Blackboard Learn SaaS: Options for Moving Forward - North Dakota ...

March 26, 2018

                               Blackboard Learn SaaS:
                             Options for Moving Forward
The ability to achieve the NDSBHE’s goal of a single Learning Management System (LMS) for the
University System is under review after the new Blackboard Learn SaaS environment
experienced outage and performance issues.

The NDUS has three options for consideration in assessing the direction forward. Within each of
the three options, there are correlated impacts on contractual agreements/licensing; migration
windows of opportunity and staffing; and ongoing technical support. However, one common
goal does continue to unite the 11 institutions of the NDUS and Core Technology Services (CTS):
the LMS must work and it must work well for faculty, students, and staff.

   Option #1: As currently scheduled, continue migration toward a single LMS.

   The 11 NDUS institutions and CTS have focused on this option since the NDSBHE approved
   the single LMS plan during its May 2016 board meeting. Most of the migration planning is
   already finished and more than half of the institutions (six) have already migrated. The
   remaining work is scheduled for completion in July 2018.

          Contract Considerations: Shortly after the Board approved the single LMS plan, the
           contractual agreement/licensing was negotiated and signed. The NDUS is currently
           operating in the second year of the five-year agreement. CTS fully funds the annual
           licensing costs. The average annual savings across the NDUS is calculated at more
           than $477,000 annually, as compared to the previous, distributed LMS environment.

          Migration Considerations: Six of the 11 institutions started operating in the new,
           single LMS at the start of the Fall 2017 semester (BSC, LRSC, NDSCS, VCSU, UND, and
           WSC). DSU and DCB are piloting some courses during the Spring 2018 semester and
           are scheduled to migrate their remaining courses at the conclusion of the term. The
           final three schools – MaSU, MiSU, and NDSU – are all scheduled to migrate starting
           in the Spring of 2018, go live for Summer 2018, and be finished with all migration
           work before the start of the Fall 2018 semester.

          Technical Support Considerations: The new LMS is governed by an Executive Steering
           Committee, a Functional Committee, and a Technical Committee. The Functional
           and Technical Committees meet bi-weekly to discuss on-going operations and
           issues.

           With a single instance LMS, CTS can do the work one time for all the campuses on a
           shared service rather than replicating and duplicating the same effort at multiple

institutions that support separate instances of LMS. Examples include delivering
       courses and students to the LMS from the student information system; ensuring
       third-party integrations work correctly; and managing configurations, settings,
       permissions, and templates. Concurrently, each institution has node administrative
       rights that still give campuses the ability to manage issues related to their
       institution.

      Risk Assessment: Continued poor performance is the primary risk with this option.
       Blackboard’s poor performance has frustrated faculty, staff and students. Some
       faculty have already decided to stop using the LMS and some institutions are
       concerned that their brand identity has been or will be negatively impacted by the
       performance issues. Under the cloud of technical performance uncertainty,
       continuing the migration as currently scheduled presents a risk to both the
       campuses currently using the NDUS tenant and also to those yet to be migrated.

Option #2: Pause the migration until system stability has been validated and then resume
the migration to a single LMS. The pause could consist of a couple of different scenarios:
one or more campuses could pause while the others continue as planned or all five
campuses would pause and restart at a later date. The pause could be for a short period of
time, measured in weeks or it could be a lengthier time measured in months.

      Contract Considerations: The Blackboard contract consists of two primary
       components: Services and Licensing. The Services component provides vendor
       resources for such things as project management, project technical support, and
       training. In the original contract, the Services component was set to expire in March
       2018. However, the Services component was extended to its current expiration date
       of August 2018. With licensing, the NDUS is currently operating in the second year of
       the five-year agreement. CTS also pays for the ongoing support costs associated with
       Moodle (approx. $45,000 annually).

       Risk Assessment: A pause of any kind would have negligible impact on the
       Blackboard contract. Another extension of the Services component could be done
       with minor adjustments. Meanwhile, the NDUS would continue with the existing
       Blackboard licensing. However, the Moodle services contract would need to be
       extended until all Moodle campuses have successfully migrated to the single LMS.
       The additional extra costs will be dependent upon the length of a pause and the
       number of current Moodle schools that continue to use it.

      Migration Considerations: Annually, there are three optimum windows of
       opportunity to migrate to a new LMS: immediately after the fall semester,
       immediately after the spring semester, or during the summer months leading up to
       the start of the fall term. Of the three options, the least favorable window is after
       the fall term – it is simply too hard to change to a new LMS in the middle of a school
       year. That leaves the fast approaching end of spring semester, the soon after
       summer months, or a longer delay.

Risk Assessment: A short pause would substantially constrict the migration window
       between now, the end of the Spring 2018 semester, and the start of the Fall 2018
       semester. A reduced window of opportunity increases the risk of a possible LMS
       delay to the start of the Fall 2018 Semester. A readiness delay caused by a restricted
       migration window would create another round of LMS unease for faculty and staff.
       One alternative is to extend the pause for a full year and resume the migration
       schedule after the completion of the Spring 2019 semester.

       A pause will put added stress on staff resources. The ramp up to migration, the
       actual migration itself, and post-migration testing are additional duties absorbed by
       staff who already have fulltime, daily responsibilities. An extended delay would have
       a significant impact because most of the migration planning that has already been
       accomplished will need to be replicated next year.

       On Tuesday, February 20, 2018, North Dakota State University notified CTS that it
       was putting its migration effort on hold. Given the size of NDSU and the amount of
       work required to migrate to the single LMS, it is unlikely NDSU will be able to ramp
       back up for a summer 2018 semester go-live.

      Technical Support Considerations: Of the schools yet to migrate, DCB, DSU, and
       MaSU are currently using Moodle while NDSU is hosting Blackboard and MiSU is
       using Blackboard in a managed hosting environment. The technical support for these
       platforms will need to be extended during any pause in the migration to a single
       LMS.

       Risk Assessment: CTS staff provide most of the technical support for Moodle.
       Depending upon the length of a pause and the Moodle schools involved, CTS staff
       resources will be extended in order to support both Moodle and the CTS instance of
       Blackboard Learn. The staff impact at NDSU and MiSU will be limited since both
       campuses are already supporting their current environments. However, when the
       ramp up to migrate to the single LMS restarts, staffing resources at both institutions
       will again be stretched as some work will need to be repeated.

Option #3: Allow institutions the opportunity to have their own instance of the LMS if
desired. Within this scenario, it is expected that all 11 institutions will migrate into the
Blackboard SaaS environment in order to develop a consistent LMS experience across all
institutions of the NDUS.

With this scenario, CTS would continue to pay for and support a single instance of LMS for
those institutions that would want the CTS services provided in the shared environment.
The institutions that would want their own instance of the LMS would be responsible for
their costs associated with the contract, costs associated with the migration to their new
SaaS instance, and costs associated with ongoing technical support. CTS would provide user
creation (including staff and non-SIS users); student enrollment and class information from
the student information system (SIS); and special course/org enrollments not affiliated with

the SIS system (example: training courses, resource sites, etc.). CTS would also provide
reports and data extracts associated to their campus instance.

        Contract Considerations: The existing contract would need to be amended to
         accommodate for the increased number of instances that would be added to the
         environment. CTS asked Blackboard to provide cost estimates for multiple instances
         of SaaS and Bb provided three solution sets as identified in table #1. With all three
         scenarios, the Enterprise License fee of $1,264,708 would not change from the
         existing fee structure that is in the current contract. CTS currently pays this fee.

         In the three-instance scenario, NDSU and UND would be charged an additional
         $226,200 each for their own instance. This would raise the overall cost for the LMS
         by $452,400. The five-scenario options provide a solution set for MiSU and VCSU,
         the other two schools that previously supported its own Blackboard instance. And
         the final scenario – the 4-instance scenario – lays out pricing for the research
         institutions, a generic mid-size institution, and a smaller institution. It is important to
         note that these are estimates only and any additional services, storage, and
         technology costs are not included.

         Instance:          3 Instance Scenario             FTE           List Price   New Total
                     1   UND                            14,406             $435,000        $226,200
                     2   NDSU                           14,358             $435,000        $226,200
                     3   Enterprise License*            46,788            $2,984,938   $1,264,708
                                                                  Total   $3,854,938   $1,717,108

       Instance:            5 Instance Scenario             FTE           List Price   New Total
                     1   UND                            14,406             $435,000        $226,200
                     2   NDSU                           14,358             $435,000        $226,200
                     3   MiSU                               3,216          $268,997        $139,878
                     4   VCSU                               1,522          $208,683        $108,515
                     5   Enterprise License*            46,788            $2,984,938   $1,264,708
                                                                  Total   $4,332,618   $1,965,502
       Instance:            4 Instance Scenario             FTE           List Price   New Total
                     1   NDSU                           14,358             $435,000        $226,200
                     2   Medium** (BSC)                     3,756          $268,997        $139,878
                     3   Small*** (DCB)                      909           $208,683        $108,515
                     4   Enterprise License*            46,788            $2,984,938   $1,264,708
                                                               Total      $3,897,618   $1,739,302
       *Includes Storage, Connect, VoiceThread, ATP, Learn Enhancements, Innovation Fund
       **Used BSC as "medium" within NDUS system
       ***Used DCB as "small" withing NDUS system
                                                  Table 1

Risk Assessment: The original contract providing for a single instance of LMS for all
    11 institutions provided an annual average savings of $477,000 across the NDUS.
    The savings will mostly be negated by providing separate instances to the two
    research institutions. Beyond costs, collaborative students may be required to log
    into separate instances of the LMS. But as long as all 11 institutions are using
    Blackboard SaaS, the user experience will be consistent across the platforms.

   Migration Considerations: Campuses who want their own instance of LMS will be
    responsible for setting up and managing their LMS platform to include third-party
    integrations, configuration settings, roles and permissions settings, authentication
    sources, themes, customizations, templates, and language packs. CTS would provide
    user creation (including staff and non-sis users) as well as student enrollment and
    class information from the student information system (SIS). CTS will work with the
    institutions to setup and configuration of authentication sources. Campuses will also
    be responsible for staffing and managing the migration process from their current
    environment.

    Risk Assessment: Conservatively, it will take approximately three months to properly
    prepare, configure, and test a new instance of LMS before migration could start.
    Once the new LMS goes into production, users could experience growing pains that
    were similar to the ones experienced with the startup of the single instance LMS this
    past year. In addition, each of the third-party integrations in the single instance LMS
    will need to be modified in order to separate user accounts associated with any new
    instances of LMS.

   Technical Support Considerations: If a campus chooses to support its own LMS
    instance, it will need to provide local technical expertise for ongoing support. This
    would include tier 1 and tier 2 help desk support. CTS will provide SAIP files for
    student enrollment and term-based course creation. Beyond that, everything else
    Blackboard-related will need to be supported by the campus.

    Risk Assessment: A campus with its own instance of LMS will not be required to
    collaborate with other institutions on issues related to shared governance. The trade
    off, however, is the amount of work that will be replicated for each individual
    instance of LMS. Examples include campus-based feeds from the student
    information system will need to be individually generated and managed by CTS and
    daily support related to LMS user administration and course administration would
    be replicated times the number of separate LMS instances across the NDUS. In turn,
    increased staffing costs will be commensurate with the total number of instances.