Changes made for Bb Vista

Some students may have been surprised this semester when they were told to log into Blackboard Vista rather than WebCT for their course homework, discussions, or readings. Over the summer, the University changed the course management system to Bb Vista, which is the new name for the existing line of software, said Elizabeth Clark, director of Instructional Design and eTeaching Services, who explained that the transition was more like a major upgrade than a move to a completely new site."We have been switching to Blackboard Vista … over a period of two and a half years. It is a Web CT product, but Web CT was bought out by Blackboard three years ago … [This] is an upgrade." Clark said.

The new software has several benefits over WebCT, Clark said. "One of the major advantages is that this is actually a database system where WebCT was not. The interface is nicer to work with for both students and faculty [and] there are more tools and features for faculty to work with."

The site has brought mixed reactions from both students and faculty. Bonnie Jefferson, a professor in the communication department, transferred her custom designed Rhetorical Tradition site from WebCT to Bb Vista this summer.

"My class is so big that we're uncovering problems smaller classes are just not hitting," Jefferson said, referring to some of the problems her class of 280 students have encountered now that her site is on Bb Vista. Jefferson said she would not call any of the site's problems "major," with the greatest difficulties being that "there are different steps for doing things."

She said that her friends at other colleges, such as Bridgewater State College and Suffolk University, have used the new Bb site and were impressed by the upgrade.

Clark said that 95 percent of concerns regarding the site come from faculty rather than students. She believes most of the initial reluctance to switch to the new system is just resistance to change. "I think the change for everyone is difficult but our group has tried to support students and faculty over the course of the change. The process takes a very long time. … People don't like to change," she said.

The site was tested, Clark said, "to make sure on campus all the different labs and public machines were tuned up so they wouldn't have any problems with the application." She said, "Different applications require different browsers, that's just how the world works," so certain student computers may encounter some problems with the new site.

Many students won't notice a radically different interface though. "[There are] toolbars in different places, but the basic site … has exactly the same look," Jefferson said.

Greg Kirby, A&S '12, used Blackboard while in high school and agreed that the layout is fairly simple. "It's very easy to use, it's very intuitive," she said.

Web-based course management systems are not new to Boston College, Clark said. "This is our seventh year with the course management system, and it has been a stable product for the University."

Jefferson also shared her experience with the University's online learning system, saying that her Rhetorical Tradition class had "been up on the site four to five years."

"When you are building these sites, they take a phenomenal amount of time," Jefferson said, whose site was developed on WebCT by four to five people over a period of several weeks. Many courses can use a much simpler site, she said, created from the generic template rather than being custom tailored.

The sites give faculty a means to provide students with homework, videos, readings, and course outlines. Jefferson explained that her Rhetorical Tradition class also utilizes the software's ability to host online discussions among students. "I hope [the Web site] gives us a lot more flexibility we didn't have before," she said.

"The numbers of how many course sites we have each semester seems to have grown. Everything is still going smoothly so far … about 68 percent of courses on campus have a site," Clark said, which adds up to about 1,200 to 1,300 classes each semester.

Blackboard, a multimillion dollar company based in Washington, D.C., has been in business for over 10 years. The company claims to be among the leaders in Web learning systems, and sells several products for colleges across the country.