Students will begin to see the transition from Blackboard to Moodle and the ushering in of new usernames in the coming months.
Tom Bonvillain, director of academic computing, said the proposed plan is to replace Blackboard with Moodle by the second summer intersession.
The first step in the transition, Bonvillain said, is getting all faculty members set up with a private “sandbox,” an area in which they can begin to make new course development. Faculty members are no longer able to make any new course developments on Blackboard.
Though faculty members can transfer their existing courses to the Moodle system, Bonvillain said that the converter made a jumbled mess of the information.
“We’ve had a bunch of teachers look at it and say, ‘I just as well start over.’ “
Once the system is up and running, it will serve as a cost-saving method for the University and provide a more beneficial outlet for receiving information, Bonvillain said. Though all the features in Moodle are similar to the ones on Blackboard, a course can be laid out in topics, as it is currently, or in a weekly format.
Usernames are in a period of transition as well, Bonvillain said.
Two types of usernames are currently in use, one that was created in the Plus System and one that was created in its successor, Banner. The goal is to have every student utilizing his or her Banner usernames, the third party ID located in the top right corner of the system, within days of the end of the spring semester, Bonvillain said.
Academic computing manually maintains the old usernames, IDs with the first four letters of a student’s last name, first initial and three numbers, because they do not exist in Banner, Bonvillain explained. This is not only a difficult task to continually monitor but is also potentially unsafe in regards to student’s accounts, Bonvillain said.
“This is one of the last remnants of the conversion (to Banner) that needs to happen,” Bonvillain said.
E-mail accounts, however, will not be changed, Bonvillain said. Any accounts in the old formats are essentially serving as an alias for the newly converted Gmail system, and students can continue to use their accounts like normal.
Though the University is aware of the severity of such a change, it is one that is necessary, Bonvillain said.
“It is a drastic change, but we’re increasing the probability of errors if we continue to manage the usernames outside of Banner.”
Bonvillain said that he urges all students to become familiar with their third party ID, found by logging into the Banner system, in preparation for the changes.
