Learning Management System

As part of its market research, the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS) of Bethesda, MD is seeking sources interested and capable of providing a Learning Management System. This RFI aims to communicate with industry our interest in a Learning Management System, receive feedback from industry that identifies multiple sources, find interested vendors to foster competition, and use the information gained from this notice to prepare any future solicitation in a way which benefits both the Government and the contractor. This announcement is an official Request for Information (RFI), as defined in FAR 15.201(e). This is not a request for proposal, but a survey to locate potential sources to meet our requirement. Reimbursement will not be made for any costs associated with providing information in response to this announcement or any follow-up information requests. Project Information: The Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences includes the F. Edward H'bert School of Medicine, which provides a year-round, four-year curriculum similar to other U.S. medical schools and has Doctoral and master's degrees in the biomedical sciences and public health awarded by interdisciplinary and department-based graduate programs. USU also has a Graduate School of Nursing which offers a Master of Science in Nursing degree in Nurse Anesthesia, Family Nurse Practitioner, Preoperative Nursing, Doctorate of Nursing Practice, and a Ph.D. degree in Nursing Science. The University has a growing portfolio of credit and continuing education courses. We are interested in acquiring a commercial off the shelf (COTS) or Open Source software, services and hosting designed specifically for use as a learning management system. The system will provide individual course and student lab support, host content, continuing education courses and tracking, e-portfolio, provide integration with Web 2.0 and mobile applications, perform online tests and quizzes, and integrate with a university registrar system enabling simple course setup and exchange of grade data. USU may also use the system as the USU Intranet and for a virtual research environment platform USU is currently using Blackboard 7.x. In the event the USU determines that an alternative system meets our needs we will be extremely interested in knowing how existing courses/tests/quizzes would be migrated to another vendor's platform. The software must allow USU to exchange data with the University's Corporate Database (Oracle) and the University's Intranet and Registrar system. In addition to supporting our traditional on-site instructional programs, the system will also need to support multiple USUHS programs such as the National Center for Disaster Medicine and Preventative Health, the Virtual Medical University, online Master's of Public Health, and the growing USUHS continuing education and distributed learning portfolio. Attached is the - Functional Requirements document. If you can meet all of the requirements for this project, please respond electronically to this Request for Information by e-mail to Timothy Bunting at contact@example.gov. Responses are due by 11:00 AM (EST), Friday, May 15, 2009. The USU may request vendors to provide live demonstrations of their products and request establishment of demonstration systems for evaluation. Please include the following information: Name of firm with address, phone, fax, e-mail address, and point of contact. State if your company is a Hubzone Small Business, or Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business, Women-owned small business, Small Disadvantaged business, and 8(a). Vendors may submit information on services supporting migration from our current Blackboard platform, hosting services and pre-packaged release support for Open Source software. Specifically provide the contract number, project location, description of work requirements, university contact and phone number for any contract where you migrated a university from Blackboard to your system. Describe relevant experience, including the most recent projects and contracts, including contract number, project location, description of work requirements, contact and phone number for each effort, etc. Submitting firms shall address the functional requirements sought in the attached document and the specific question in section 8 below. Firms should either address each point using the attached matrix or provide detailed narrative of how the system meets each area of requirements matrix. Please address these specific questions: a. The University is currently using Blackboard 7.x. Specifically detail the utilities your system provides to migrate our Blackboard content to your system. b. Detail your products security model, how is student data secured? What data is encrypted at the field level? c. Detail which registrar/student information systems your product currently integrates and how each system is integrated. d. The University uses Blackboard, Test Pilot and Respondus to support online tests. Does your product support these systems directly? What utilities does your system provide to migrate our existing test and quizzes to your system? e. Provide details of your pricing model. The USU currently supports 7,500 users. Define your pricing model in 10,000 user increments to 100,000 users. f. Provide a recommended high availability hardware configuration for a user base scaled as in 5 above. g. Does your system provide a flexible access control model enabling it to provide open access content, student/faculty content and serve as a university intranet? h. Describe the different models of username and password authentication and authorization systems supported by your system. Provide details of how your system integrates with single sign on systems. i. How can your system be integrated through Web services or SOA to provide data to other university or DOD systems? j. How does your system support compliance with DOD Instruction 1322.26 - http://adlcommunity.net/file.php/14/DoD_Instruction_132226p.pdf and Section 508?