Online Learning Management Solution Improves...
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“We’ve just completed our first full year with our courses running on the Desire2Learn and Microsoft mission-critical platform, and we’ve been thrilled with the uptime and performance.” Storie Walsh, Director of Instructional Technology, Virtual High School To enhance its online education programs, Virtual High School Global Consortium implemented a learning management system created and hosted by Desire2Learn that runs on the Microsoft platform. Based on Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2, the solution has delivered improved uptime and scalability. As a result, the nonprofit organization can now focus on enhancing its educational programs and better serving a growing number of students. Business Needs Virtual High School Global Consortium (VHS) has been a leading provider of online education since 1997. Based in Maynard, Massachusetts, VHS collaborates with 770 member schools to offer 200 rigorous online courses that help develop the twenty-first-century literacies that students need to prepare for college and careers. The organization’s small, highly interactive global classrooms bring together 15,000 students and 350 teachers from 45 countries and 35 U.S. states. VHS teachers are certified in their subject area, have completed a graduate-level course in online teaching, and actively teach at member schools. VHS handles registration and runs all its courses through a hosted learning management system (LMS) that students and teachers connect to through the Internet. Students not only use the LMS solution to receive and submit assignments, but they also collaborate through blogs, wikis, discussion forums, and other web tools. Both students and teachers rely on VHS to provide high levels of availability for the mission-critical system. Storie Walsh, Director of Instructional Technology at Virtual High School, says, “We have students and faculty participating from around the world, so no time is a good time for an outage.” With all its courses online, the organization’s IT team routinely evaluates the performance of its own LMS system and also looks at new products. In 2008, VHS decided it was time for a change. The organization wanted better administration and collaboration tools, and it also needed to improve availability. Downtime with the current LMS solution had become a weekly occurrence, and VHS was also concerned about scalability. Its student enrollment was increasing annually by 15 to 20 percent—a rate that VHS expected would continue to accelerate. Walsh says, “It had become clear that, in addition to other technical problems, our server could not handle the increasing workload.” Solution VHS began evaluating leading LMS providers and ultimately chose Desire2Learn for its LMS solution. Desire2Learn, a Microsoft partner with Silver Hosting and Silver ISV competencies, offered a system with an enhanced user interface and toolset and improved scalability. Running on the Microsoft mission-critical platform, the Desire2Learn LMS solution was the right choice for VHS. The organization trusted Customer: Virtual High School Global Consortium Website: www.goVHS.org Customer Size: 30 employees Country or Region: United States Industry: Education—Secondary education institutions Partner: Desire2Learn Partner Website: www.desire2learn.com Customer Profile Virtual High School Global Consortium is a nonprofit pioneer in online education for K-12 students and in course design and instruction for teachers. It has students in 35 U.S. states and 45 countries. Software and Services Microsoft Server Product Portfolio − Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise − Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Technologies − Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 Desire2Learn Learning Environment For more information about other Microsoft customer successes, please visit: www.microsoft.com/casestudies Microsoft Server Product Portfolio Customer Solution Case Study Online Learning Management Solution Improves System Reliability and Scalability
Transcript of Online Learning Management Solution Improves...
“We’ve just completed our first full year with our courses running on the Desire2Learn and Microsoft mission-critical platform, and we’ve been thrilled with the uptime and performance.”
Storie Walsh, Director of Instructional Technology, Virtual High School
To enhance its online education programs, Virtual High School Global Consortium implemented a learning management system created and hosted by Desire2Learn that runs on the Microsoft platform. Based on Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2, the solution has delivered improved uptime and scalability. As a result, the nonprofit organization can now focus on enhancing its educational programs and better serving a growing number of students.
Business NeedsVirtual High School Global Consortium (VHS) has been a leading provider of online education since 1997. Based in Maynard, Massachusetts, VHS collaborates with 770 member schools to offer 200 rigorous online courses that help develop the twenty-first-century literacies that students need to prepare for college and careers.
The organization’s small, highly interactive global classrooms bring together 15,000 students and 350 teachers from 45 countries and 35 U.S. states. VHS teachers are certified in their subject area, have completed a graduate-level course in online teaching, and actively teach at member schools.
VHS handles registration and runs all its courses through a hosted learning management system (LMS) that students and teachers connect to through the Internet. Students not only use the LMS solution to receive and submit assignments, but they also collaborate through blogs, wikis, discussion forums, and other web tools. Both students and teachers rely on VHS to provide high levels of availability for the mission-critical system. Storie Walsh, Director of Instructional Technology at Virtual High School, says, “We have students and
faculty participating from around the world, so no time is a good time for an outage.”
With all its courses online, the organization’s IT team routinely evaluates the performance of its own LMS system and also looks at new products. In 2008, VHS decided it was time for a change. The organization wanted better administration and collaboration tools, and it also needed to improve availability. Downtime with the current LMS solution had become a weekly occurrence, and VHS was also concerned about scalability. Its student enrollment was increasing annually by 15 to 20 percent—a rate that VHS expected would continue to accelerate. Walsh says, “It had become clear that, in addition to other technical problems, our server could not handle the increasing workload.”
SolutionVHS began evaluating leading LMS providers and ultimately chose Desire2Learn for its LMS solution. Desire2Learn, a Microsoft partner with Silver Hosting and Silver ISV competencies, offered a system with an enhanced user interface and toolset and improved scalability. Running on the Microsoft mission-critical platform, the Desire2Learn LMS solution was the right choice for VHS. The organization trusted
Customer: Virtual High School Global Consortium Website: www.goVHS.orgCustomer Size: 30 employeesCountry or Region: United StatesIndustry: Education—Secondary education institutionsPartner: Desire2LearnPartner Website: www.desire2learn.com
Customer ProfileVirtual High School Global Consortium is a nonprofit pioneer in online education for K-12 students and in course design and instruction for teachers. It has students in 35 U.S. states and 45 countries.
Software and Services Microsoft Server Product Portfolio− Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise− Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2
Enterprise Technologies− Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0
Desire2Learn Learning Environment
For more information about other Microsoft customer successes, please visit: www.microsoft.com/casestudies
Microsoft Server Product PortfolioCustomer Solution Case Study
Online Learning Management Solution Improves System Reliability and Scalability
Microsoft products, which it was already using, and trusted that Desire2Learn would provide optimum support and teamwork.
After finishing a pilot project with summer courses in June 2008, VHS decided to migrate all its programs to the Desire2Learn learning environment. The solution includes Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise data management software with the Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise operating system. The LMS application runs on Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 web servers, which Desire2Learn plans to upgrade to IIS 7.5 by the end of 2011.
Desire2Learn worked with VHS to enhance its migration tool and migrated more than 200 courses to the new LMS system in less than six months. By July 2009, all of the organization’s courses were running on the Desire2Learn and Microsoft platform. VHS says that the smooth implementation was the result of both the reliability of Microsoft technology and its relationship with Desire2Learn. “We’ve been partnering with Desire2Learn for some time now and have found them to be a very customer-focused organization,” Walsh says.
Since implementation, the LMS solution has shown that it can easily handle the growing workload. Approximately 5,200 concurrent users connect during peak periods in 2010 with no reports of server latency or dropped connections. This number is expected to jump to 6,000 during the fall semester in 2011.
BenefitsBy implementing a solution from Desire2Learn and Microsoft, VHS can focus on enhancing its innovative programs with a more scalable, reliable LMS.
Improved Reliability and ScalabilityWith a global learning model that depends entirely on online services, VHS cannot afford to risk availability. “When considering options, we only looked at products that could scale with our needs and provide consistent access and performance,” says Walsh. “We were reassured that Desire2Learn had performed strenuous load-testing in a Microsoft certification facility to determine maximum user levels, and the tests showed scalability to at least 1
million users on a single instance of SQL Server 2008 R2.”
And after implementation, the organization is even more confident in the solution’s scalability. “We’ve just completed our first full year with our courses running on the Desire2Learn and Microsoft platform,” says Walsh. ”We’ve been thrilled with the uptime and performance, especially during peak activity periods.”
Enhanced Focus on EducationInstead of troubleshooting technical problems, VHS administrators can now focus on improving its innovative education programs. “We can focus our core staff on what we do best: providing quality courses to expand student opportunities and professional development for teachers,” says Walsh. “We rely on Desire2Learn for its hosted solution, which in turn relies on Microsoft to provide the mission-critical technology that keeps everything humming along.”
Better Service for Students and TeachersVHS can better serve students and teachers with the Desire2Learn solution and also can stay on top of education trends. The improved performance and reliability of the Microsoft platform makes it easier for students to access their courses where and when they need to. Walsh says, “The enhanced stability and performance of Desire2Learn and the Microsoft platform makes a huge difference in the quality of our support, as well as in people’s impression of technology in general.”
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published September 2011
