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A week ago I sent the following message to the list
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Over a 3 month period...
1. What is the approximate staff effort of machine/server admin support
that is required for the server running BB?
2. What is the amount of staff effort required to support the BB
software (patching, problem solving, etc.)?
3. What is amount of staff effort need to support BB course
administrators and end users of BB?
I appreciate that the last one of these will be closely linked to the
level of usage of the BB system, but a rough idea of the ratio
of support effort to number of users (admin users and end
users/learners) would be very useful.
Additionally, any guidance that people could provide as to the skill
sets required by the staff in each of the roles outlined above would
also be very useful.
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Here are the responses - I think they make interesting reading. It would
seem that people aren't to concerning about the technical setup and
implementation (although the traffic on this list might indicate
otherwise). What people are concerned about is the staffing support
issues in light of users (mainly staff) using this new (at least for
many "teaching" staff) technology. The pedagogic issues are by no means
clear. That is also my main concern - just exposing teaching staff
to the technology will result in a very messy, poorly focused VLE.
What do others think?
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Catherine Durkin <[log in to unmask]>
There are 2 of us working full time in the role, however our
responsibilities run beyond Blackboard to e-Learning generally. At the
moment, we are both involved in the pilot of BB L1, which is coming to
an end this month. There have been 12 courses (i.e. modules) running
through BB that we have been involved in supporting from a 'Course
Creator' perspective (however there are upwards of 70 trial courses that
have been created by interested parties). We basically notify department
heads/interested parties generally about BB, invite them over for demos,
and train staff (and some students, although we try to encourage staff
to do this). I would think that one person could easily spend their
entire day/week (FT) doing this in an institution the size of Bristol.
As for skill sets, this is very much a co-ordinating role between tech
support and the lecturers, you therefore want someone who is a good
communicator who can work with a broad range of people. Politics also
seem to play a large part so someone who is able to handle that sort of
environment too :) (Personally, having a background in HE and
understanding the way such institutions work and the pressures on
academics has helped me enormously).
==================================
Bruce Ingraham <[log in to unmask]>
At Teesside we are only using Bb (L1), but I think many of the answers
to your questions are the same irrespective of the level. Like you, we
are also relatively new to Bb per se; but, with other 5 northeastern
Universities, we have been studying the issues for almost 2
years. Rollout patterns and staffing vary between the 4 institutions
that have adopted Bb, but I think we would all agree that the answers to
your first two questions are that technical support in those senses is
trivial. Once you've built your server and installed the software, it
is reasonably robust and takes little time to support. Of course, if
people actually start making serious us of media rich files, this might
change.
Like you, we at Teesside have adopted the strategy of rolling it out to
one large faculty to learn about support issues, etc. and we are finding
that the things that demand time include:
- establishing communication with your MIS system/ registry (academic
staff don't want to hand-enroll students or hand-create individual
modules).
- training staff -- not in using Bb, that's easy, but in rethinking
their resources to suit the new medium; and advising them about/training
them to use appropriate file formats and/or actually providing them with
developer support to convert materials where appropriate. At Teesside
we have thus far made training largely voluntary, but are considering
not allowing anyone in future to use Bb without going through a half-day
workshop that addresses the above issues and starts them working of a
specific course of their choosing. We have 500 staff and, experience
suggests that we could probably do them in groups of 25. Netskills are
producing something similar for Newcastle (and will sell it to others).
- students appear to need little or no training, but you may find that
you have to provide a phone/online help service (via your library?) to
deal with simple questions, warn people when the server is going to be
down etc.
- At Teesside (500 staff/15000 students) I think we will have to support
them all on less than 3 FTE staff.
==========================
Paul Grist <[log in to unmask]>
We have BB level 1, but hope this helps:
> Over a 3 month period...
>
> 1. What is the approximate staff effort of machine/server admin
support
> that is required for the server running BB?
> 2. What is the amount of staff effort required to support the BB
> software (patching, problem solving, etc.)?
Probably about 0.6 FTE at the moment (spread over 3/4 individuals,
mainly one individual) for 1 and 2. Effort varies: when
patching/upgrading can be intense activity involving three/four
people; when stable, system requires backup and low-level sysadmin
> 3. What is amount of staff efforted need to support BB course
> administrators and end users of BB?
At least 1 FTE - but this depends entirely on how well you do it?? We
have a management plan which covers support, standards, user management,
backup etc... but this is as we move into the production service and out
of the pilot. Generally, you can get away with less for the pilot, but
our experience is the pilot is never treated as a pilot by the academics
using the system because once they get started their courses depend on
it - try telling the students the service is a pilot!! At systems
level, we found we had to treat it very seriously from day one so this
amount of effort has really been needed from day one...
From day one, you should put in 1 - 1.5 FTE (realistically spread over a
team or about 8)
> I appreciate that the last one of these will be closely linked to the
> level of usage of the BB system, but a rough idea of the ratio
> of support effort to number of users (admin users and end
> users/learners) would be very useful.
We have approx 1000 users registered now and approx 40 courses. But I
don't think support is related to number of users really - getting the
system running with some standards is the capital overhead - more users
don't have much effect...
> Additionally, any guidance that people could provide as to the skill
> sets required by the staff in each of the roles outlined above would
> also be very useful.
We use NT as OS
Sysadmin:
NT server skills
SQL server skills
App support:
applications skills linked to NT server skills
User support:
User registration knowledge and understanding
Training skills (both staff and students)
Ability to interface between systems team and user needs
Final point - install BB on its own server - it doesn't like running
with other apps
...and do set it up expecting that it will become a production service
===================================
Kate Boardman <[log in to unmask]>
server admin - minutes? picking it up when other servers on the system
crash and take it with it (very rarely falls over on its own). backup-
not sure how long this took to set up, but takes half an hour -
automatically- over night.
software - minutes to hours? taking down the server to add
patches/offline content fixes etc probably takes 1/2 to an hour a
shot. couple of hours to run an upgrade. depends therefore on whether
there are any!
both of these have been easily absorbed into current systems/operations
roles.
support - 1 of me to currently 6000 active users is probably not a ratio
you would want to play with. We have a full(FULL) time post plus two
that also help out, with all queries diverted to the ITS helpdesk
staff. If you have the staffing budget, you would wish to use more than
this...
not really too sure about skill sets - the server guys do server stuff -
someone will need root access. 'software support' is a systems
programmer, with experience of running networks. i've added two docs for
you which are what the two strands of our helpdesk staff have. we
haven't yet gone for any course creators, though i'm working towards
batch creating all modules from the undergraduate office and creating
course builders over the summer.
===========================
Paul Chin <[log in to unmask]>
I've added my comments below but they are based on our experience with
CourseInfo. However we are just about to move over to Bb level 1 and I
don't see things changing too much at the moment in terms of support,
though I think this will have to change if current level of uptake
continues. I'll be interested to know what the general UK situation is
when other people contact you...
> 1. What is the approximate staff effort of machine/server admin
support that is required for the server running BB?
We have one computer centre based technical person who helped set our
server up and helps maintain it for us. I head a team of 6 staff who
help support the service for academic staff, but have many other duties
besides supporting Bb.
> 2. What is the amount of staff effort required to support the BB
software (patching, problem solving, etc.)?
As I just said, we only have one technical person supporting the server,
who looks after it as a relatively small part of his job. His input has
only been critical for things like crashes (very, very rare), server
maintainence (again, very rare) and software upgrades (a bit more time
demanding). Outside of this, his required input is minimal since the
system just ticks along nicely. However, I'm sure he would say it takes
more time than I am aware of because I'm in a different building and I
don't actually see how long he spends working on it!
> 3. What is amount of staff efforted need to support BB course
administrators and end users of BB?
With our team of 7 (which includes me) I would say we spend maybe a few
hours a week (half a day at most?) supporting CourseInfo to about 200+
academic staff at the moment, though this will increase next
session. Our 'busy' period is mostly at the start of semester
(registering students etc.) after which requests for support/help
decrease and we only have to support CourseInfo ad hoc when we get the
odd phone call, email etc. However, we also have to build time in for
developing help notes, providing training sessions etc. so it probably
averages out at say, half a day as I mentioned.
Cheers,
Martin.
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[log in to unmask]
Institute for Learning and Research Technology, University of Bristol
8-10 Berkeley Square, Bristol BS8 1HH, UK
Tel: +44 (0)117 928 7192, Fax: +44 (0)117 928 7112
http://www.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/ and http://www.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/id/
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