My Courses: Backend Migration Overview
What is happening?
VitalSource is migrating the backend system that powers My Courses. This is an infrastructure change on our end and does not require any action from your IT or LMS team. However, there are some visible changes to the My Courses experience your students and instructors may notice.
What is improving?
Users who are both students and instructors will see a unified view.
Previously, users with both roles would only see one role's courses at a time, which caused issues with opting and content access. After the migration, all sections will appear together with the appropriate actions available based on the user's role for each section.
Instructors with split catalogs will see all their courses in one place.
If your school has both an EA and an IA catalog, instructors previously had to toggle between the two to see all of their sections. After the migration, all sections will appear under each catalog, so instructors no longer need to switch back and forth.
What will look different?
Section names will follow a new consistent format.
Section names will now display as they are in Connect: Department, Course number, Section number. For example: SPAN 105, Section 02. Previously, section names came from your LMS and varied by institution.
Each section will be listed separately.
If your LMS groups multiple sections under one course, those will now appear as individual entries in My Courses. This is most relevant for instructors teaching multiple sections of the same course, or courses where lectures and labs are tied together in your LMS.
Content access buttons will not appear until the trial period starts.
Previously, content access buttons appeared as soon as a Connect catalog was activated, but students received an error if they clicked before the trial period had begun. After the migration, those buttons will not appear until access is actually available.
Book title and author information may differ on some items.
Item titles and authors will now come from your bookstore's system rather than publisher metadata in Manage. For most titles this will be identical, but you may notice differences on some items.
Questions?
If you have questions about how this migration may affect your institution, please reach out to your VitalSource Customer Success Manager.