MELA Meeting Minutes 2003 - 2017

c. Blackboard contracting – Mr. Pugh

d. Update on Enrollment Tool enhancements – Mr. Pugh

e. Enrollment Tool Changes – Mr. Smith

f. DLC Association elections – Mr. Smith

g. MSVCC Work Group (DLC Strategic Plan) – Ms. McCrimon

III.

NEW BUSINESS.

a. The meeting opened with a welcome to the two new DLC’s, Susan Sleppy and Audra Kimble, followed by introductions of all attendees.

b. Mr. Pugh provided an update on the status of SACS response to the community colleges. SACS will be sending individual responses to each community college president involved in the accreditation visit conduct in February 2003. c. Mr. Pugh proposed the possibility of migrating to the Blackboard 6.0 software version between the Summer and Fall 2003 semesters. Migration was originally scheduled to occur between the Fall 2003 semester and the Spring 2004 semester. Discussion ensued related to the advantages and disadvantages of changing the original migration date. The two primary reasons for moving up the migration to before the Fall semester were the instability issues plagued by the Blackboard 6.0 software appear to have been corrected and the break between semesters is greater during the Summer to Fall time frame. Mr. Kynerd and Mr. Blackburn provided valuable insight into what to expect with the new Blackboard 6.0 software. Mr. Blackburn offered to create a temporary training shell for each DLC to use for previewing the new software and for conducting training of instructors. Mr. Blackburn also provided copies of the Blackboard 6.0 instructor manual to those that requested the manual. Blackboard has requested approximately two weeks to complete the migration process and Mr. Pugh requires approximately one week for completing the purge of the user database. Mr. Pugh will contact Blackboard to establish a date for beginning the migration. d. Mr. Pugh briefly discussed the contract negotiations with Blackboard regarding the MSVCC. He also discussed the interest by other learning management system vendors. The new Blackboard contract will go into effect in January 2004 and will be for eighteen months. Negotiations for this contract are in the initial phases, and have not yet been confirmed. Also, the DLC’s are encouraged to investigate and include software licensing for the MSVCC and on their campuses (including dollar amounts) when doing strategic planning. e. Mr. Pugh provided a status update on the proposed enhancements to the MSVCC enrollment tool. Praises were given to Mr. Ive Burnett for the fantastic work in building and maintaining the MSVCC enrollment tool. This tool has far exceeded its original intent. Mr. Martin, the prior DLC at Holmes, and Mr. Yates have submitted proposals for creating an option allowing instructors to post final grades directly into the MSVCC enrollment tool. This proposal is under review.

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