LearnUCS Summer Upgrade - July 20th 2013

LearnUCS is scheduled to be upgraded on Saturday 20th July to the latest stable Blackboard release (SP12). This will involve the service being unavailable on the Friday 19th from 17.00, being upgraded on the Saturday, tested by the Elevate Team on Sunday 21st, and available by 8.00 on Monday 22nd (if not earlier).

We have already worked with Blackboard to complete a successful upgrade on our test environment which has passed our Phase 1 Test Plan. This is great news, and means we are very confident to be able to deliver the upgrade on the live LearnUCS platform within the timeline above.

The latest version will provide some enhanced functionality around common task, often requested by Staff and Students. These include:

• inline marking: enhance the feedback process


• discussion board redesign: it actually works like a discussion board


• enhanced statistics


• improved notifications


• completely redesigned Text Editor


• new Calendars


• video Everywhere: direct upload from webcam

A more detailed timeline is:

May

Technical: Elevate

• 
  

  Upgrade Test Environment to SP12 [Bbd MH] (Complete)

  
  

Project Management

• 
  

  Project Documentation  [AB] (Created)

  
  

Communication

• 
  

  Setup project blog area [AB] (Complete)

  
  


• 
  

  Meet with Course Admins - 23 May (Complete)

  
  

June

Technical: Elevate

• 
  

  Test Integrations on Test Environment [AB] (Complete)

  
  


• 
  

  Offer access to upgraded Test Environment to champions [AB] (Started Rollout Offer)

  
  


• 
  

  Identify common tasks and document how to do this in the new version [AB] (Complete)

  
  


• 
  

  Building Block Management (see risk log) - first exploration for turning off LO (wiki, blog, expo), safeAssign submissions, course merge functionality [AB] (Complete)

  
  


• 
  

  Agree new course template with Academic Services [AB]

  
  

User testing

• 
  

  identify the power groups (staff & system / course admins) and the tasks they need to complete. what did they do? how did they find it? did it meet their needs? do they like it? [AB]

  
  

Staff & Student Support

• 
  

  design work packages for FAQs and Videos - what scenarios do we need to cover? [AB]

  
  

July

Technical: Elevate

• 
  

  Upgrade Production Environment to SP12 [Bbd MH]

  
  


• 
  

  course design applied to Template [AB]

  
  


• 
  

  Roll out 13/14 modules

  
  

 Once we have completed the remaining June tasks, we will update the blog.  If you wish to try out the new LearnUCS (SP12) in the test environment please email elevate@ucs.ac.uk to request access.