This year, Saint Mary’s University was scheduled to “flip the switch” and complete the migration from WebCT (web course tools) to a system called BlackBoard. On an implementation that was started in mid-2008, the launch date for faculty was to be December 2008, and the launch date for students was to be January 5, 2009 – the first day of class in the winter semester.

Now, let me preface this post by saying that I’ve worked on a bunch of IT related projects before, and I understand that deadlines are frequently missed due to unforseen technical issues and delays from various parties involved. I consider this par for the course for most IT organizations, and this is not what I fault SMU ITSS and the blackboard implementation team for. What I do fault them for is the premature launch to students who rely on the system (some  in-whole, some in-part) to attend and interact with their courses. If the system is not ready, then fine. Just don’t launch it into production when ZERO functionality is ready. 

As a part time student upgrading some Information Systems skills, I’m taking a few “online” courses. This requires that I use BlackBoard to “access the course” – which is the online equivalent to attending class and receiving the physical class material.

We’re told to expect delays of roughly a week. Well, thats sort of acceptible. No sweat there? Not exactly. Another failure on the part of the SMU ITSS department (the IT organization within/supporting faculty and students) was that they have not communicated well with students.  Most are walking around with NO idea how to access the new system, and those who do know (like myself) have not been informed of how to log in. Great. SMU has a myriad of disparate systems for the students and staff to manage their “stuff”  (most of which are horrible from  a UI standpoint) and none of those logins work. Surfing both the student intranet (smuport) and the SMU.CA website reveals no hint of information regarding the new system or the delays.

So, SMU ITSS, this is my plea. Please communicate, at least daily with students and faculty with regards to the blackboard implementation.