Dev Diaries #5: My Dundee Roadmap

We thought we’d use this week’s dev diary post as an opportunity to give staff and students look at our plans for My Dundee following the upcoming upgrade. These are just the basics for now and more details will be released in the new year:

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Move to the cloud

  • Zero-downtime due to updates
  • Immediate access to newest features
  • Immediate application of bug fixes and stability patches

My Dundee is being moved to a new home in the cloud, delivering a range of immediate benefits including no more week-long periods downtime. This move will also unlock new options for the future of our online learning environment.

Migration will be completed by 7 January 2018

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Spring Clean

  • Revised administrative procedures
  • New data management policies
  • Tidy up of old modules and content

Well be going through all our administrative procedures including how modules are created, how users are managed and what we do with the quantities of content and data accumlated over the years. Our aim is to make My Dundee efficient, reliable and easy to manage.

Various sub-projects through Sem2 (18/19) & Summer 2019

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Ultra Interface

  • Complete redesign of the main user interface of My Dundee.
  • New and improved user experience.
  • Improves main interface without changing modules until course leaders are ready.

Throughout Sem 2, we will be redesigning and testing a new brand new user interface for My Dundee. Ultra delivers modern, intuitive navigation that provides quick access to the most critical information from across all modules. Users will be able to preview Ultra through a test server and we’ll be heavily publicising the changes through Sem2 (18/19)

Consultation + publicity throughout Sem2 (18/19) –  Go-live end of May.

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Ultra Courses

  • Extends Ultra interface to modules and organisation.
  • Completly new way for staff to build and students to interact with modules.
  • Opt-in scheme allowing schools/disciplines to choose when to move.

New course view that offers a streamlined, more intuitive interface and workflows for maximum efficiency. We’ll be working with a few early adopters to convert some modules ready for 2019/20 before epanding to a fully supported opt-in scheme to schools, disciplines and module leaders.

Working with early adopters ready for 2019/20 followed by managed adoption schedule in consultation with Schools.

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Ally for Accessibility

  • Integrates with My Dundee to support the creation and delivery of fully accessible content.
  • Automatically generates alternative formats for range of course files.
  • Provides accessibility indicators to guide best practice.

Blackboard Ally is a bolt-on product that we plan to integrate into My Dundee in the summer. Its main aim is to support educators in delivering accessible content to their students.

Consultation throughout SEM2 (18/19) – Implementation Summer 2019

Any questions about any of these, feel free to get in touch with ctil@dundee.ac.uk or comment below.