Intention & Background

As part of the standard business practice of periodically re-evaluating vendor partnerships Boston University is conducting this investigation, reviewing BU’s Learning Management System (LMS) history, local (non-enterprise) LMS, and the  LMS arena at large.

The LMS at Boston University

Early History and Proliferation

Boston University first introduced a LMS in 1999, when the Office of Information Technology deployed Blackboard CourseInfo. At the same time as an alternative WebCT was introduced to the faculty as well. Both systems were integrated with roster management to draw the enrolled students for the managed classes from the Student Information System. Over time the software versions of CourseInfo and WebCT were upgraded and both systems were available for over a decade (CourseInfo retired 6/30/2010 and WebCT on 12/31/2012). In 2008 CourseInfo was superseded by Blackboard 8.
Another level of complexity was added in 2006 when the Office of Distance Education migrated their courses from a WebCT hosted instance of WebCT Vista to a locally hosted instance at Boston University. WebCT Vista became Blackboard Vista after Blackboard acquired WebCT. All online education was handled several years using Vista, until the Vista product line was discontinued by Blackboard. In September 2011 IS&T rolled out Blackboard 9.1 SP8 for Distance Education, with full adoption by Spring 2012. A large migration effort was accomplished and a locally hosted Blackboard 9.1 instance took over the role of the DE LMS.

Consolidation

Encouraged by the experience with Blackboard Learn 9.1 and the impending end-of-life of Blackboard 8 and the underlying platform IS&T, as charged by and in conjunction with a newly formed Learning Management Steering Committee, undertook an extensive investigation project to build a proof of concept of  a consolidated single instance of Bb Learn. The consolidated system was to serve as a centrally supported offering to the enterprise. The investigation yielded a positive outcome and a project to consolidate Blackboard 8, WebCT Campus Edition, and the DE instance of Blackboard 9.1 was initiated. The migration to the single instance was planned and executed, and since January 2013 a single instance of Blackboard Learn 9.1 SP8 serves as the enterprise-wide available and centrally supported LMS.

Blackboard 9.1 Migration to Managed Hosting

The centrally supported and locally hosted Bb Learn instance required constant attention and technical challenges resulted in significant service impact and downtime. An upgrade to Service Pack 11 was accomplished, but the incidents and negative impact on the teaching and learning community at Boston University continued. An investigation into migrating the LMS to a Blackboard Managed Hosting facility and full system administration by Blackboard Complex Hosting was undertaken. The results showed that managed hosting was an advantageous option that would deliver the LMS on a Software as a Service basis and free BU staff and infrastructure up and make the LMS more independent from local incidents and outages.

The full migration to a hosted instance was accomplished in July 2014, with 96 hours of total down time. Service resumed on July 7, 2014 after the migration and a full upgrade to SP 13 was accomplished. Since then Bb Learn at Boston University has undergone another software update in December 2014 (handled by Bb managed Hosting) and is now at the “April 2014” release level.

Local LMS Deployments

The School of Management at Boston University has a locally enhanced and integrated instance of Sakai serving their undergraduate and graduate students.

Market Overview and Factors

Over the last few years the LMS world at large experienced the effects of:

  • Global economy shifts
  • MOOCs and related delivery platforms (Coursera, edX. etc.)
  • New entrants (Instructure)
  • New or expanded concepts

Boston University became a member of the edX consortium and Boston University’s Digital Learning Initiative began to offer MOOCs using the edX Platform. In an assessment of the edX platform it was determined that at the current state of the the platform it would not lend itself to play the role as the enterprise-level LMS.

These new or expanded concepts in the LMS arena and IT services in general are:

  • Proprietary software licensed under the exclusive legal right of the copyright holder. Licensees are granted certain usage rights but are restricted from such uses as modification, further distribution, or reverse engineering (e.g., Blackboard).
  • Open-source software with source code that is made publicly available, enabling anyone to copy, modify, and redistribute them without paying royalties or fees (e.g., Moodle, Instructure).
  • Community-source software with academic community coordination mechanisms that build on the practices of open-source communities. Programs resulting from these collective efforts are distributed via an approved Open Source Initiative license (e.g., Sakai).
  • Availability of cloud-based offerings of LMS (e.g. Blackboard’s Course Sites, Instructure Canvas).
  • Managed Hosted instances of proprietary software (e.g. Blackboard).