The College has learned that Techsmith Knowmia, a multimedia creation and storage platform that we licensed in 2020, has decided to dissolve the Knowmia service for all customers, which means we will need to migrate course content from this tool to another platform.
Use this link to join the Knowmia listening session on Webex on Friday, March 12, at 2 p.m.
This was an unexpected announcement for the Office of Instructional Technology, as it will be for our many users around campus. The College has invested many hours in implementation, promotion, training, and support of this tool and we were incredibly happy to see how quickly and effectively it was adopted by the campus. We feel your frustration in now having to repeat this process little more than six months after the initial implementation.
A silver lining as we look to the future is that we now have a better understanding of what campus users are looking for in this type of tool. We are now committed to finding an equal or better replacement tool that meets campus needs for the long-term and to plan a transition to the new tool that will be as seamless as possible.
Information Technology Services (ITS) has consulted with the Committee on Educational Technology, Academic Deans and the Provost, and the Purchasing Department and developed a plan of action that we hope will cause the least disruption to members of our community.
Our plan at this time is to demo alternate tools and select two or three for a more focused pilot, which we will undertake in spring and summer 2021 in hopes of making a choice and implementing the new tool before the end of 2021.
We understand that current users of Knowmia or those who were planning to try it soon will have questions about this process. Some basic questions and answers are published below. We will continue to update the campus as we have more concrete information to share.
The Office of Instructional Technology will host a listening session on Friday, March 12, at 2 p.m., for members of our community to raise questions and concerns and get more details about what comes next. Use this link to join the session on Webex when it begins.
We also invite those who are unable to attend the listening session or prefer to communicate in writing to share their feedback on the Knowmia migration via this online form.
Q: Can I still use Knowmia until we migrate?
A: Yes, Knowmia will continue to be fully supported, both by staff in ITS and by our reps at Techsmith, until the point when we migrate to the new tool.
Q: What attributes will be considered in the new tool?
A: We will look for many qualities in the new tool, but some of the factors we will consider are screen capture and recording ability; media storage options; media quality; accessibility; mobile options; security of the media library and the ability manage user privileges; engagement tools; Learning Management System (LMS) integration; customer service and responsiveness; ability to request feature enhancements; ability to migrate content to the new system; and price.
Q: How will this impact my workload?
A: We will not know the full extent of how faculty members’ workloads will be impacted until after a new contract has been negotiated, but we are committed to making this change with the least disruption possible. However, given our general knowledge of these systems and the integration with Blackboard, it is likely that faculty will be responsible for relinking media content from the new system to their Blackboard classroom.
Q: Will grades from Knowmia quizzes that have already been taken be saved on Blackboard?
A: Yes. Though the Knowmia integration in Blackboard will cease to work after we have discontinued our contract, the grades from any quizzes you conducted through Knowmia media will remain in the Blackboard grade center.
Q: Will analytics and “conversations” transcripts be preserved in the new system?
A: With the information we have at present, it does not seem that analytics and “Conversations” transcripts will be preserved. However, it is possible to download this information yourself and we will provide information on how to create your own back-ups of this information in the near future.
We thank all members of our community for their understanding as we work together to adapt to this unexpected change.
