From waterfall to rapid prototyping: supporting enterprise-wide adoption of the oncourse collaboration and learning (CL) environment at Indiana University

A critical challenge for Indiana University's IT Training and Education (ITTE) division is supporting the academic community during its adoption of a new enterprise-wide application which combines a course management system (CMS), a collaboration and learning environment (CLE), and electronic portfolios. The process of migration from IU's original CMS to the new Oncourse CL is delicate, complex, and fast-paced. For the past decade, ninety percent of the faculty and students at seven IU campuses have used an IU-developed CMS. Even while some functionality of the new environment remains a moving target, we must train the academic community who may be loyal to, wary of, or unacquainted with the original CMS. Accordingly, as Oncourse CL evolves throughout its 18-month migration, our challenge involves software training and proactive change management. Examination of development and training strategies quickly revealed that standard ITTE practice could not keep pace with the aggressive transition to Oncourse CL. As a result, our project team radically adjusted its methods, adopting a Rapid Collaborative Prototyping (RCP) model based on a more agile approach. We observed two benefits: valuable user input regarding our presentations allowing for rapid improvements, and feedback-driven changes in the very development of Oncourse CL. Our discussion will highlight the benefits of this new approach, using our training products as examples. IU is one of four founding partners of the Sakai community source software development effort to design, build and deploy a new CLE for higher education. Oncourse CL is IU's implementation of it.