Scaffold Migration
The University of Health Sciences and Pharmacy (UHSP), founded in 1864 as the St. Louis College of Pharmacy, is a distinguished private institution located in St. Louis, Missouri. It comprises the historic St. Louis College of Pharmacy, the third-oldest and tenth-largest pharmacy college in the U.S., along with the College of Arts and Sciences, the College of Global Population Health, and the College of Graduate Studies. Accredited by the Higher Learning Commission, the university is dedicated to advancing education in the health sciences.
After over 10 years on Moodle, the learning platform was about to undergo significant changes, with many features no longer being supported. Given the substantial advancements in learning management systems since its adoption, and with the current multi-year contract nearing its end, the university decided to evaluate alternative LMS options. This evaluation aimed to determine if a different LMS could support faculty and students more effectively.
After nearly a year of evaluating different systems, faculty, staff, and student focus groups unanimously agreed that Brightspace was the ideal choice for a new LMS. The next step was developing a comprehensive implementation and transition plan to facilitate the institution’s migration to the new platform.
Transferring content that didn’t match systems
One of UHSP’s biggest challenges was that most of the content needing to be transferred didn’t match the new platform one-to-one. Foundational elements like displays and names might change, making it difficult for faculty to navigate. The instructional design team aimed to maintain familiarity for faculty to ensure a smooth transition to the new platform.
Faculty adoption
Faculty had concerns about migrating to a new platform. Transitioning to a new LMS was daunting for faculty who had become accustomed to doing things a certain way. UHSP’s LMS evaluation team knew that faculty needed to feel supported during the transition in order to fully adopt the new platform.
Supporting a small team
The small team at UHSP recognized that they did not have the capacity to manually migrate courses and provide essential support and faculty training. With this knowledge in mind, the team began looking to partner with a vendor to build an API for efficient content migration that would meet faculty needs.
“We would have been more hesitant to migrate without K16. Scaffold Migration increased our confidence to proceed by providing us a safety net.”
- Jeanene Singleton, Director of Academic Technology
The team at UHSP discovered K16 Solutions early in the migration evaluation process. In fact, the ease with which K16 could migrate courses was a major factor in UHSP’s decision to migrate to Brightspace.
“We would have been more hesitant to migrate without K16,” said Jeanene Singleton, Director of Academic Technology. “Scaffold Migration increased our confidence to proceed by providing us a safety net.”
K16 began by transferring the most challenging courses, which had unique functions and data. UHSP was able to demo these courses and provide feedback to perfect them.
“The willingness to sit down, answer our questions, and walk us through what they were doing made the difference for us,” said Emily Fetick, Lead Instructional Designer. The K16 team consistently kept us informed about the progress. The personalized attention we received was incredibly important to us.”
While K16 migrated courses, the team at UHSP could focus on the LMS Technical Plan and providing faculty with the necessary training to navigate the new platform effectively, ensuring an excellent learning experience for students. Once the migration was complete, all UHSP had to do was provide faculty access to their new courses along with a comprehensive course readiness guide.
“We’re extremely grateful for the dedication and hard work of Chani and his team. Their expertise and customer-focused approach provided us with a positive migration experience,” said Singleton.
Custom transfer saves significant time
Faculty were concerned about transferring custom reports they had to manually enter into the legacy LMS, as these wouldn't match up in Brightspace. However, the K16 team rose to the challenge. They successfully migrated quiz questions with associated outcomes into Brightspace's new learning outcomes feature, a task that had never been done before. This impressive feat eliminated the need for faculty to rebuild these reports manually, saving significant time and effort. The successful migration not only impressed D2L but also ensured faculty support for the transition. K16’s expertise made it possible to map the data accurately, making the transition seamless for UHSP.
Prompt, efficient support
The team at UHSP felt supported every step of the way during the migration project. “From initial consultation to the final implementation, every step of the process was handled with professionalism and expertise. The support was amazing,” said Singleton.
Giving instructors confidence
With the burden of migration lifted, the team at UHSP was able to focus on providing faculty the training they needed to navigate the new LMS. The team provided a training program with asynchronous and synchronized courses, plus one-on-one support and open office hours. “We loved that we had K16 in our corner so that we could focus on other aspects like training opportunities,” said Fetick. “This gave confidence to our instructors as they knew where to find everything, which reduced any concerns. The summer launch went smoothly and quietly without any issues, which speaks to the ease of our migration process.”
“The willingness to sit down, answer our questions, and walk us through what they were doing made the difference for us. The K16 team consistently kept us informed about the progress. The personalized attention we received was incredibly important to us."
- Emily Fetick, Lead Instructional Designer