The document discusses lessons learned from migrating multiple colleges from the Blackboard LMS to the Desire2Learn LMS. It describes Colorado Community College System's initial plan to have faculty backup and upload their own courses, but challenges with that approach. The revised plan involved testing procedures, piloting with select courses, and providing varied training and support for the full migration. The key lessons were to communicate extensively, remain flexible, have contingency plans, and maintain a positive attitude throughout the process.

1. Staying Sane When Migrating to a New LMS WCET, October 2009

2. Presenters Donna HallInstructional Design Team CoordinatorCCCOnlinedonna.hall@cccs.edu Debra Warren Instructional DesignerCCCOnline debra.warren@cccs.edu 2

3. Colorado Community College System 13 colleges and CCCOnline 117,000+ students annually 1,200 secondary, 800 postsecondary career and technical programs Blackboard (WebCT) Vista 4.2 to Desire2Learn Started migration planning January 2009 All colleges on D2L by January 2010

4. Initial Planning Communicate early, often LMS support IT Administrators Staff Faculty Helpdesk Get feedback from all parties

5. OriginalPlanforMigrating Faculty Unsubscribe all files Backup, download course Upload backup to file sever Staff Migrate backup to D2L Copy migrated course into “Master” course Enroll faculty in “Master” course

6. OriginalPlanforMigrating Pros Spread work over many individuals Faculty responsible for selecting course to be migrated Cons Faculty technically challenged Faculty had to be on network to upload backup User errors

7. Test, Test, Test! Plan for challenges Verify procedures work as expected QA all procedures (recruit guinea pigs) Example: Because of established communication and repeated tests, when the decision to change plan was made, the switch only took a week.

8. PilotCourses Pilot small number of courses View and test as Student Hand-select pilot faculty Don’t assume everyone adapts well to change There will be surprises on who are early adaptors Stress “there is a reason it is called a pilot”

9. MigratingAllCourses Mentors Conference to rollout training Variety of training for all learning styles Positive attitude Scheduling

11. Be flexible

12. Have contingency plans

13. Stay positive

14. Buy lots of stress relieving toys!