Context & Conditions

“A proposed solution to full Blackboard Vista implementation at UNCW,” was a project management plan completed in the fall of 2006 in partial fulfillment of a course entitled: MIT 520: Managing Instructional Development. Under the guidance of Dr. Arnold Murdock this plan was developed to manage the transition from WebCT Campus Edition to Blackboard Vista on the UNC Wilmington campus. 

Scope:

The project objective was to develop a plan that would convert the entire UNCW campus to Blackboard Vista learning management system from WebCT Campus Edition. This was accomplished through a series of analyses. Initially the project statement was defined and an information gathering stage was planned. The information was then analyzed and the actual performance was compared with the optimal performance. Next a project scope was defined which set the deliverables, budget, specifications, development team descriptions, as well as the formative and summative evaluation procedure. A risk analysis and work breakdown structure was also produced. Microsoft Project was used to help manage the resources and timeline for the project. 

Role:

I completed the project by myself undertaking various roles. I worked as a project manager in defining the project scope and budget using instructional systems design principles. I also worked as an assessment specialist in the information gathering and analysis stage. 

Reflection:

This project gave me experience developing a management plan for a large university-wide project. I can see defining a scope, managing a budget, setting a project timeline, and writing project team descriptions will be very valuable skills in my future endeavors. If I had this project to do over again I would include a more comprehensive information gathering stage. Time is always a constraint but the more information you have up front the better your end product is going to be.