1	ITSP WebCT Vista Update and Desktop, Notebook & Printer Purchasing Standards Allen R. Taylor Office of the Vice President/CIO Director IT Research, Planning & Standards Vista Executive Project Director January 2004
2	What is WebCT Vista? An Enterprise Course Management System WebCT Vista features a state-of-the-art, multi-tier architecture that is 100% Java 2 Platform based and Enterprise Edition (J2EE) compliant. WebCT Vista leverages the BEA WebLogic Enterprise Server at the application layer and the Oracle 9i Database. The WebCT Vista SDK includes native Java interfaces carefully developed for external use and based on Web Services standards (WSDL, SOAP and HTTP). Using the WebCT Vista SDK, institutions have the ability to expand their e-learning environment and integrate learning applications running on any server or client platform, written in any language.
3	Marshall Vista Environment
4	What is a Course Management System (CMS)? Course Management System (CMS) is a term used in Higher Education and is analogous to the term Learning Management System (LMS) that is used in industry. Course Management Systems provide a repository for technology enabled course content and usually provide a process for: Registering Students and Maintaining Student Records Course Content Delivery and Management Student Assessment (Quizzes, Exams, and Surveys) Tracking Student Activity & Progress Class collaboration tools like discussions, email, and chat Student progress and grading Evaluations
5	Sounds like WebCT Campus Edition that we have been using for years… What do we hope to accomplish with Vista that we could not with WebCT CE? Scalability, WebCT CE is based on an IT Architecture that works fine with a limited number of courses and concurrent users but will not scale to handle all of our courses at Marshall. Usability – We needed to improve the usability of our CMS. The learning curve for faculty was too high. Reliability – We wanted an architecture that had built in redundancy to support nearly 24/7/365 operation. Standards – The product strategy needed to be moving toward the emerging standards including IMS and SCORM (more on this later).
6	The Vista Project Goals Convert from WebCT Campus Edition to Vista completely by Fall 2004. Create a presence for all courses in Vista by Fall 2004. Make Vista the primary Web interface to course information and management for both students and faculty. Integrate Vista to the myMU portal and Banner allowing myMU to become a secondary (backup) communication system for course information. Improve the sharing of content modules between courses and with other institutions. Others?… final scope will be set in January 2004 by the Vista Planning Group.
7	Technology Hype Cycle
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9	Who are the players today?
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13	Integration is the Key! Many of the benefits of a CMS or LMS is greatly improved with integration to other Enterprise systems. Improved customer/patron/student service Lower cost Easier to support Enables superior features
14	Gartner predicts….. By 2005, at least 60 percent of new higher-education IT spending will go toward acquiring and supporting academic technologies, including e-learning, content management and library management systems (0.7probability). By 2005, competitive differentiation between higher-education institutions on the basis of e-learning capability will widen dramatically due to a larger, more-tiered product marketplace (0.8 probability).
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16	Vendor Lock-in and Standards Elimination of vendor lock-in One of the historical issues with e-learning content has been that it is often in a proprietary format, making it difficult to integrate with e-learning software. This created integration barriers or obstacles for enterprises and meant that every release of software had to be tested with every change to any content. These early problems with content integration are one of the reasons that the SCORM, Sharable Courseware Object Reference Model, standard was developed. By leveraging SCORM and the standard application programming interface calls it uses for interfacing into LMSs, enterprises can ensure that their content is portable across multiple LMSs. This is important, because many enterprises will have multiple LMSs.
17	Vista Implementation Schedule at Marshall University October 2001 – we began to explore alternatives in the CMS market space as a replacement to WebCT CE. November 2001 – began discussion with the HEPC on CMS products. July 2002 – finalized some base requirements and some projections on scale needed by Marshall and continued to look at market trends and product announcements. August 2002 – continued discussions with HEPC regarding an acquisition of an enterprise CMS . October 2002 - began serious look at the WebCT Vista product with potential funding support from the HEPC. November 2002 – initiated acquisition of WebCT Vista with funding support from the HEPC. December 2002 – Vista Implementation Planning & Project Groups were established. March 2003 – completed Vista product and services acquisition. April 2003 – detailed Vista project planning began.
18	Vista Schedule (cont.) May 2003 – finalized Vista Implementation plan June 2003 – Vista administrative & pilot faculty training June 2003 – Vista 2.0 installation July 2003 – pilot course conversions August 2003 – production pilot begins with batch integration to Banner September 2003 – document production bugs October 2003 – establish comprehensive bug list and adjust pilot schedule accordingly October 2003 – expand pilot for spring courses October 2003 – expanded faculty training begins November 2003 – migrate CE 3.6 beta server to CE 3.8 December 2003 – finalize Vista scope and final implementation schedule December 2003 – migrate Vista to production hardware
19	Vista Schedule (cont.) January 2004 – CE 3.8 and Vista 2.0.3 go production February 2003 to August 2003 - continue faculty orientation, training and Vista communication plan March 2004 – implement Vista 3.0 pre-production environment April 2004 – make Vista 3.0 pre-production available for testing to faculty May 2004 – document bugs in Vista 3.0 June 2004 – make Vista 3.0.1 available in pre-production available for testing to faculty July 2004 – document bugs remaining in Vista 3.0.1 August 2004 – upgrade Vista production environment to Vista 3.x
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21	Vista Tour Register with Matt Christian for one of the Vista Orientation Sessions Or go to: http://gromit.webct.com/vistatour/ More complete version of this presentation at: http://www.marshall.edu/it Choose About IT and then Seminar Presentations
22	Vista Questions? Allen R. Taylor Office of the Vice President/CIO Director IT Research, Planning & Standards Vista Executive Project Director Allen.Taylor@Marshall.edu
23	Desktop & Notebook Purchasing Standards You should continue to budget replacement on a three to five year lifecycle averaging four years for most systems. Current Standards: Dell Optiplex GX270 Desktop. Dell Latitude D600 or D800 Notebook. Dell X300 sub-notebook will be added in January 2004. A new Dell X300 based Tablet PC will be added in the second quarter of 2004 after its release. A new Dell GX280 is expected to be available by July 2004. We will be evaluating it in May/June. You should be planning for the phase out of GX110s this year GX150s by July 2005 and GX240s by July 2006. You should continue to budget $1,800 for the standard desktop and $2,500 for the standard notebook.
24	Staying with Dell but continuing to look at IBM and HP Products We will continue our exclusive Dell sourcing for desktops, notebooks, and servers for the rest of this fiscal year. We will, as in years past, continue to examine other leading vendors on an annual basis. Both IBM and HP will be considered this year again. Refer to the Gartner Enterprise Desktop and Notebook PC Magic Quadrants for second half 2003. This is a new replacement of Gartner’s old PC Vendor Tiering that substantiates our choice for the past six years to choose Dell as our major vendor.
25	Desktop PC Magic Quadrant
26	Notebook Magic Quadrant
27	Issues to be considered in the near future? Feedback? Elimination of the 1.44MB Diskette Drive as part of the standard by July 2004? Increased utilization of USB Drives Increased use of CD-R/RW or DVD+R/RW Increased use of other media like Compact Flash, SD, etc. Gigabit Ethernet to the desktop beginning in 2004 and expected to be completed campus wide by 2008. What should the priorities be? Expansion of WiFi Wireless (802.11 a/b/g)? Do you have a need? It is available now! What are you seeing in RAM requirements? Is 512MB still adequate for the standard desktop/notebook? What are you experiencing with Flat Panels? Can they last through two systems? What demand do you see for Tablet PCs?
28	Faculty, Staff & Student Personal Purchases http://www.marshall.edu/personalpurchase http://www.marshall.edu/personalpurchase/dell
29	All Institutional Purchases Refer to our Dell Premier Site ONLY: http://www.dell.com/premier You must establish an account to login to see the configurations and generate electronic quotes to order from. If you do not have an account you can request one from me or your buyer in purchasing. Your purchasing agent or I can do the electronic quotes for you if you wish. On orders of 15 or more units in a single order please contact me for special pricing.
30	Printers – HP is still the standard E&I Contracts Available as Purchasing has advertised recently. Open Systems of Cleveland Contract still has better pricing on most products (available in PDF format from your me or your buyer). New low end laser (HP 1012 & 1050) available for <$200. Still recommend workgroup printers from HP like the 4200 and 4300 series ranging from $1,350 to $2,250 where logistics permit. Consider extended warranties. WiFi and Bluetooth Printing? What are your thoughts? Color is cheaper but standard for variable consumption pricing will not be here until 2005. Recommended Color Laser is the HP 5500 ($3,200 to $5,000) although the HP 4600 starting at about $2,000 is reasonable for lower volume and non-tabloid (11”x17”) color printing.
31	Questions, Comments, or Recommendations? Allen R. Taylor Office of the Vice President/CIO Director IT Research, Planning & Standards (304)696-6195 Allen.Taylor@Marshall.edu