Learning Management System (LMS/WebCT) Service Level Agreement 2009/10 Home  Service Catalog Sla Learning Management System (LMS/WebCT) Service Level Agreement 2009/10
Learning Management System (LMS/WebCT) Service Level Agreement
1 General Overview
2 Service Description
3 Roles and Responsibilities
4 Requesting Service
5 Hours of Coverage, Response Times & Escalation
6 Maintenance and Service Changes
7 Pricing
8 Reviewing and Reporting
9 Approvals
1 General Overview
This is a Service Level Agreement (“SLA”) between the campus community and the Information Technology Services Division (ITS) to document:
- The LMS (Learning Management System) Service
- The general levels of response, availability, and maintenance associated with this service
- The responsibilities of ITS as a provider of this service
- The responsibilities of the clients receiving this service
- Deviations from the standard processes documented in the ITS and Campus SLA
This SLA shall remain valid until revised or terminated.
2 Service Description
ITS clearly documents services provided in the ITS service catalog (http://its.ucsc.edu/service_catalog)
2.1 Service Scope
The current LMS (known as WebCT, Blackboard Campus Edition 4.1) is a legacy application that will be downgraded from vendor Full Support to Operational Support effective October 1, 2009. It will be replaced by a UCSC Sakai installation by Fall 2010. See Sakai Implementation Project (its.ucsc.edu/projects/cle/sakai) for more info.
The Learning Management System (“WebCT” Blackboard Campus Edition 4.1) is to be identified in this document as the "LMS." The LMS is an integrated set of web course tools that can be used to supplement a class taught mostly face-to-face or can be used to teach a course entirely at a distance. Students and faculty can access course materials and tools via secure, validated web browsers using their CruzID Blue for login and password. The learning management system is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week except during planned maintenance events. LMS tools (full list available) include the following popular subset:
LMS features include:
- Discussion Boards (threaded message forums), Mail
- Live Chat and Whiteboard
- Online Quizzes and Surveys
- Assignment Submission
- Calendar
- Grade book, My Grades
- Notebook
- Student Presentations and Homepages
- Group Discussion Areas
- Content Modules with Paths Book marks, Progress Tracking
- Glossary
- Rich Media Support (html, audio, video, flash, pdf)
In addition, ITS provides infrastructure, people, and processes including:
- Escalated support services
- System operations, administration and network connections
- Web access
- System level backup processes and disaster recovery.
- Quarterly individual course backup
- CruzID Blue Account administration and support
- LMS Account/Course administration and support
- Vendor relations and referred incident and problem escalation on behalf of UCSC users
- Consulting to UCSC instructors on usage and best instructional design practices
2.1.1 User Requirements
- Users must have a valid UCSC CruzID Blue to access the LMS
- See separate SLA with ITS Support Center and UCSC Extension regarding CruzID Blue accounts
- Internet access using compatible browsers, plug-ins and settings as specified by application.
2.1.2 Boundaries of Service Features and Functions
- Student access to courses is active only during the quarter offered and by official enrollment or consent of instructor.
- Access to LMS courses by those not enrolled or associated must be approved by the instructor of record.
- Courses are active for instructors for the academic year in which they are taught
- System backups are made for disaster recovery. Course level archives are created at the end of quarter only. (Instructors have the option to create their own course backup at anytime within the application.)
- There is no provision for the restoration of individual student files.
2.2 Service Level Performance
2.2.1 General Service Levels
- Total system storage is 130 GB and is a shared resource.
- 24/7 Availability except during scheduled maintenance.
- CruzID Blue is the standard authentication source to login to LMS.
- Wireless access to LMS, on campus requires CruzID Blue login to Cruznet
2.2.2 Specific Service Levels
- Properly submitted and complete Course Requests will be created in 3-5 business days.
- During Peak Periods (1 week prior and 1 week after the start of quarter and during finals) course requests may take 10 business days to complete.
- Student accounts in the LMS will be generated from AIS course enrollment updates daily beginning the first day of instruction through the last day to add.
- Manual class list enrollment requests will be completed in 1-2 business days.
- New Course file storage quota is set at 200MB
- Course restoration requests will be completed in 5 business days if data is available.
- Courses file storage of 1GB may not be backed up or restored from archive due to application limitations.
3 Roles and Responsibilities
3.1 Parties
The following Service Owner(s) will be used as the basis of the Agreement and represent the primary stakeholders associated with this SLA:
3.2 ITS Responsibilities
ITS will provide the infrastructure, technology, people, processes and monitoring tools necessary for supporting the LMS. Specifically, ITS will:
- Clearly document services provided in the ITS Service Catalog.
- Meet response times associated with the priority assigned to incidents and service requests.
- Generate quarterly reports on service level performance.
- Notify Customers of all scheduled maintenance via the Maintenance Calendar, Service Catalog web page and/or a communication to campus via the ITS Communication Specialist.
3.3 Customer Responsibilities
Customer responsibilities and/or requirements in support of this Agreement include:
- Utilizing the Support Center for incidents.
- Users must comply with all related laws and university policies (including but not limited to FERPA, and Copyright.)
- Instructors and TAs must be identifiable as officially associated with the course.
- Initiating complete course requests via online form five weeks prior to start of quarter to ensure enrollments and access are available first day of instruction.
- Instructors must indicate the active term for each course, either quarter taught or if year-long access is required.
- Providing self-management of course environment (content and tool usage) as appropriate by role including internal TA (teaching assistant) and co-designer access for courses.
- Instructors are responsible to maintain, archive and transmit any grade data or student assessment to the Academic Information System.
- Students must be registered for active UCSC course to have access to LMS course or by permission of the instructor
- Users should avail themselves of training opportunities and self-help via online tutorials and help resources.
- Users are responsible for creating, archiving and maintaining their own content.
- Contacting the IT Service Manager for additions or changes in established service levels. Note that “WebCT” Blackboard Campus Edition is offered as-is from the vendor, see Maintenance and Service Changes.
4 Requesting Service
See the ITS and Campus SLA for standard methods of contacting ITS for service.
Exceptions:
The Faculty Instructional Technology Center (FITC) will be the primary contact for instructors' service requests, consulting and questions regarding usage of the LMS and integration with teaching and learning.
5 Hours of Coverage, Response Times & Complaint Resolution
For all requests, the ITS goal is to have a staff member assigned and acknowledge requests within 8 business hours of receipt. Campus priorities may require exceptions to this goal during certain times of the Academic year.
5.1 Hours of Coverage
LMS application is provided 24 hours a day 7 days a week except for periods of planned maintenance, scheduled outages, and recovery from unexpected outages. See 6. Maintenance and Service Changes.
5.2 Incidents
5.2.1 Incident Response
See the ITS and Campus SLA.
5.2.2 Prioritization
See the ITS and Campus SLA.
5.2.3 Service Request
See the ITS and Campus SLA.
5.3 Escalation
See the ITS and Campus SLA.
5.4 Information
See the ITS and Campus SLA.
http://ic.ucsc.edu/services/learning_management_system/
5.5 Other Requests
No new features will be implemented in WebCT.
5.6 Service Exceptions to Coverage
The current LMS (known as WebCT, Blackboard Campus Edition 4.1) is a legacy application that will be downgraded from vendor Full Support to Operational Support effective October 1, 2009 and retired at the end of the academic year.
- Full Support (formerly Category A): Full Support includes product versions for which Blackboard
offers a wide range of support options. For the two most recent issued product versions, Full Support
includes an active maintenance schedule of Service Packs and Hotfixes and for the older product versions under Full Support, it includes workarounds developed on an as-needed basis.
- Operational Support (formerly Category B): includes those product versions for which Blackboard
offers a modified version of support. This category does not include an active maintenance schedule
such as corrections, enhancements, bug fixes, Application Packs, Services Packs or other updates made
generally available by Blackboard. All issues related to products in the Operational Support category,
for which Blackboard does not have an available fix or workaround, will be examined on a case-by case
basis, and may require a separately priced Professional Services engagement. All client calls will
be answered, operational assistance will be provided, and issues will be escalated to Product
Development." – Blackboard Service Support Guide, May 19, 2009
6 Maintenance and Service Changes
The LMS (WebCT) is generally available 24 hours, 7 days a week, excluding scheduled maintenance windows. In case of unexpected system failures we will make a best effort to bring the system back up as quickly as possible. The system is not housed in a fully redundant architecture and certain single component failures could cause unexpected service outages. Systems are no longer under Sun warranty. Typically these types of outages have been very rare (less than one minor failure a year) and recovery has taken only a few hours. While unlikely, more severe failures are possible which could result in an unexpected outage of a few days.
- 10:00 pm - Midnight on Thursdays is reserved for system maintenance. System may be unavailable during this time and we expect to utilize this window once or twice a quarter. Clients will be notified in advance.
- Other Maintenance Windows for LMS Planned outages will be performed between 7PM and 7AM on any day of the week and posted on the ITS Maintenance Calendar
See the ITS and Campus SLA for details of our standard maintenance and service process.
7 Pricing
LMS application is funded by instructional computing funds and provided at no additional charge for campus courses.
Course Recovery may incur costs if tapes are offsite. Clients are responsible to pay for actual vendor fees for transfer of offsite tapes for the recovery process.
8 Reviewing and Reporting
8.1 System Performance and Availability Reporting
Quarterly service performance and availability reports will be published for review.
- Availability
- Normal course account processing within 3-5 business days, peak period processing in 10 business days.
- Course Enrollment updates by first day of instruction through fifth week (last day to add.)
- Support response time will be tracked and reported separately as part of the ITS and Campus SLA.
- If LMS outages occur, they will be reported through Change Management.
8.2 SLA Reviews
This Agreement is valid from July 1, 2009 and will be reviewed annually or as otherwise needed.
IT Services is responsible for facilitating annual reviews of this document. Contents of this document may be amended as required, provided mutual agreement is obtained from the primary stakeholders and communicated to all affected parties. IT Services will incorporate all subsequent revisions and obtain mutual agreements.
This Agreement will be posted to the following location and will be made accessible to all stakeholders:
Document Location: http://its.ucsc.edu/service_catalog/sla/
9 Approvals
The Divisional Liaisons and ITS Senior Managers approve this document. This document is then published on the ITS Service Catalog web site along with other service level agreements. Service level information is integrated into the service page in the ITS Service Catalog.
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