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One shared system for Blackboard users

CampusNet, Firstclass, AULA... The jungle of e-learning systems is now a thing of the past. AU has reached its goal of a single shared system to all students.

2017.11.02 | Signe Schou

Photo: Anders Trærup

In his May 2017 blog post, University Director Arnold Bloom writes: “An area where we need to increase our efficiency is the number of procedures and systems we use to perform our work tasks...it requires a lot of resources to maintain three systems if we can actually get by with just one. I believe that we can use those resources better in other ways.

With the merger of the last two versions of the Blackboard system, AU has taken a big step towards realising this goal. AU now has a single shared LMS (Learning Management System). Formerly, there were two different versions of Blackboard in use at AU: BSS LMS and a system shared by Arts, HE and ST. Now all four faculties have moved into the same ‘house’ at this address: https://blackboard.au.dk.

This means that all AU Blackboard users now have a single point of access to their course activities. It will no longer be possible to log on to the wrong version of Blackboard.

New hosting

The operation of the new university-wide system has been placed in the hands of Blackboard Inc., which has a large European data centre in Holland. While Aarhus BSS is accustomed to this solution, having an external partner who is responsible for operating the system is new for Arts, HE and ST, where the solution was formerly operated by AU IT.

“We hope that the new partnership will mean shorter service interruptions in connection with upgrades. We also expect that upgrades will more often take place outside normal working hours, so that we can avoid inconveniencing users as much as possible´,” says Anne Luther, AU Educational Administrative Systems.

From 5 to 1

The journey to a single LMS at AU has been long – but we have finally reached our goal with this final merger of the last two versions of Blackboard. A total of five LMS systems have been shut down since autumn 2014 (DPU Blackboard, AULA, CampusNet, FirstClass and finally BSS Blackboard).

If you have questions regarding the merger, please contact Anne Luther.

Education, Technical / administrative staff, All AU units, AU Student Administration and Services, Academic staff, Students