Migrating Birds and Online Courses

The BOR has informed us that WebCT Campus Edition will not be supported after December 2006, and that all campuses must be fully migrated to VISTA by Spring 07 semester. Just the word migration conjures up images of birds making a deliberate path to some better place. Yet, they have to know where they are going in order to get there. Last week, the Distance Education Steering Committee met and recommended that the migration begin with some courses in summer, and continue into spring. The proposed schedule is that Education courses (or at least most of them) begin in Summer; Business courses in fall; and Arts & Science courses in the spring. It was also recommended that departments migrate as a whole, rather than by individual faculty. DDEC staff are meeting with the TPC and academic department heads over the next few days to work out the exact timetables. VISTA demonstration workshops will begin next week, with weekly how-to sessions beginning in early-to-mid March.