having been informed that there is a foreign items for approval action item 1A is the approval of the minutes of June 5th 2023 I move the approval of the action item 1A do I have a second second any discussion all in favor any opposed any abstentions extension right here since I wasn't present noted the the matter the minister the resolution is adopted with no policy items on the agenda I will address the information items there's one information item on the agenda information item two a is the Learning Management Systems transition status update interim University Executive Director CUNY online Evan Silverman will present on this item where is that the Steve colleagues thank you for the opportunity to present an update about the CUNY Blackboard to brightspace learning management transition I will refer to learning management system here within as LMS I'm Evan Silberman University Executive Director in CUNY office of academic Affairs I'm the LMS transition lead the LMS is a foundational platform for CUNY because it enables us to deliver on our mission of access for any student using brightspace we can easily manage the delivery of online courses ensure access to brightspace for Learners of different abilities and leverage and integrate academic teaching and learning technology securely and in compliance with relevant laws and regulations the expiration of our contract with Blackboard drove the choice to evaluate and select a new LMS the determination to select brightspace was based on a thoughtful RFP which reflected a comprehensive scope of work developed during A needs assessment led by university-wide committee representing key constituencies within CUNY there is no doubt that brightspace is the right choice for CUNY brightspace is an industry-leading learning management system D2L the parent company of brightspace brings a forward-thinking approach to brightspace as a modern tool that delivers on students expectations of today's digital learning environments the LMS allows us to grow online learning and create meaningful learning experiences across any modality brightspace also connects students with students students who establies and students with their college brightspace brings tremendous value to CUNY the advantage of Contracting D2L for brightspace the advantages of Contracting D2L for brightspace are many as a modern LMS with a large share of the higher education Market one of the largest in fact we will join our peers using brightspace this gives us an extended support system for the implementation speaking of support as early as this fall we can offer 24 7 365 end user support for anyone at CUNY using brightspace through services procured with D2L this support enhances existing college and Central resources immediately through the early phase of this implementation we learned how easy it is to use brightspace and how flexible the configuration is that allows us to respond to various needs efficiently lastly brightspace enhances engagement through tools like the video note so that faculty can create videos on the fly directly in the LMS the transition from Blackboard to brightspace is two years four sequential transition groups there there are four of transition sequential transition groups I'm just a little bit nervous y'all if we view this graphic as a wayfinding map we're working with the first transition group now that's comprised of six colleges to help them prepare their brightspace environments in order to deliver courses in brightspace in the summer of 24. this group this group is in the middle of a four-part implementation training program to prepare them to become system administrators in their instance of brightspace I highlight this because it is a crucial Milestone and a project success considering we only sign the contract with D2L a few months ago our work to reach this stage began in June with contract execution when we were approved to engage with D2L along the way we've hit some key Milestones which I've listed on this slide we've configured the central system of brightspace we've developed and launched a training program we've designed an implementation process to carry us through the four sequential transition groups and we've started course migration prep work our governance model which we've also designed incorporates a wide diversity of University stakeholders such as faculty students staff and college and Central teams that span vertical hierarchies making it a very inclusive process and I will speak to the governance model in a moment further we're moving along the project timeline as expected the project is in good health and we expect to remain on track for the duration I introduced the diversity of the governance model earlier this comprehensive framework ensures that we have the necessary representation in the areas of the project that matter most at the center of our virtual is our virtual project management office the CUNY office of academic Affairs leads the project a virtual pmo combines project leadership and staff from OAA and partner organizations like CIS to run the day-to-day of the initiative Three core groups are the steering committee core strategy group and advisory team the work of the advisory team is tactical the work of the core strategy group is strategic and the work of the steering committee is enabling change one key feature of is the relational design of this model campus teams to the right of the model are designed to engage specific functions or roles at the colleges with our virtual pmo so that the right people work on the right activities during the implementation our director of change management engages with campus teams in a relationship management function to ensure alignment and identify unmet needs there are five critical work streams in this model each has a set of co-leads tasked with managing work stream activities for example our chief academic technology officer and senior director of academic collaboration technology lead course and content management which is responsible for course migration training is a core component of this initiative there are three primary training opportunities certificate training private training and on-demand self-guided training this General framework is designed first to build the expertise of those who will centrally manage configure and administer brightspace next college learning management system administrators and other others who will lead training will participate in live webinar style workshops when we engage broader audiences we'll offer specialized webinars on topics like wipe right space and accessibility faculty will also be offered live webinar style training while student training will primarily be on demand based on available resources that we produce and have been provided to us the entire University already has access to D2L brightspace self-guided training website with various learning paths and resources our training will be ongoing so that anyone at any time can participate regardless of transition group this overview highlights the effort for this significant transition to CUNY and provides insight into key components of this initiative I now welcome your questions thank you Evan are there any questions yes hi Hugo Fernandez I'm representing the University faculty Senate as the alternate there was tests that were supposed to be done as far as migrating existing Blackboard courses uh to write space and I don't know if or any outcomes about that I'd say that EVC Hessel is is shaking her head what were the outcomes I guess you're correct that that a key component of this migration is a course of this transition is course migration to clarify for the audience course migration is moving content from Blackboard courses to brightspace courses does not include records we are currently developed we are currently developing the migration process and doing a proof of concept with 60 plus courses from from the college's uh about six colleges at CUNY that will be completed in early October once that proof of concept is completed we'll have a clear understanding of what migrates and what the known issues are with migrate with migrations and those that we need to remediate or those that we need to make transparent so when you speak of outcomes the outcome is understanding the efficacy of the migration process right and we will we will be developing a document for colleges in which we will articulate what to expect from course migration including known issues and and other items that are related great I also understand that customization of the interface by faculty currently seems to be inhibited by configuration choices I don't know if you could speak to that at all I I'm not sure specifically what you're referring to but we have as I've indicated brightspace is a highly configurable environment and one of our principal principal principles of this transition is that we do work that benefits the students and we want the students have the best possible experience using brightspace in that regard we've made decisions to make certain aspects of brightspace not editable so as students move from college landing page to a course landing page to a CUNY level landing page they have the same experience across those environments specifically in regards to the navigation menus so that and it also is most supportive for accessibility as well ensure and consistent environment again it's it's interesting because when I first started teaching Blackboard I didn't know anything about customization it's called teaching style in Blackboard and which are basically it's like what does a student see when they first show up now I you know regularly change the image just to you know it kind of a lot of times is telegraphing what we're going to be covering in that particular class and things that may be what they're referring to the last piece is this the excuse me can I just jump in really quickly for the benefit of the rest of the folks here one of the things that uh I heard loud and clear from students as we went from campus to campus is they're frustrated by having a completely different interface for every different course because they have to learn how to access different courses and and as you know many faculty don't even have them within brightspace or within Blackboard they have a third-party provider like twin so students report to me that the you know in the limited amount of time that they have you're very used to it but for them they have to learn five six seven different systems in order to access their education so there is there are very clear reasons why we are limiting some of the interface based on best practices for student learning environments that's one to three yeah and I wouldn't deny that I mean because I do know that students sometimes struggle finding the content as much in every every semester I try dry even harder and harder to be organized and every semester you know there's always somebody that wears this where is that uh the last piece is excuse me so sorry I want to before you move on to your next question there there are several complaints by faculty about the process for how these decisions are made and where there's room for faculty input because this particular choice of fixed navigation for whatever reason seems to have a lot of people upset and from The Faculty ranks and it's something they were used to it's been taken away and these two with Blackboard it's been taken away and they don't see the compelling argument that you see that everything should be the same because essentially what's going on is are we the faculty would like to narrow what the students have to look through like when I get on blackboard currently there's 50 different things on the left side that I know three I'm looking for and I'd love to get rid of those I had no idea I could the students might feel the same way they're overwhelmed with options when the faculty is trying to narrow those forms so that they're not spending time going down through navigation bars whether they're going exactly where they are so there I believe there are two sides to this I think that the process for deciding what configurations should be set system-wide uh would benefit from having faculty input so we don't have to have these ongoing conversations the last uh point I wanted to touch on was the plans to mandate that this Elms usage for online courses uh which many see as impinging on academic freedom you know just mandating that bright space has to be the content manager for a course so any thoughts on that yeah I'll speak to that that really has a great deal to do with compliance with a variety of federal regulations including FERPA which is about the privacy of student data only the university supported LMS can provide compliance with FERPA and with some of those other security issues so where and so what this is really about online courses it also because the university supported LMS and right now that's Blackboard and bright space those are the only systems that are integrated with CUNY first that allow for that transfer of data it allows us to do all sorts of tracking for financial aid verification for um um just a number of of things that we need to provide reporting for for both internal and external entities and so that's that's really the rationale behind that it's it's about the data security and it's about the student experience and so it's not considered a third party you know as far as purpose concerned I mean that's really the issue with FERPA right that so for example if I put everything on Google Classroom Google is a third party provider and and somebody could access that information through the third party you're saying it's not possible through right space I'm not sure that I'm yeah the whole thing about FERPA as far as data and student data is that you can't put that data on a third party provider that someone could access right so we yeah we're able to set controls on who can access bright State brightspace and how they can access it what content they have they are able to see Within brightspace so that's how it provides that that protection where we can't set some of those controls with Google or or other sites God let me be clear we have not issued a policy on that we started the conversation on that and decided to have more conversations on that so that is undergoing I mean it's ongoing at this moment thank you yeah and just to respond to to um the previous comment about decision making we you know these decisions we have a governance model that informs decision making and faculty are on the governance structure correct yeah yeah and all the faculty chosen were chosen through faculty governance processes correct the so I'll speak to how people were chosen for the advisory Council or our team as we looked at various uh CUNY wide and campus specific groups such as seedl uh cat LMS administrators faculty Senate et cetera et cetera et cetera and then we sought to achieve a balance of representation across those groups and across those campuses we then identified people in those groups we reached out to the campus presidents and said we've identified this person as a good candidate to sit on this committee because of the role they play on your campus do you support their selection and in some most cases the president said yes in some cases they said no that person's stepping out of that role we'd rather really have this person and so we respected that whatever the the president's decision was and then we reached out and invited those people to serve I just wanted to add we address this at The Faculty Senate as you know and what I said is always happy to have additional conversations as long as we all recognize that the students needs will come first as will cyber security those two things are critically important and they do come into play with all of these decisions and so happy to have some additional conversations John I think you sit on that committee am I wrong about that on the strategy on the steering committee but we didn't discuss this I don't know where this particular policy decision was discussed but I do know that it has several ufs Senators I'm happy to happy to get together I don't know if you had a chance say that before the decision was made that's all I don't this decision was informed by the course strategy group we can have a conversation John happy to do it thanks thank you excuse me anything else from anybody hearing none we will move along um I now move that we go into the executive session in accordance with section 105c of the New York State the meeting law do I have a second all in favor any opposed that has been adopted we will now go into executive session
2023-10-03