Project: Blackboard™ Transition
Introduction
As the Training Administrator for the US Army Practical Nurse Course, there are many activities to oversee. One of which is to migrate the curriculum to the Blackboard Learn CMS. This daunting task takes a group effort to accomplish. The migration was to be completed over 3 months. The project met a lot of resistance from the staff and faculty upon notification of the migration throughout the project.
The Negative Aspects of the Project
During the Phase I of the project, the mandate for the migration to Blackboard was distributed to all US Army training sites. The decisions were dictated by a higher command to the Blackboard Learn CMS platform. The migration project was filtered down to each individual school with a timeline for completion. Prior to the notification, the course faculty and staff had no knowledge of the migration to Blackboard. The project would have been better received if the faculty of each course were part of the information chain to migrate to a mandated standardized learning management system.
Phase II: Create a Project Plan
The project was presented to the staff by the Course Director to comply with the mandated migration of Blackboard. The project was ill conceived from the start, staff were confused of how this will impact training? Staff were not knowledgeable in the use of Blackboard as faculty. How would online testing be conducted for the students? Was the infrastructure capable to handle the online demand for the use of Blackboard? Many of these question could have been answered if a project team was designed with key personnel to assist with the workload and migration with checkpoints for timeline completions.
There are many factors that a Project Management format could address shortcomings of this project:
- Communication
- Organization of the project
- Leadership Involvement throughout the project
- Training of staff and faculty before migration to a new CMS
“Eight Steps to Transforming Your Organization” (Kotter, 2006)
As we look back at the plan for change, mapping change and communicating (Beach, 2006) the change early to the staff would have resulted in less resistance, anticipation of resistance involving time, personnel, money, equipment, training, and other resources. Utilizing the four tasks for institutionalizing change, communication, document updating, realigning rewards and culture change (Beach, 2006) you will have a successful less turbulent change process with staff empowerment and buy in to promote a positive organizational culture in the work place.
Conclusion
As I look back on the transition, the Blackboard migration has been successful due to the diligence of the few faculty members that embraced the change and a new leadership team that understood the new technology to empower the staff members with playing a part in the decisions of the project. The continued learning curve is still prevalent today as we continue to successfully engage our students with the Blackboard Learn CMS to promote a positive learning environment.
Beach, L. R. (2006). Leadership and the art of change: A practical guide to organizational transformation. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publication.
Kotter, J. P. (2006). Leading change: Why transformation efforts fail (chap. 10, pp. 239-251). In Gallos, J. V. (Ed.), Organization development: A Jossey-Bass reader. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Organization Development: A Jossey-Bass Reader by Gallos, J. V. Copyright 2006 by John Wiley & Sons Inc. Reproduced with permission of John Wiley & Sons Inc. in the format electronic usage via Copyright Clearance Center.
David Graham ePortfolio 
Sometimes the success of a project depends on how well those who are involved take on the project. It sounds like your project was somewhat successful because of the actions of a few dedicated instructors. Embracing change is hard for any organization. However, if more people embrace change it could greatly improve the organization.
LikeLike
David,
I work in education. I have experience where teachers have received new technology to use in the classroom without training. Sometimes without much notice. One example is that during fall break, smart panels were installed in the classrooms. The past week someone came to train us on the basics of the smart panel. We received the panels three weeks ago. I think that if all staff can’t be trained on the new technology then a few staff members should be trained to help make the transition easier.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi David,
Looks like the change was and still is causing a lot of growing pains. My organization is constantly changing and after awhile I think people get change weary. They haven’t really mastered one change before another one comes along. In a period of about one month we have had to learn how to use two new pieces of technology in our jobs. The learning curve is tough to go through for two changes at once. Maybe your staff needed more training before being asked to implement the change. In our distance education class I had no idea how to set up my classroom in Blackboard at first. It took a lot of trial and error. No one showed me how to use it; I had to figure it out myself. That made me feel very overwhelmed and very frustrated.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I think Greer’s post mortem example distributing questions to stake holders to answer and then having a meeting to discuss the answers to those questions would have been an effective approach in your project situation. I would even suggest a mid-project post mortem to assist in the change process and help to ensure that plans to move the project forward would become more effective.
References
Greer, M. (2010). The project management minimalist: Just enough PM to rock your projects! (Laureate custom ed.). Baltimore: Laureate Education, Inc.
LikeLiked by 1 person