MacEwan University is implementing a new digital learning environment, paskwâwi-mostos mêskanâs, to replace Blackboard Learn in 2022. Here is a summary of the architecture and security of the new environment.
Location
Where will MacEwan University’s information or data be stored?
Unlike Blackboard Learn, which has been hosted in MacEwan’s own data centre on campus, paskwâwi-mostos mêskanâs is hosted in the cloud.
The hosting platform is managed by the Learning Management Centre (LMC) of the University of Alberta. The environment is located in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud. Specifically, LMC hosts all their environments in AWS zone us-west-2, which is located in Oregon. Files uploaded into paskwâwi-mostos mêskanâs will be located on cloud storage in this AWS region.
Security
How secure is the new digital environment?
There are three levels of data security with paskwâwi-mostos mêskanâs:
- AWS-hosted resources are located on highly protected networks and trusted by millions of cloud customers worldwide. They provide more advanced network protection than individual organizations’ data centres due to factors of scale and efficiency.
- U of A’s LMC has over a decade of experience in managing the hosted digital learning environments for several Alberta post-secondary institutions. MacEwan IT Security did a review of LMC’s security practices and found them in good order.
- MacEwan’s web development team will be managing the software package deployed on LMC’s environment, which is based on the Moodle open source learning management system and extended with a variety of plugins and integrations.
Access to paskwâwi-mostos mêskanâs for end users is secured by the same single sign-on environment as most other MacEwan University applications.
From the paskwâwi-mostos mêskanâs Project Team
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