California Community Colleges Online Education Initiative Common Course Management System (CCMS) Butte- Glenn Community College District (BGCCD) June 16, 2014
California Community Colleges Common Course Management System (CCMS) Request for Information (RFI) Online Education Initiative Project Description The Online Education Initiative (OEI) is an initiative of the California Community Colleges (CCC) Chancellor's Office, funded by the California legislature in 2013 in support of Governor Jerry Brown's Online Education Initiative proposal. The mission of the OEI project is to dramatically increase the number of CCC students who obtain college associate degrees and transfer to four- year colleges each year by providing an online environment which will facilitate the delivery of online instruction and services and which will expand access to educational opportunities for students. The Online Education Initiative (OEI) is led by the Foothill- De Anza (FHDA) and Butte- Glenn Community College Districts (BGCCD). OEI is one of three major initiatives including the Education Planning Initiative (EPI) and the Common Assessment Initiative (CAI) that are expected to integrate, improve, and evolve existing technology services on behalf of California's community college students. Additional information about the Online Education Initiative can be found at: http://www.ccconlineed.org/ Procurement Objective This RFI is part of a procurement process that will result in the purchase of the Common Course Management System (CCMS) and related support services to be deployed and used by the community colleges in California. The objective of this RFI is to identify and explore capabilities and practices of vendors that may be viable providers of products or services necessary to support a CCMS for use among the California Community Colleges. Additionally, this RFI process will inform the development of a Request for Proposal (RFP) for a CCMS. Information given in the RFI will not be used to pre- qualify vendors for the RFP. Through the RFI process, BGCCD is looking for features and capabilities that will help specify a state of the art CMS for use by the 112 colleges in the California Community College system. We hope to obtain information on a range of creative solutions with particular attention to innovative and flexible systems that can be integrated into and leveraged with a variety of CCC initiatives and programs. Interested parties that meet the requirements listed in this document are encouraged to submit responses regarding products and related service offerings. The District may conduct discussions with specific vendors and other applicants who have submitted responses if there are questions regarding the subject matter requested in the RFI. All information should be submitted in the format stipulated in this RFI. This is not an offer to buy, nor obligation to purchase, on the part of the California Community College Chancellor s Office, the Butte- Glenn Community College District, or any individual community college. Interested parties may obtain further information or clarification by emailing oei@cccnext.net. 2
Procurement Timeline (Tentative) Event Date Release RFI June 16, 2014 Responses to Questions Posted June 30, 2014 RFI Responses Due July 16, 2014 Release RFP September 8, 2014 RFP Responses Due October 20, 2014 Contract signed December 31, 2014 System Deployed for Migration / February 1, 2015 Training / SIS Integration Go Live with Courses June 1, 2015 Mandatory requirements (Tentative) A full set of mandatory and desired requirements for the CCMS system will be included in the RFP. At a minimum, the chosen partner must meet the following requirements: Be able to scale up to support all 112 community colleges. Have significant experience hosting CMS applications including supporting a large customer / client base of colleges / universities. Be willing to work with the California Community Colleges (CCC) OEI project office in developing future enhancements to the system to meet CCC requirements. Meet Section 508 (29 U.S.C. 794d) regulations for facilitating access for individuals with disabilities RFI Responses Due Vendor responses to this RFI will arrive at oei@cccnext.net no later than July 16, 2014 at 5:00 PM PST. Do not embed or include marketing materials within the response. Marketing materials must not be a substitute for written responses. Please fully answer all questions relevant to products and/or services in the response. Do not direct reviewers to supplemental materials instead of responding to the questions in the RFI. Please be specific and succinct in the response. Information Requested We are soliciting your assistance to help us understand the capabilities and functions of the current and future state of the art in CMS design and operations. Please provide a written response to the following inquiries. Detailed, but highly concise and focused answers will be most helpful. The responses will be reviewed by staff of the CCC Technology Center including software engineers and the OEI Project Team, as well as teams of faculty and administrative users who are experienced in using multiple CMS systems. Any questions regarding this RFI may be directed to oei@cccnext.net. Responses to questions submitted by vendors will be compiled and made available under Documents at http://www.ccconlineed.org/ by June 30. 3
Response Format Vendors must address all information specified by this RFI. All questions must be answered completely. Please be specific and succinct in your responses. Response Submission Vendor responses should be emailed to oei@cccnext.net no later than July 16, 2014, at 5:00 PM PST. File names must adhere to the following conventions: OEICCMSRFI_ MMDDYYYY_VendorName MMDDYYYY should indicate the month, day and year the final version of the document was completed. The Vendor Name is respondent specific. Please note that it is the vendor's responsibility to ensure that the final response and all other required documents are received by the specified closing date at the address specified above. Vendors will bear all costs associated with preparing and submitting responses to this RFI and any subsequent evaluation phase. BGCCD will in no case be responsible for these costs, regardless of the conduct or outcome of the RFI process. Responses to this RFI become a matter of public record and shall be regarded as public records, with the exception of those elements in the proposal which are identified by the responder as confidential or proprietary and plainly marked as Confidential or Proprietary. Cover Letter The RFI response must be accompanied by a cover letter, signed by an individual authorized to certify the accuracy of responses. Statement of Interest At this time, do you have an interest in responding to a California Community Colleges RFP for the acquisition of the Common Course Management System? If not, why? Vendor Company Profile Please provide a company profile and relevant contact information including: 1. Company Name 2. Physical Location of Operations 3. Primary Contact Person 4. Primary Contact Phone 5. Primary Contact Email 6. Provide a brief company history including years in operation, governance/management structure and major milestones. 7. Describe the company assets including number of employees and other information relevant to this RFI. 4
Current CMS Features and Capabilities What is the name of your current CMS/E- learning/lms product line (you may combine similar products if closely related)? Please describe the basic feature set and capabilities of your current CMS product(s) including: Current number of users (provide the number of institutions and number of students currently using the system) Unique functional capabilities (list those capabilities not normally available in competitor systems) Unique functional services (list those services not normally available in competitor systems) Integration of third party services (provide names and functions of the third party services) Specific ERP applications that your CMS/LMS product has prebuilt bridges for exchanging information with (provide names of the ERP systems with the specific modules that interface) Standards that your CMS/LMS product adheres to (such as IMS, SCORM, etc.) CMS System Design Based on your experiences as a CMS provider, how do you see the design of future CMS systems changing? Consider the following areas: System architecture User experience Functional capabilities Integration of associated services Scalability Portability (of course content) 508 compliant / W3C requirements accessibility standards Other: Please describe Software Development Process Describe your software development process (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/software_development_process) that you use to develop and evolve your CMS system. What makes your software development process different from (and perhaps better) than other developers? Technology Stack Describe your current technology stack (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/technology_stack) for your CMS system. How will your technology stack change in your future plans as your CMS system evolves or is replaced? CMS Development - Roadmap Describe your future CMS development plans with regard to milestone events (major revisions to the technology stack, functional capabilities, and integration of third party components) of the CMS listed above. Are you planning for your CMS systems to evolve (e.g. applying continuous improvements) or leap frog (e.g. implementing occasional, dramatic and substantial changes to architecture, functionality, etc.) in the future? How do you plan to improve the capabilities of your CMS system with regard to: 5
New functional capabilities New functional services Workflow management Integration of third party services Flexibility to add new components from external developers Associated Support Services Describe any support services you provide to enhance and facilitate the use of your CMS system, such as: Call Center / Help desk for faculty & students & technical personnel Course migration tools & services for faculty Course development tools & services for faculty SIS integration tools & services Other Overall Competitive Advantage What do you consider to be the major differentiators in your CMS system and associated support services (as compared to other competitive systems) with regard to generating more success for the faculty and students using your system (considering student access to instructional content, student- faculty communications, analytics, etc.)? What Else Should We Know? Please provide additional information and insights that might be relevant to the development of a Common Course Management System for the California Community Colleges. Procurement Process Please add any questions or comments that you have regarding this procurement process, timeline, etc. 6