Stakeholders
The following stakeholder groups can be identified for Blackboard:
- Students
- Tutors
- University academic management
- Student Administration (particularly Academic Services)
- IT Services
Governance Structure
Key:
| DVC-COO | Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Chief Operating Officer) |
| DVC-A | Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Academic) |
| PVC-SE | Pro Vice-Chancellor (Student Experience) |
| D-AS | Director, Academic Services |
| D-ITS | Director, IT Services |
| AD-ITS | Assistant Director, IT Services (Line manager for Learning and Research and Learning & Research Systems) |
Representation of stakeholders is as follows:
- Students and tutors are represented in User feedback groups
- University Academic Management is represented in the Vice Chancellor’s Executive, Academic Board and Continuous Improvement Board
- Student Administration is represented by AS, including the Director’s membership of Academic Board, the Learning & Teaching Student Experience Committee and Continuous Improvement Board
- IT Services are represented by Assistant Director on the Continuous Improvement Board and TEL Learning and Research 2020 Strategic Programme.
Drivers for Change
There are five drivers for systems change
- Strategic requirements
- Evolving academic needs emerging through formal academic review
- Evolving academic needs emerging through user feedback (student and staff)
- Changes to academic regulations with Blackboard implications
- Environmentally mandated change
Examples of these might (respectively) be:
- the Vice-Chancellor’s directive to open up all Blackboard courses to all users
- changes to course templates and minimum specifications
- evidence of user confusion at the screen shown when the release button is pressed in online assessment
- module coding conventions
- security patches from Blackboard and network changes
These changes requests reach the Learning & Research Systems team via the Continuous Improvement Board, the TEL Learning and Research 2020 Strategic Programme, the Learning & Teaching Student Experience Committee, calls to the support team, direct contact from AS (Academic Services, who govern academic regulations), and awareness within the IT department.
Priorities for academic-driven change are co-ordinated by the Continuous Improvement Board.
Authority to implement casual, small-scale changes is mandated to IT Services, and therefore the Learning & Research Systems team. Significant change with large-scale resource impact is referred to the Continuous Improvement Board.
Continuity in this governance arrangement is achieved by the shared membership of governance committees and groups as per the key in the diagram above.