Information Technology Services Blog

Dear Community,

After more than a year of testing an alternative course management system, the IT Steering Committee has approved the adoption of Moodle, an open source learning system, to replace Blackboard. This decision was made with input from more than a dozen faculty members who pilot tested the product with their students, the Educational Technology Advisory Group, the Academic Affairs Council, ITS and Educational Technology staff, and current Blackboard users. We feel that Moodle offers many benefits, including more varied course tools, better product support, open standards for integration of add-on functionality, and significant cost savings.

Faculty will receive more information in the coming week about workshops and other training opportunities that will show them how to use Moodle. They may also request assistance in moving course materials from Blackboard. “Organizations” will also need to make the transition, and assistance will be provided to them as well.

The transition to Moodle will follow a phased approach. We hope to have 75 faculty using Moodle by the fall semester, including those who are teaching in the Montserrat program and all faculty who will be new to the College. We invite other interested faculty to contact us about adopting Moodle this summer. Blackboard will continue to be available throughout the 2008-2009 academic year but all course content must be moved by Summer 2009.

We want to thank those who participated in the evaluation and gave us valuable input. We are excited about the new system, although we realize that it will be a busy summer with the Montserrat program and other projects underway. Please let either of us know if you have any questions or concerns. We want this to be a very open process. You’ll be hearing more in the coming weeks.

Sincerely,

Ellen Keohane Mary Morrisard-Larkin

Director, ITS Director, Educational Technology

Dear Holy Cross Faculty and Staff, As many of you know, Information Technology Services has been evaluating Office 2007 for Windows (the next version of Word, Excel, Access, and Powerpoint). We have also been evaluating Office 2008 for Macintosh. Both of these products are considerable improvements over the previous versions; however, in the case of Office 2007 for Windows, the software looks quite different than the older versions and the menus have been significantly re-organized. Our testing has shown that this new look and re-organization actually makes this version of Office easier to use, having more commonly used features readily accessible. However, given all the changes, persons who receive this product take some time to get used to the new set up. Read the rest of this entry »

Testing continues with Microsoft’s new Vista operating system and Office 2007. Because there are too many Vista incompatibilities with our other systems, we will be staying with Windows XP for this Spring’s computer rollout.

We do hope to be able to offer Office 2007, however. Testing is proceeding well. Our test group recently expanded to include people from many departments across the campus who use Word and Excel in different ways. Stay tuned.

Welcome to the Information Technology Services blog, a source for updates on ITS services. For questions or further information, contact the ITS Help Desk at helpdesk@holycross.edu or visit the web site at http://www.holycross.edu/its