Alina: The PHBern is one of the first users of ILIAS to have updated to the new version, ILIAS 10. And you did that three days before the official release. Normally, most institutions of higher education tend to wait several months to a year before updating. Why did you decide to update so early?

Kirstin: We updated our learning platform on the 15th July from ILIAS 8 to ILIAS 10. This date had already been agreed upon in January. In the end, it wasn't much more effort than if we had decided to update to version 9. The advantage as we saw it though, was that in half a year's time, we would have the most current version of ILIAS running.

With the current update, PHBern's ILIAS is now much closer to the core version of ILIAS than in the past. We are only using a few plugins. That made such an early update much easier. 

Such an early update surely requires a fair amount of preparation. What was required? 

As a matter of fact we worked through the Feature Wiki early on with the following questions in mind: which changes are relevant for us at the PHBern? Which are important for our teaching staff? What will we have to do without? 

This way, we put together an initial overview and made our teaching staff aware of the most important changes. This overview is updated continuously, as the effects of the changes are only now becoming apparent to users in some cases. 

Additionally, we have worked closely together with our partner, sr solutions. As ILIAS developers, they are close to the community. This gave us the necessary assurance, that even if problems did crop up, it would run well and we would find solutions. Good communication, close cooperation and reliability are absolutely essential in order to be able to use the new ILIAS version so early on. 

We have had access to a staging installation with ILIAS 10 via sr solutions since April. This enabled us to test ILIAS Core at an early stage in order to identify the implications for our environment from various perspectives: both technical and in terms of general usage and concrete usage scenarios. Bit by bit, the plugins were added, which were made available to us for testing purposes at the agreed times. 

We were already able to carry out the most important preparations well with the beta version. In the final phase before the update, we got some teaching staff involved in the testing. They looked at their own courses in ILIAS 10. This way we were able to get an initial impression of how the upgrade affected existing content.  

We tried to split the issues into those which needed to be prioritised and dealt with before upgrading and those which could be seen as more trivial, which could be worked through afterwards. 

Where there technical or organisational issues that you expected having to face? Or maybe those that took you by surprise? 

Originally, we wanted to already start testing in March, but then the release of ILIAS 10 was pushed back. That was rather inconvenient for our test phase, after all, you can't neglect the day-to-day business because you are testing. This meant that we were not able to test all of the Objects to the necessary extent by the time of the upgrade date. 

Even now, errors are still cropping up during use. Our update took place at the beginning of the semester break. Because of that, we now have enough time until the start of the semester to work continuously on getting through the feedback from the teaching staff. 

The update to ILIAS 10 means that we are losing the option of using HTML code in the page editor. For this reason we installed the SrExternalContent plugin right before the update. Using this, course administrators are still able to embed content. The new plugin led however to three steps needing to be coordinated: 1) Installing the plugin, 2) Updating to ILIAS 9, 3) Updating to ILIAS 10. This all obviously required quite a bit of time and so we were grateful for sufficient stamina. Also on the part of our partner. 

Plugins are often given as a reason for delaying updating to the newest ILIAS version. You already mentioned that you are being supported by sr solutions in this regard. Do you now only have plugins from them? 

We moved to sr solutions when we updated to ILIAS 7. With this move we made the decision to use ILIAS in its core version for cost reasons. We also had most problems with earlier versions when it came to plugins. That's why we made the conscious decision, with this latest update too, to remove another two plugins from our repertoire. Many of the plugins that we use at PHBern are technical plugins which are maintained by our service provider. Our service partner also got another plugin ready for the new version of ILIAS at our own expense, in consultation with the maintainer. Thanks to this reliable collaboration, we were able to count on all plugins being ready by the agreed date. 

And with hindsight, would you say that the update went relatively smoothly? 

Many things went well, but of course there were some issues. We take all feedback seriously and try to make sure that tips on how to deal with some of the changes reach as many people as possible, so that not all members of teaching staff end up struggling with the same problems. 

Because a couple of the changes to the standard style in ILIAS 10 unfortunately don't suit us, we had to come up with an interim solution for our staff and students. It basically only came down to a couple of tweaks to font sizes. It is important that the courses can be structured well and clearly for learning purposes - for which the style plays a decisive role. 

In their report on the release, sr solutions refer to you as 'pioneers'. And there is no doubt that you are! Would you decide to go down the 'early update' route again in the future? 

As things stand today – yes, absolutely! We get the whole year long not only security updates, but also bug fixes. We also get the impression that during this period, the developers are interested in fixing bugs promptly. 

You have been using ILIAS 10 for several weeks now. What do you like about it particularly?

The following features are particularly important to us:  

Thank you so much for the insight into your update, Kirstin. You report shows that it is possible to update to a new version of ILIAS as soon as it has been released, as long as the necessary preparations have been made. I hope this will encourage other institutions of higher education and companies to take this step as well.

If you are interested in updating your system, you can find the new version here. And if you need assistance, please feel free to contact one of our Service Providers.