A Cat-Herding Tale

Forging a Single Course Management System for a Decentralized Institution

Copyright Abdul Shibli, 2004.This work is the intellectual property of the author. Permission is granted for this material to be shared for non-commercial, educational purposes, provided that this copyright statement appears on the reproduced materials and notice is given that the copying is by permission of the author. To disseminate otherwise or to republish requires written permission from the author.

A Poster Presentation byAbdul Shibli

Harvard UniversityCambridge, Massachusetts

http://gseweb.harvard.edu/~shibliabEducause 2004, Denver, CO

HMS

HGSD

HSPH

HDS

HGSE

FAS -DCE

FAS

HLS

Arnold ArborHBS

KSG

FAS ICG Tools

FAS -DCE ICG Tools

HGSE ICG/iCommons Tools

HDS ICG/iCommons Tools

HSPH ICG/iCommons Tools

HGSD ICG/iCommns Tools

HLS ICG/iCommons

Arnold Arbor ICG/iCommons Tools

HBS HBS Coursetools

KSG Lotus

HMS HMS myCourses

Percent of Harvard courses by school and course platform

Some Accomplishments

• Strengthening of the student learning experiences in the various schools at Harvard

• World-class course management platform that is both faculty- and student-centric

• Started as a Pilot in 2000, now embraces all schools at Harvard

• 80% of courses using common set of tools• Harvard’s schools are sharing resources;

librarians and instructional technologists are cooperating; faculty are enthusiastic.

AccomplishmentsThe collaborative effort has spawned and/or linked up with other initiatives:

• Presidential Instructional Technologies Fellows• Web pedagogy and community of practitioners• Technology Integration• Needs assessment• Faculty development• Course transformation & content development• Three T’s (tools, training, and technical support) • Strengthening of working relationship between

faculty and technologists

Key Challenges• To consolidate best of breed instructional tools

from around the university into a single, integrated course management system

• To overcome the historical independence of Harvard’s various academic environments

• To reconcile technical approaches to software development in a way that produces an application equally relevant to diverse instructional cultures and curricula