IT Issues

Technology Integration Subcommittee

Suggestion for Help Desk: Explore single dial-in number. Have a single dial in 800 number that all students use for help desk. the recording asks you to type in your schools initials, ex: RODP would be 7637, ROCC would be 7622, ROCE would be 7623, Northeast State would be 67822 or 6782, Nashville State would be 6722. From 7am to 7pm your call is routed to the campus help desk number. From 7pm to 7am your call is routed to a central help desk. this makes it easier on students to only have to know 1 number.

Campus Access levels to Administrator D2L and Branding Issues Sub-Team
Team Members: Clarence Dobson, Tom Wallace

Campus Access Levels:

·        What are they?
·        How many are there?
·        Has anyone seen an administrator interface?     Answer: No
·        What type of anti-virus will be running on the servers/instances?

Recommendations:
·        Be able to set groups at the Campus, Department/Division, Course level’
·        Allow multiple administrators/designers with different Login Names to keep change tracking separated.
·        Be able to set, start, and stop Banner/SIS2D2L, D2L2Banner/SIS integration when/if needed
·        Be able to pull student/course/data from SIS/Banner and apply it to D2L
·        Be able to access logs on the system level.
·        Be able to recreate past semester courses content in toto.
·        Be able to perform course backup and place result on local drives
·        Be able to set "dummy accounts"
·        Be able to set up "Specialty classes" and populate them from D2L
·        Be able to reference accounts by groups.
·        Be able to set some courses as limited access and some as public access on the same instance
·        Course populating??? content populating?? Current semester - next semester. Content roll-over from semester to semester.

Branding Issues:

·        What privileges do we have?
·        How do you do branding? Do you need system level access to change logos, colors, etc
·        How do you restrict branding?
·        Is D2L ADA Compliant?

3^rd Party Software:

· Challenge(s): Discuss the concerns regarding 3^rd party software programs (Respondus, StudyMate, Wimba products, book vendor e-pack, etc.) that are used in the current course management systems(s)

Please see the separate Third Party Software page to let us know what you are using.

· Discussion:

§ How many 3^rd party software programs are currently being used?

§ Are they compatible with D2L?

· Recommendation:

§ Since it would be impossible to guess which software programs each TBR school is using, we recommend that a survey be sent to the TBR schools requesting information on which 3rd party programs are used in or with their course management system.

§ The survey results can then be sent to D2L so that they can inform us of which programs they do or do not work with.

§ The survey results would also give D2L an idea of which software programs TBR school systems are using so that if they are not compatible they can work on resolving that problem.

Migration:

· Challenge(s): Discuss the concerns regarding migrating to a new course management system.

· Discussion:

§ Would migration of courses be handled the same at each campus?

§ What are the options for migrating from WebCT or Blackboard to D2L? (backup, restore, IMS)

§ Since WebCT has a December 31, 2007 “time bomb”, who should be responsible for backing up faculty course content (text, assignments, quizzes, etc) in a way where faculty could have accesses for changes or updates?

§ Is there an Admin way to “batch” convert all master courses, templates and training courses into an IMS format so that they may be “batch” imported onto the D2L development server?

§ Who should be responsible for converting courses IMS format?

· Recommendation:

§ Since each campus may have a different migration technique, we recommend that each “campus plan” include a course migration technique and timeline with a “completed by” date that gives faculty, support staff, or professional staff ample time to fix, edit, or update course content / design.

§ We recommend that each campus make faculty aware that WebCT is “time bombed” and no one, not even IT, will be able to access their course content or course records.

§ We recommend that each campus provide faculty with tutorial information for backing up:

Ø Course content

Ø Quizzes

Ø Student Grades (for archiving)

Ø Any data needed from inside WebCT

o Example: Data needed in the instance of a student contesting a grade

o We recommend that if a campus does not have IT or support staff to assist in the above recommendations, that campus should be provided with assistance from another TBR entity.

Comments

From TWallace - 12/1/06 7:14 AM

With regard to the third party product compatibility - it was my understanding that some of the functionality currently delivered through the third party products is native to D2L, eliminating the need for these products. I'm not sure which team should access this but I'd recommend that this be explored.

From jonbooker - 11/30/06 9:09 AM

Each campus should develop a very tight timeline of transition to D2L. The timeline should be consistent with RODP transition.

Early notification of faculty and staff to backup course content and download from server to their computer. An alternative would be to have the administrator do a complete backup of each course on the system. I would be best to charge the faculty and staff with this responsibility.

Make sure faculty and staff are of aware of the process of exporting content modules and quizzes for transfer to D2L.

Request Desire2Learn become proactive with third party software providers (Respondus, StudyMate, MyMathLab, Elluminate, and others) to make sure we have a smooth integration from WebCT to D2L.

Conduct a survey of faculty and staff as to important third party software that is currently being used with WebCT. See what the problems are and how we might meet the needs of these groups.

From jbryan - 11/28/06 12:05 PM

D2L Issues from the Integration Team

1. The system should present the student with one class schedule on Luminis presented in one Luminis channel. The one class list should include campus based courses (credit courses), RODP courses, ROCE courses, and so-called “non-catalog” courses. All courses should be accessible via Single Signon from Luminis to D2L.

2. Will authentication for D2L logon from each campus’s authentication server, or will it be from a central authentication server at D2L?

3. Will the D2L integration with Banner be real-time? Will the D2L integration with Banner use LDI? The use of LDI is important because there are a number of Banner forms that support the management of the LDI interface. Without the use of LDI, there will be no Banner forms to support the management of the D2L integration with Banner.

4. D2L integration must support SIS for schools that are still on SIS and Banner for schools that have completed the conversion to Banner. There will be periods during the conversion when schools will be using SIS and Banner at the same time. How will D2L integration work when a school is using SIS and Banner at the same time?

5. A campus based authentication server could fail. For example, the server itself could fail, there could be a failure of the Internet between D2L and the campus, or the campus could suffer an extended power outage. Does D2L have a failover capability to continue running (for example, using a cached copy users’ password) if the campus authentication server fails?

6. A campus may have a primary and a secondary authentication server. Does D2L have a failover capability from the campus’s primary to secondary authentication server in the event that the primary authentication server fails?

7. The “My Courses” channel in Luminis must function successfully with the D2L server with a hosted scenario such as D2L’s. To that end, what information must reside in the Luminis LDAP and what information is stored in the D2L server.

8. Can you help us find a school that has successfully integrated D2L outsourcing with Luminis and Banner. Integration with Banner alone is not sufficient. We need to talk to a school with both Luminis and Banner.

From rickcruse - 11/28/06 9:36 AM

Security:

To address Ferpa/Hippa issues, the application must use SSL and some type of secure authentication.
With data housed in a different state, are there concerns governing when and how information can be subpoenaed that contrast with TBR guidelines and TN state law? This goes beyond copywrite of materials and focuses on what happens to our data if authorities in another state determine they need information from the data center or a particular server. Although we 'own' the data, laws of the state housing the information will override our guidelines and laws where they conflict with the other state.

Campus Network Bandwidth (BW):

How much bw does an average transaction use? After receiving information from d2l about the payload of the application, sites should review their current bw usage and determine whether there is sufficient bw to support another application. Specific guidelines would be to determine whether there is available bw at peak utilization times.
What types of traffic, protocols, and ports are necessary for usage?

if they are non-standard ports, how do we ensure those ports are available for an off-campus user using network services via the public vs campus networks?

How are the data transferred?
What impact will the customer notice due to latency of a WAN connection rather than using campus resources. (IT staff should be aware this could impact how the application launches through the portal. WAN issues could impact all portions of the portal if the connection to the internet is experiencing issues as the portal attempts to establish sessions with the d2l site)
Does d2l recommend any type of Quality of service or Traffic Shaping to improve performance?

Disaster Recovery:

Backups

What is the backup window?
Are backup tapes housed off-site?
Is there user impact during this window?
Are there addtional fees associated with any recovery from backup, whether it's a user or system level restore?

Maintenance

What are the windows for scheduled maintenance?
What is the frequency of version upgrades? (Can we see a copy of the product roadmap).
On upgrades, since these are separate instances, what is the impact on an institution that has issues after a major or minor revision to the application or underlying software? Would it require a rollback for all institutions? How can we mitigate the impact of such upgrades?

Failover

Are there multiple locations available in the event of catastrophic failure? Are the locations geographically diverse?
Are the sites synchronized via remote cloning? Live replication? If a restore from tape at another location is necessary, what are the contracted recovery point objectives?
When was failover last tested and how often is DR tested?

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Last Modified 11/30/06 1:56 PM