[Teaching-Faculty] Brightspace Information: Cross-listing

[Office of the Provost/VPAA]

Hello colleagues,

We'd like to update you on the switch to Brightspace as the campus'
learning management system. As most of you know, all summer courses were
taught using Brightspace. A big "thank you" goes to the faculty who made
the switch and to the tech team who worked very hard to make sure things
went as smoothly as possible.

As we move all courses to Brightspace, John Locke and the TEL team have
previously communicated that instructors will work on course materials in a
DEV (development) site and will identify and create production course sites
using an Argos dashboard beginning 2 weeks before the start date of a
semester. The roster will be added when the course site is created, giving
students the ability to see the existence of the course site as well as any
course materials that have been made visible. Instructors can continue to
update course materials in the live site but should not require any student
work to be done until the semester starts.

Due to unique issues that arise from the way SUNY has implemented our
version of Brightspace, there are some processes that will need a little
more attention. It is very important that before the course site is created
using the Argos dashboard, the *details of the course related to
cross-listing, sections, and instructor assignment* in Banner must be "set"
as much as possible. This is because if certain changes are made after the
course site is created from content in the DEV site, instructor or student
work *will be lost*. For example, if two cross-listed course sections are
created as a single course site and later the course sections are
separated, instructors and students in one of the sections will lose their
work. The same goes for joining two live course sites if one section is
canceled. There are also issues when a live course site is split into two
sections and when instructors are reassigned.

In summary, cross-listing or un-cross-listing courses that have active
course sites will be problematic if instructors have already added content
from a development site, and especially if students have done any work in
the course site. The basis of this issue is to protect ownership of
intellectual property. Brightspace defaults to keeping the instructor,
students, and course material together. And Brightspace requires that
Banner controls these assignments, giving our tech team less flexibility in
controlling course materials and rosters.

For most courses, none of this will be a problem. but we ask for your help
by using *cross-listing very carefully and only when needed*. And we ask
for your patience if a situation that cannot be avoided causes some
difficulty. Thank you.


*JoAnn Gleeson-Kreig, Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs*

*TJ Myers, Chief Information Officer*

*Pam Munson, Registrar*

101 Broad Street
<https://maps.google.com/?q=101+Broad+Street+Plattsburgh,+NY+12901&entry=gmail&source=g>

Plattsburgh, NY 12901
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*plattsburgh.edu <http://plattsburgh.edu/>*
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