Romancing the LTAC
We had quite the shocker on Friday. That was the day Kim (one of the instructors using the alpha) forwarded us an email she had received from the UBC Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology asking for community feedback on LMSs to replace Blackboard Vista. This meant two things:
1) UBC has decided to replace Vista (hooray!).
2) The selection process for a replacement is well underway and we somehow missed it (not so hooray).
How could this of happened? I feel like we must have been sleeping on the job, yet I know we weren’t. We have spent the last 9 months working day and night to solve this exact problem at UBC. We’ve met with many instructors, administrators, department heads, and various chairs over the months. Matygo is already, now, being used instead of Vista in three courses. And yet somehow we never knew of this process, and the Learning Technology Advisory Council (LTAC - overseeing the process) never heard of us.
Thankfully, there is still time to correct this. I spent the better part of my weekend drafting, revising, folding, and signing introduction letters to all 39 members of the LTAC and set out today to hand deliver them. What a trek. By a large margin, I traversed more of UBC today than I ever did in a day during my 8 years as a student there. From Mary Bollert Hall up by Anthropology down to Forestry, the LTAC has members from everywhere.
Henry, a TA from one of the CS courses using Matygo, recognized me walking into Brock Hall.
“Hey Paul! You’re from Matygo right? That’s really cool man, it is so nice.”
I showed him my bag of letters and said what I was up to. He was pretty pumped, I told him I wish he had emailed me so I had everything he said in writing. I couldn’t have scripted all the things he said. He ended by saying, and this is pretty close to verbatim because I don’t think I’ll ever forget it, “Fight really hard for this [referring to the LTAC selection], I really want to see you guys win. You could really be the next generation you know.”
I had actually met Henry last year in CS, but to be honest I didn’t immediately recognize him. I’m really glad he recognized me though, because he absolutely made my day. I need to thank him again - Henry if you’re reading this, thanks - you’ve inspired me probably more than you know.
At the end of the day, the LTAC and other powers that be are going to do what they think is best for the students. And with feedback like that, I’m pretty optimistic we have a decent shot at this one. :)
Stay tuned, version 1.3 should be out soon!
Paul
