size of image files, PowerPoint presentations, video files and any other files that are too large to be delivered effectively in a web-based environment.
  4. Migrate optimized course content into course shells on Springboard.
  5. Prepare the courses for use by students in Spring 2008 semester.

Integrate the Learning Object Repository

An important feature of the Springboard! architecture is the Learning Object Repository (LOR). This feature makes it possible to share resources between course sections and between courses. For example, it is possible to create a 'master' course and then base multiple sections on that master course. This will ensure that students in each section of the course will have access to the most current resources available since it will be simple to update the LOR with an additional resource or a new version of an existing resource.

New users

Any faculty member or instructor who is willing to learn how to use Springboard! is welcome. Visit the Education page for more details.