We have engaged external consultants from Blackboard to undertake a major performance audit of the core Blackboard Learn software, commencing in August 2011. The purpose of the audit and tuning project is to to ensure that Blackboard and its key components are able to cope with the expected load from October 2011, to include a projected 20% increase on the 14,500 users (accessing Blackboard 6 times per week) experienced in October 2010, coupled with system-wide use of the Content System and upgrade to Blackboard 9.1
The goals of the project are to:
The performance audit and subsequent tuning will hopefully ensure that core Blackboard Learn software is running as smoothly and quickly as possible, as well as testing how key critical activity areas perform under different types of current and predicted future demand. The initial priority will be to review and improve core service stability (which has both hardware and software compenents) and then move on to improving the general responsiveness of Blackboard.
The funding for the performance audit was partly met by an underspend on the IeLS project matched by funding from Information Services and was undertaken both to support the objectives of the IeLS project and also as a direct response to user feedback which indicated that the speed of the Blackboard system had been problematic for some users in 2010-11.
Below is a summary of the actions:
Hilary Griffiths