Managing and Archiving Learning Management Systems Course Materials and Records

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Arizona State University Background

• 57,000 plus students on four campuses
• Tri University initiative — Arizona Regents University
• Over 1300 courses currently being delivered via Blackboard
• No one knows how many courses currently delivered via other products
• 160,000 Blackboard student accounts
• 40,000 active accounts Fall 2003

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Learning Management Systems Background

• Initial development as stand alone courses (html, MacroMedia Director and others)
• Blackboard implemented as "standard" 1995 in version 3.0
• BB upgrades through 3.0, 4.0, 5.0 and various versions
• Though still used by some faculty, Version 4 no longer supported
• Content migrated to new versions (or recreated)

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What are Course Materials?

• Course administration-syllabus, calendar, grade books, exam records, etc.
• Locally produced content
  • Instruction - notes/presentations, graphics, models/simulations, etc.
  • Student discussions, projects, exams, etc.
• Imported/3rd party produced content - articles, research materials, etc.
• Include a variety of potential resources
  • Courses and learning objects
  • Institutional records

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Statement of the Challenge

• Exponential increases in file volume
• Faculty asking ownership questions — little policy clarification
• Institution requires documentation for grades, appeals etc.
• Interest in learning object management
• "Permanent" student portfolios marketed by two colleges
• Archives interested in documenting this "revolution" in pedagogy

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Policy Questions

• Unresolved authority issues for permission to edit, reuse, redistribute content
• Faculty request retention for:
  • Reuse of all or portions of previous content (examples)
  • Support of grade appeals processes
  • Tenure/promotion portfolio's
  • Students work products portfolios

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Policy Issues

• Student/Faculty/University
  • Embedded material IP
  • Public records
• Content issues:
  • Identification and extraction issues
• Accessibility issues (obsolete software required to access some content, ADA, etc.)
• Migration
• Scalability — storage, management, access

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General Counsel Work Group November, 2002

• Representation: IT, Archives, Counsel
• Extended Education, two faculty
• Identified scope and issues
• Started by developing a matrix or taxonomy of content types
• Attempted to establish criteria for retention goals for each content type
• Developed a model for moving and retaining content
• Developed a process map outlining process

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Model Development - Goals

• Effectively manage active and inactive course content
• Collaborative, distributed decision making
• Support institutional uses (P&T, grades, appeals, portfolios, etc.)
• Improve storage/back-up processes
• Include metadata to automate management/decision making
• Enable reuse of content
• Support archival course content

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Assumptions

• University ownership/license
• Content "Owner" identified for each course
• "Host" identified for each course
• Retention for
  • University and faculty use
  • Permit student portfolio retention
• Active, near term, and long term storage

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Learning Management System Record Taxonomy

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Next Steps

• Advocate Vendors for non-proprietary formats, archiving and export capabilities
• Establish work flows and storage facilities for different materials
• Continue discussion about software issues
• Explore potential standards to control retention costs
• Train faculty and students in information policy issues
• Resolve ownership and access issues through collaborative policy development

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