Teams continue to test the newest version of ReggieNet, Illinois State’s customized learning management system, ahead of an important upgrade on Thursday, July 26. On that day, technicians will take ReggieNet offline to install a series of bug fixes, interface improvements, and a few new features. As summer instructors learned in late April, the system will be unavailable for most of that day to accommodate the upgrade. Instructors still teaching in July are encouraged to remind their students of the planned outage.
Since early June, testers at the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Technology and Administrative Technologies have put the new version of ReggieNet through its paces, working together to identify and fix any issues before the rollout to the campus community. A small group of students and faculty members will be invited to “test drive” the updated system before it goes live. While testing continues, instructional support staff will begin to update help guides, videos tutorials, and workshop materials available on CTLT’s ReggieNet support site.
Because classes are taught almost entirely year-round at Illinois State, there is no ideal time to do such a sweeping upgrade. The July 26 date was chosen in consultation with the Office of the Registrar to cause the least disruption to student learning, faculty planning, and summer grade submission.
ReggieNet is based on an open-source software platform called Sakai. The July 26 maintenance will update ReggieNet to the latest version of Sakai. Students will notice improvements to the user interface, especially on mobile devices, and more options for selecting courses as “favorites” for easy access. Instructors will see a wide variety of improvements, including some long-requested changes to the Gradebook and Tests & Quizzes tools. Look for details about changes and improvements once testing is finalized, closer to the launch date.
