Change Management

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Last updated: Feb 23, 2007 by Corey Owens (Unlicensed)Version comment
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CHANGE MANAGEMENT

NOTE: This document is under constructions and should not be considered final. (DRAFT v.1)

As with any transition to a new technology, the introduction of the new UC Davis Collaboration and Learning Environment must be carefully planned and implemented. One safe assumption: Some faculty and staff will resist change, even positive change.

A. Current UC Davis Course Management Situation
B. Why this change?
C. Who will be affected by this change?
D. How will the campus community be prepared for this change?

A. Current UC Davis Course Management Situation

At UC Davis, a number of course management tools have been available to faculty and students for the last several years. These are tools designed to:

  • More easily manage key administrative functions, such as
    • distributing course materials and information through course Web sites
    • assessing student learning through online interactive quizzes, and
    • tracking student grades with the help of electronic grade books.
  • Communicate electronically (e.g., email, threaded discussion boards, chat rooms), such as
    • faculty-to-student
    • faculty-to-group, and
    • student-to-student communication.

In addition, faculty responded very favorably to the Fall 2004 campus decision to require that final grades be submitted electronically.

  • Many instructors used the GradeBook tool available in MyUCDavis
  • Others opted for the simplified electronic grade submission tool available from the Online Grading Web site.

Although many faculty do not use the current MyUCDavis course management tools, over time, the adoption rate has increased to the point that in Winter 2005, the following statistics were registered (see Appendix for detailed analysis):

  • 6,679 graded classes (includes all the 199 / 299 research or TA credit hours).
  • 2,047 Instructors of Record
  • 28% of instructors used Website Builder
  • 40% of courses used GradeBook.

B. Why this change?

Known issues with current CMS

Over time, a number of issues have surfaced with the MyUCDavis Course management system.

  • Many faculty and students have voiced concern about the system's slowness and instability
  • "It is imperative that UCD's enterprise-level learning information systems keep pace with the ever-increasing demands and expectations of students and instructors, quickly adapt to the rapidly changing technology environment, and be the most cost-effective solution possible." (CCFIT CMS Report)
  • Need to flesh out this section....What other issues?
    Need for a new Collaborative Learning Environment
    New learning tools and virtual learning spaces are needed to bring together people with common interests and to foster collaboration between students, between instructors, as well as among students, instructors and other learning partners. Examples/existing challenges:
  • Instructors do not have the tools to foster collaborative learning outside of class.
  • Instructors who are collaborating on interdepartmental, interdisciplinary, team-taught courses do not have adequate tools to manage these courses.
  • Student expectations are increasingly shaped by sophisticated social networking environments to which they are accustomed.

New opportunities

Sakai Consortium

  • Has its origins at the University of Indiana and the University of Michigan, where both universities independently began open source efforts to replicate and enhance the functionality of their existing course management systems (CMSs). The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford soon joined in, along with the Open Knowledge Initiative and the uPortal consortium. The Mellon Foundation provided a generous grant to help establish Sakai.
  • Primary goal: deliver an application framework and associated tools and components that are designed to work together.
    • Components are intended for course management and research collaboration.
    • Tools are being built by designers, software architects and developers at different institutions, using a variation of open source development strategies.
    • Sakai Educational Partners Program and the Sakai Commercial Affiliates Program: Launched in February 2004 to provide a support system for institutions that want to be involved in the Sakai Project, either by adopting Sakai tools or by developing tools for inter-institutional portability.
  • Being called a "Collaboration and Learning Environment" (CLE), replacing the better-known terms "Course Management System" (CMS) or "Learning Management System" (LMS).
  • Several software releases; most recent is 2.2.
  • System is stable but continually evolving, by design.
    University of California's Involvement:
  • UC System has a very strong presence in the national Sakai consortium, with five member campuses: UCLA, UC Merced, UC Berkeley, UC Santa Barbara, and UC Davis.
  • Remaining campuses (UC Irvine, UC Santa Cruz, UC Riverside, and UC San Diego) are very interested in Sakai, but have solid existing systems and are not ready to incur the costs, for both change management and implementation, of a transition. However, if all goes well with other campus implementations, they are likely to follow ? especially if we can find ways to leverage each other's knowledge and staff, and systemwide resources.
  • Add implementation timeframes for the campuses that are moving forward with Sakai.

Campus decision to adopt Sakai as platform for new CMS

  • At UC Davis, the decision was made to adopt Sakai as the platform for the new campus learning and collaboration environment in summer 2005.
  • UC Davis has been a member of the Sakai Educational Partners Program (SEPP) since December 2003 and on the board since June 2004. UC Davis has had the opportunity to contribute to and define the tools available in the Sakai framework, and we are leading a project to integrate the Sharable Courseware Object Reference Model (SCORM) engine into the Sakai environment. (SCORM is a suite of technical standards that enable web-based learning systems to find, import, share, reuse, and export learning content in a standardized way.)
  • The decision to adopt Sakai was based in large part on IET's involvement in the national consortium, as well as plans the School of Medicine and the School of Veterinary Medicine were developing to launch pilot projects.
  • In addition, in Spring 2005, a subcommittee of the Campus Council for Information Technology (CCFIT) was charged with investigating current and potential campus course management systems. By June 2005, they released their report recommending campus adoption of Sakai.
  • In Summer 2005, the Vice Provost-IET formed an Oversight Committee, and initiated the campus migration to the Sakai platform to complement Veterinary Medicine and School of Medicine.
  • The Sakai platform will be the basis for the new UC Davis Learning System and will integrate with our student systems and other campus systems.

Status and next steps:

  • The first phase of the UC Davis implementation is now underway. Using the Sakai 2.0 release, a 'preview' pilot is being conducted with a select number of instructors. The winter 2006 and spring 2006 previews will serve to capture local issues for UC Davis and ease the transition for instructors and students. The current roll-out plans are:
  • Winter 2006: Pilot Using v. 2.1; CCFIT appointing task group to help guide implementation
  • Spring/Summer 2006: Major new release and further pilots
  • Fall 2006: Full pilot for any course with full rosters, sections etc.

Benefits of UC Davis participation in national open source consortium:

Being an integral part of the Sakai collaboration has enabled UC Davis to

  • Channel its requirements directly into the development process,
  • Contribute greatly to a project that has already made a significant impact in the area of learning systems on an international level
  • Collaborate with and leverage resources from peer institutions more closely than we could in the past (which in turn allows us to integrate innovative tools that have been developed elsewhere and develop a product that our few local developers could never achieve alone)
  • Have access to support and community discussion groups that collaborate on diverse issues (e.g., pedagogy, campus integrations), and
  • Work toward developing and implementing a single collaboration and learning enterprise system.

C. Who will be affected by this change?

The new course management system is designed primarily for UC Davis students and faculty. They are expected to be the heaviest users of the system and will be the primary target of external communications.

Primary audience: Instructors

  • Instructors already using MyUCDavis. They will need to be informed of the differences between their current tools and the new ones. They will also need assistance to make the transition.
  • Instructors using a course management system other than MyUCDavis. Whether they are using a departmental, open source, or commercial system, they too will need to be informed of the new system's tools, features, and functionality. They may also require assistance making the transition to the new system.
  • Instructors who have no or very limited experience with course management systems ('late adopters'). This group is expected to require significant help.
  • Teaching assistants - flesh out their needs here.

Secondary audiences: "agents of change":

  • Campus technical support staff
  • Campus administrative support staff
  • Campus advisory groups
  • Campus administration

1. Need to identify instructors who are using MyUCDavis CMS

  • Who are they? How many? Colleges/schools?
  • What tools are they using?
  • How long have they used those tools?
  • What do they like about the tools they're using?
  • What don't they like?

2. Need to identify instructors who've never used MyUCDavis CMS

  • who are they?
  • are they using a different CMS (moodle? Homegrown? Open source? Commercial? Etc.)
  • why haven't they switched to MyUCDavis CMS?
  • What would make it easier for them to switch to or adopt the new system?

D. How will the campus community be prepared for this change?

A number of strategies and tactics are proposed to prepare the campus community for this change. These are described in the sections that follow (see Communication as well as Support and Training).

SmartSite Summer 2006