Blackboard Portal Progress
Posted on: 25 July 2015
By: saundeg
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Filed under: Blackboard
Plans stay more or less on track on this project. The Blackboard pre-arrival sites are taking shape and should be released to students coming to the University in September at the beginning of the second week in August or thereabouts.
The new ‘main’ Blackboard is at an advanced stage of preparation. The design has more or less been chosen (see earlier post) and the wireframes are now in the hands of technicians at Blackboard who will start working on turning the designs into reality.
More to follow soon.
Classrooms work has started
Posted on: 25 July 2015
By: saundeg
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Well this is it. Parkeray the external building contractors have started work on all sites. Rooms have been cleared and floors ripped up (amongst other things). Too late to change our minds now….. 🙂
You can view Parkeray’s planned schedule for each building and each room using the links below.
Check back on this blog for photographs as work progresses.
Cavendish
Harrow
Marylebone
Regent
Sneak Preview of Student Driven Designs for Blackboard
Posted on: 18 June 2015
By: saundeg
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Here are the likely designs to go out to students for voting.
Click on any image to enlarge.
Update on the Blackboard Portal Project
Posted on: 18 June 2015
By: saundeg
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All strands of the project have made good progress int he last few weeks.
14 student helpers have been employed and they are supporting drop-in sessions for staff across the 4 Faculties with a specific aim to help staff better manage their Blackboard sites. Already nearly 100 academic staff have booked on. If you are interested to attend a workshop then use the links below to book a slot.
The information architecture for the new Blackboard is more or less agreed sufficiently to generate a ‘mock-up’ (see below – NOTE YOU CAN CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO MAKE IT LARGER). Later this month we will release a video tour of the ‘mocked-up’ Blackboard on our test server for people to comment on. Alongside this the design consultants Syndicut have been working to generate 4 or 5 possible ‘new looks’ for Blackboard based on the student responses to the earlier ‘mood board’ questionnaire. We hope these options will very soon be available for students to vote on.
Finally the pre-arrival Blackboard experience is developing. A major step forward has been completion of purely technical work which will allow us to provide students coming to us in September with a Blackboard experience which is fundamentally different (in terms of both look and content) to that which students actually starting their studies will see. Central tot he pre-arrival experience will be access to a wide range of induction type information about services.
Plan for the new Classrooms Develops
Posted on: 7 June 2015
By: saundeg
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For an outline plan of the works see below (click on the image to enlarge) or follow this link
Syndicut working with students on design
Posted on: 31 May 2015
By: saundeg
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Filed under: Blackboard
The external designers tasked with creating a special look and feel for Westminster on Blackboard have conducted a survey with our students. The students were asked to give their views on 10 quite different looking websites so as to gauge the ‘mood’ of students in respect of a range of styles. Over 350 students responded to the survey (see the survey) and the 3 websites below came out as the top 3.
Wired
Manchester City Council
The Verge
Classrooms tender being prepared
Posted on: 17 May 2015
By: saundeg
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Some delays have occurred in preparation of the tender for the classrooms refurbishment. In light of feedback and detailed costing the project should now be able to go forward with plans for the re-development of 22 rooms across the estate. The tender is now scheduled for issue on the 21st May and the revised outline plan for the project is as follows:
Tender: 4 weeks (22.05-19.06)
Negotiation: 1 week (22.06-26.06) (Appoint contractor 26.06)
Contractor’s mobilisation:  2 weeks (29.06-10.07)
Construction period: 8 weeks (13.07- 04.09).
Trying to make all students and staff aware of changes to Blackboard
Posted on: 17 May 2015
By: saundeg
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Although appreciable numbers of our staff and students have been involved already in providing feedback and ideas on the the changes to be made to Blackboard, there will still be an awful lot of folk out there who wont know in detail what is happening.
As part of a wider communication plan for the project we have produced a very short video and online booklet that provide an overview of the work.
Update on the Blackboard Portal Project
Posted on: 17 May 2015
By: saundeg
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In the last couple of weeks there has been progress across all strands of the Blackboard portal project.
We are on the verge of appointing up to 14 students to help over the Summer engaging with academic staff to help them learn more about the basics of Blackboard with a specific remit to ‘tidy up’ the navigation menu in sites to make them look simpler and cleaner.
The external design company that will provide the new look and feel for Blackboard have made available a ‘mood’ questionnaire to our students to get a feel for ‘likes and dislikes’ across the student base with respect to web design.
One of our students, from Media Art and Design, has entered a JISC competition to win further support for his idea for ‘Chapter 2’, an online resource to support student prior to arrival at the University. You can find out more and vote for his idea via this web page.
iPADs rolling forward with procurement
Posted on: 4 May 2015
By: saundeg
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Filed under: Mobile
A formal procurement is now being undertaken for the the FST Flexible Learning Mobile Tablet device project. This procurement is being run using the Crescent Purchasing Consortium – Desktop Hardware and Peripherals Framework and the invitation to tender has been issued to Suppliers that are listed on both the Apple Equipment Lot and the Maintenance & Installation Services Lot.
A preferred supplier will be selected towards the end of May 2015.  This should enable the project to move ahead to deliver iPADs to existing staff and current level 5 students in FST from mid-June.