LearnLink Upgrade is finally complete!

In addition to leading the search for the perfect replacement LMS for WebCT, the LMS team has been working hard on upgrading the LearnLink system to the most current version. Last Friday, the system was successfully upgraded from v8.0 to v8.3.

While the new version offers many of the same features as the older one, v8.3 totes a new interface (MS Outlook users may experiences some déjà vu!) and several new tools and features.

The LearnLink website also has a new face. We're still working on updating the entire site, but we have the main pages sporting the new McMaster website look and feel.

For more details about the upgrade and the new system, please visit: http://www.learnlink.mcmaster.ca

- Katrina Espanol-Miller

Process update

We have hired a summer student to work with our LMS team. Her name is Tiffany Neal. Tiffany starts next week and will be doing low level support and course creation for WebCT/LearnLink as well as helping out with the LMS evaluation. She is a third year Life Sciences student and will be with us until the end of August. Welcome Tiffany!

WebCT summer course requests are still coming in and our staff have started to collate and compare the survey data as well as the RFI vendor data in preparation for a ranking of the RFI submissions according to the expressed needs of our LMS community. I have also started working on an RFP framework for the next stage of the selection process and have been meeting with Deans and dept. chairs in order to update them and get them involved in the process.

I would also like to introduce the newest member of the committee. He is an undergraduate student by the name of Po Ko. Po is a second year Social Sciences student pursing a combined honours in Political Science and Communications Studies. Welcome Po! I envision our next committee meeting to be in late June but that is flexible and contingent on our workload and ability to complete the data analysis and research necessary for you to make an informed decision regarding which products should continue in the process.

- Bart Strong

Lucky streak!

Herman is on a lucky streak! He went to a conference last week and won an iPod. Today, Wayne ran a script to randomly choose two people from all those that participated in the surveys. Herman had filled out the faculty/staff survey while wearing his instructor hat (he teaches for the B. Tech program). The script picked Herman's name! Of course, he isn't eligible for the $100 gift certificate, so the script was run again. However, we each fished out a tooney each and asked Herman to play the next Super 7 draw. Don't good things come in three's?

- Laila Bastedo

Student surveys are now closed

The student surveys are now closed. We are encouraged by the response from the community as we received. We received 206 responses to the faculty/staff survey and 1899 responses to the student survey. Now the hard part - going through all the data!

- Wayne Cai