Blackboard Outages and Updates

On Tuesday, September 1, 2009, NCVPS released a video message on our website from Dr. Setser regarding a number of unexpected issues with our Blackboard Learning Management System. Due to unprecedented growth in enrollments, which are up 100% from summer and are now at 16,000+ students, the system has had several instances of downtime. As a result we have met with Blackboard Executives in Raleigh, N.C., and have been in constant contact with their Washington, D.C. office this week to resolve these issues as quickly as possible. To our dismay, server issues are still causing some problems that are impacting your students and their learning time. This is unacceptable.

We at NCVPS apologize for this inconvenience and accept full responsibility for the resolution of this issue. We want to assure that your online students will not be penalized due to these occurrences and we are working closely with teachers to provide prompt communication and feedback of this requirement. Blackboard has taken measures to ensure stability of the Blackboard environment by increasing the hardware resources dedicated to the NCVPS Blackboard environment and improving the software efficiency of the system to allow for increased capacity. At this time we are working with Blackboard on an hourly schedule to ensure not only that the system is stable, but that they can handle such growth in the future.

In the meantime, these are some specific steps for district and school leaders.

Superintendents: please assure your principals and distance learning advisors that students will not be penalized and the situation will be resolved very soon.

Principals: please assure your students that our teachers are contacting them by phone and via the web in the next 24 hours to keep them on pace and on target with their studies.

Distance Learning Advisors: please do not drop students as a result of a short term technology event. This event, while unacceptable to NCVPS, is not too dissimilar from a student and/or parent who is concerned about a class and/or teacher in the first week. What we typically do in the face to face is investigate, look at data, and try to resolve the problem. In addition, when the lab is double booked at a school, educators are resilient and can find other ways for students to study, read, and work until learning materials become available. This is a very similar process in the virtual world.

We are working around the clock to provide better stability for our NCVPS system. We have had several indicators today that we are getting very close. We will update you tomorrow before the weekend as well to let you know of our progress and expect to be fully operational very soon. Should you have any questions as a superintendent or principal, please contact Bryan Setser at 919-513-8550, and he will return your call promptly and respond accordingly with solutions to your situation.

David Edwards, our Chief Professional Learning Officer, will ensure that our distance learning advisor spa and facebook account, http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/ncvps, are updated three times tomorrow in the a.m., at lunch, and at the close of business to keep your informed. In addition, you can reach out to your LEA virtual learning consultant here www.thevlc.org and here http://www.ncvps.org/lea/studentsupport/ for immediate support needs

Our LMS Administrator, Nathan Thanos, will also update twitter on the hour at http://twitter.com/ncvps throughout Friday to give you updates.

Thanks for your patience and understanding as we work to resolve these issues.