BCSC dealing with e-learning tech issues

Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp. worked alongside leaders of its technology platform for at-home e-learning to move BCSC accounts to a different server — all to alleviate system overloads because of heavy, global usage.

The increased usage of the Norway-based itslearning system Tuesday morning had slowed the speed at which some students and parents could log in Tuesday morning for assignments.

The students, staff, and families who notified the school system hotline “helped us gather data, provide case studies, and speed up the ability to alleviate the issue quickly,” said Brenny Kummer, BCSC’s coordinator of instructional technology.

Information technology staff received about 200 calls or emails about the problem, according to Nick Williams, BCSC’s director of technology. Local staff reassured concerned parents and students that the worldwide system was being tweaked.

They also assured callers that student assignments were not due Tuesday evening, as many of them thought when they could not gain access to assignments.

“They have some flexibility to get these assignments done,” Williams said.

Norway-based itslearning leaders issued a news release Tuesday saying that “engineers have been working to further increase our capacity and to resolve bottlenecks.”

They also said such measures must be implemented in phases.

“This unfortunately is taking some time and we are truly sorry for the delay. We are working on multiple solutions– increasing network and server capacity, removing bottlenecks, and now we are moving several customers over to a new cloud-based hosting provider that enables us to scale up faster.”

Williams said the last time similar issues arose was during e-learning days after flooding in April 2018.

Williams and Kummer both emphasized that it’s important for parents and students to alert them when there are system problems so they can be addressed quickly and efficiently for the sake of learning.

[sc:pullout-title pullout-title=”Getting help” ][sc:pullout-text-begin]

The BCSC e-learning hotline is 812-418-0252 and the email is [email protected]

[sc:pullout-text-end]