An Access database file was created to handle approximately 10,000 course records exported from ANGEL. The database file provided an effective way for faculty to select the courses and related course content they wanted migrated and ready for them in Blackboard in time for the required migration training sessions they registered to attend. The selected course records were then queried and exported from Access in the form of a .txt file that was uploaded to Blackboard and read to programmatically move the ANGEL course content to Blackboard. The database was also used to track faculty completion of 3 required migration training sessions prior to being flagged as Blackboard trained and course shells created.

The MCC migration from ANGEL to Blackboard was a large undertaking. When faced with 10000 courses residing in ANGEL, we needed a strategy for an effective way to migrate only the course records that met the individual faculty member needs. The end goal was to have the faculty course content from ANGEL ready for their use during the migration training sessions we designed and presented.

Microsoft Access and the tools provided with Access helped us in many ways throughout the migration process. The course records from ANGEL were exported as a delimited text file. Access can handle Excel files as well. With the import process in Access, the 10000 records came into Access easily. The database file was made available in a shared location on our network. A query and form were developed so when the database launched, a faculty member could simply enter their MNumber (our version of a Banner employee ID) on a form and with a click of a button be presented with a list of all of their course records. All that was required on their part was a check in the yes column for course records they wanted to migrate. Faculty did not need a prior knowledge of Access in any way. This simple process took the guess work out of our hands as to "which records to migrate" and we certainly did not want to migrate 10000 courses. Trying to get course selections from 641 faculty via email would have been a nightmare! Faculty were then ensured that the courses they selected and the related course content would be available to them in Blackboard during the training session they chose to register for.

After the selection process, a series of queries were written to take the "yes" records and export them from Access into a delimited file format that could be uploaded to Blackboard. We conducted these exports in 3 different cycles. The daunting list of 10000 possible course records became a very manageable list of 2180 ANGEL records that needed to be migrated. The resulting files from Access were uploaded to servers for processing.

From a training perspective, faculty had to complete 3 different training sessions as part of the migration process. One as an introductory training to navigation and Blackboard and the other two focusing on tests, discussions, assignments and then the Grade Center. The goal of our training was to teach them enough about Blackboard to be able to adequately navigate through the course content and verify that it still was functional now that it landed in Blackboard. In September, there was no choice but to be using Blackboard for their courses. We had 641 faculty members who had ANGEL courses, and we had to track their progress through the training sessions. We also had to effectively track those that did not respond to the migration as yet. We had to closely keep an eye on who had progressed through to completion, what step they were on along the way, and had to keep track of those faculty that did not respond to the migration process. ANGEL was going dark in September, 2014, so it was critical to not only track faculty to completion but stay on top of those who had not responded to the process as yet. This was easy to do via a faculty table in the same Access that we updated continually through the migration process.

In conclusion, Access provided a great "middle ground" to effectively handle a large amount of data in a short amount of time and helped us to track many facets of the migration process. A person with an intermediate level of Access skill will be key to getting the maximum performance Access can provide.