Plan of Attack: Migrating to WebCT Vista

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Thursday, July 13, 2006
This presentation is part of 3: Poster Sessions
Plan of Attack: Migrating to WebCT Vista

Description: Considering a move to WebCT Vista? Learn from the experience of Excelsior College, a distance-only institution that has successfully transitioned from WebCT Campus Edition to WebCT Vista. The presenters will share an overview of their migration plan, as well as some less-obvious strategies, issues, and pitfalls.
Presentation Format: Poster
Topic: Deploying enterprise e-learning: Strategies for success
Target Audience: Course Designers, System Administrators, Senior Administrators, E-learning Managers, K-12 Educational Staff
Appropriate Audience Level: Beginning or new users of WebCT, Experienced WebCT users
WebCT Version:
Abstract Text: Forced to migrate from WebCT Campus Edition to Vista because of ever-increasing online program enrollment and new course development, we would like to share our plan, strategies, issues and pitfalls during this monumental time. We would like to give conference participants some tips and tricks of migrating, specifically: organizational, timeframe, technological, and training considerations.
Organizationally, it is important to determine a solid set of policies, procedures, best practices, and tasks. If done right, this makes the conversion process much less stressful for your WebCT users (designers, developers, instructors, and students). We've determined a scalable workflow and timeline creation process to help organize this intimidating task. We also felt it was extremely important to come up with risk mitigation and contingency planning to help both during the conversion as well as long after the process has been completed.
We used this migration as an opportunity to upgrade our course design procedures as well as integrate some of our other systems with Vista. We converted all course documents from Microsoft Word format into HTML with the help of Macromedia Dreamweaver to make them more consistent and to ease future migrations. Migrating to a more powerful system also allowed us to integrate some of our other student service applications with Vista, as well as use third-party software to enhance our course delivery methods.
Training became an essential part of our migration because Vista 3 is much more powerful and complex than Campus Edition 4. We also had developed a much more advanced course design process. Communicating not only the policies and procedures, but also the "nuts and bolts" of using Vista was vital to our success.

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Description:	Considering a move to WebCT Vista? Learn from the experience of Excelsior College, a distance-only institution that has successfully transitioned from WebCT Campus Edition to WebCT Vista. The presenters will share an overview of their migration plan, as well as some less-obvious strategies, issues, and pitfalls.
Presentation Format:	Poster
Topic:	Deploying enterprise e-learning: Strategies for success
Target Audience:	Course Designers, System Administrators, Senior Administrators, E-learning Managers, K-12 Educational Staff
Appropriate Audience Level:	Beginning or new users of WebCT, Experienced WebCT users
WebCT Version:
Abstract Text:	Forced to migrate from WebCT Campus Edition to Vista because of ever-increasing online program enrollment and new course development, we would like to share our plan, strategies, issues and pitfalls during this monumental time. We would like to give conference participants some tips and tricks of migrating, specifically: organizational, timeframe, technological, and training considerations. Organizationally, it is important to determine a solid set of policies, procedures, best practices, and tasks. If done right, this makes the conversion process much less stressful for your WebCT users (designers, developers, instructors, and students). We've determined a scalable workflow and timeline creation process to help organize this intimidating task. We also felt it was extremely important to come up with risk mitigation and contingency planning to help both during the conversion as well as long after the process has been completed. We used this migration as an opportunity to upgrade our course design procedures as well as integrate some of our other systems with Vista. We converted all course documents from Microsoft Word format into HTML with the help of Macromedia Dreamweaver to make them more consistent and to ease future migrations. Migrating to a more powerful system also allowed us to integrate some of our other student service applications with Vista, as well as use third-party software to enhance our course delivery methods. Training became an essential part of our migration because Vista 3 is much more powerful and complex than Campus Edition 4. We also had developed a much more advanced course design process. Communicating not only the policies and procedures, but also the "nuts and bolts" of using Vista was vital to our success.