Blackboard is one of the most important system for the university. It is used by all the faculty. KFUPM has the highest utilization rate of blackboard by faculty in comparison to other universities in the Kingdom.
The first Learning Management System used by the university was WebCT 4. Later on the university moved onto Blackboard 8 and recently the system was upgraded once again to Blackboard 9.1. The whole update process was seamless with minimal disrutption for faculty and students. During the migration phases both systems were kept live for the faculty and they could use any.
We at the Deanship of Academic Development are responsible for keep managing, adminstering, upgrading and updating the system. Apart from that we are also to provide the faculty and student the support and if they have any issue we are responsible to resolve it. Speacial training sessions are also arranged by the deanship for the faculty.
Other than that number of customized help documents and guides have also been prepared for the faculty to use. These include
- Blackboard 9.1 Essentials (adding content, tools)
- Course Migration Tool from Blackboard 8 to Blackboard 9.1
- Copying Course Contents (from one course to another, within Blackboard 9.1)
- Managing 'My Course' module settings
- Making a course 'Available' for students
- Working with Grade Center (Grading Offline)
- Understanding the Changes from CE8 to Learn 9.1 (Instructors)
Online Course & Instructor Evaluation System is another system in the responsibility of the deanship. Earlier the courses evaluation was done manually. This process was not only very tedious but also prone to human error. With the increasing number of courses offered each semester in the university, the manual process was becoming unmanagable.
So to simplify and improve the things, an inhouse system was developed for the courses evaluation. Although the system is not fully automated but for the faculty and students its totally online and only few scripts are required to manually run. The system is fully integrated with the university banner system for the courses details and information. For the reports IBM Business Intelligence Solution Cognos is used.
My responsibilities not only include activating the system but also to monitor the system. Release the reports, monitor the evaluation submission status and respond to the queries from the faculty and students
Centra Solution is another service provided by the deanship of the faculty. It allows the faculty to option to have virtual classes. Centra provided some advance features for blended learning.
The system was even used by some faculty members to record sessions. It was also used in cases of hosting a meeting when all the members of the committee can't be available. My responsibilities included helping the faculty and administrator to create session in the centra system and keeping the system up and running. The system was integrated by the university authentication server to provide access to all faculty.
Academic Leadership Center is the project of the Ministry of Higher Education, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The project is under the supervision of the Rector of the King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals. Being one of the member of the team of the Academic Leadership Center, i am responsible with looking over their website and event system.
Currently Academic Leadership Center only has a website with an event management module. More systems for the Academic Leadership Centers are under development which will be integrated and launched soon. My main responsibilities include to update th existing website and monitor the event registrations when an event is announced. Also i have to communicate with developers about the requirement of the center and test their products for quality, reliability and conformance to the center's requirements.