To improve the performance, reliability and scalability of eCampus, the system will be moved from physical, on-campus servers to a cloud-based environment before the fall semester. This complex and intricate endeavor will require an extended outage in late July but will ensure that the University can quickly transition to a fully online learning environment if needed.
Information Technology Services will provide more details in the coming weeks, including outage dates to help summer session instructors and online students plan for the disruption, and to provide guidance for fall term course building.
The look and feel of eCampus will remain the same after this migration, as will the integration with STAR. This change, however, has many advantages to both instructors and students, including faster access to new features and bug fixes, and round-the-clock system monitoring that will ensure problems are either prevented or corrected quickly. While eCampus administrators in ITS will still handle day-to-day issues and support, system maintenance will be scheduled by Blackboard when needed, with minimal, if any, impact to faculty and students.
The abrupt but necessary shift to remote instruction during the spring semester stressed eCampus and related technology resources in unprecedented ways, requiring workarounds such as the recurring lockdown of the system during final exams. Those experiences helped ITS determine how to expand capacity and prevent similar lockdowns in the future.
Please monitor WVU ENEWS and your email for future announcements. You may also follow @WVUITServices on Twitter or “like” WVU Information Technology on Facebook for updates.