Following the initial TSUS/SHSU shared services partnership with Lamar Institute of Technology (LIT) in 2018-2019, SRSU signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Sam Houston State University in early 2020 agreeing to be the second TSUS system school to collaborate with SHSU in a shared services partnership. The stated objective of this initiative is to share resources in support of improving and expanding quality online education within the Texas State University System.
Support/Training Benefits of Partnership for SRSU
Tim Parsons and Estella Vega will continue to be SRSU on-site Blackboard Support and Instructional Technologists, but with the addition of the SHSU Partnership, our SRSU online faculty and students will gain the following added support services & training resources:
- 24 x 7 Blackboard Support hotline for SRSU Faculty & Students *SRSU 24×7 Blackboard Online Support Desk and toll free hotline launched on May 18th.*
- Access to all Blackboard boot camps, conferences, webinars, etc. developed and offered by the SHSU Online campus *Beginning on March 23rd, SHSU Online began offering SRSU faculty a schedule of weekly online training webinars, and over the summer, SHSU Online Instructional Designers have worked with 30 SRSU faculty in an SHSU Online Teaching Certification program.*
- SHSU will hire an Instructional Designer who will be dedicated to supporting SRSU faculty *Our SRSU Instructional Designer has been hired and will soon begin working directly with SRSU faculty to help them prepare their fall 2020 Blackboard courses.*
Shared Services Benefits of Partnership for SRSU
Over the course of the summer, the SHSU Shared Services team will be working to seamlessly migrate our SRSU Blackboard environment into the TSUS/SHSU shared services Blackboard environment (with LIT) for fall 2020. The TSUS Blackboard environment will look and feel no different (including Sul Ross branding) than our current SRSU Blackboard environment. Once in this TSUS shared services Blackboard environment, SRSU faculty will gain access to resources previously unavailable to us such as advanced Blackboard components that promote a richer DE learning experience, system-wide software licenses, and new Blackboard learning tools. A few of the new features and tools that will be available to us are:
- Advanced Blackboard Features including Communities, Content, and Outcomes
- Collaborate Ultra
- EesySoft
- System-wide license for proctoring software
- Lecture capture and video hosting software
- Media Captioning and Transcription
- ADA compliance software
- Data analytics
