The Vista learning management system is undergoing a major upgrade from Vista 3 to Vista 4. The new system launch date is now scheduled for Summer B 2007.

The primary benefit of Vista 4 is a new, more intuitive user interface that will make building and maintaining courses much easier for instructors. Likewise, some new tools and functions such as blogs and journals will become available under the Discussion Tools section.

UF is also building an entirely new hardware infrastructure in order to provide better support with the expansion of the software upgrade. This new hardware will provide increased power and memory capabilities and a server failover to keep the system running despite server problems. It will also create redundancy by keeping multiple copies on separate servers to protect data.

A major change that users will notice is that the system will change names. The WebCT company that created Vista was recently purchased by its competitor Blackboard. As a result, Vista 4 is now identified as a Blackboard product. Furthermore, Microsoft has recently released the Vista Windows Operating System. To avoid further confusion, the new Vista 4 system will be branded as “E- Learning.” You should expect to see this new name and system this summer.

We encourage those of you who are interested in the new E-Learning system to monitor the LSS website (http://lss.at.ufl.edu). See the BlackBoard Vista 4 Transition link.