GET READY FOR SERVICE PACK 12!

Friday, May 17^th, as you may know, is the day that the university will upgrade to the new “Service Pack 12” in Blackboard. In case you’ve missed our communications and workshops, here is some information that may be important to you.

 Basically, Blackboard will continue to work as you’ve used it in the past, and importing previous course ‘packages’ will work the same way.  Setting up your courses for summer will be a recognizable process if you’ve worked in Bb before.

This new service pack comes with some cosmetic changes, as well as some enhancements and new tools.  You can see some overviews of some of these features on our Blackboard support site or below in the March 18^th post on this blog. Additionally, our Atomic Learning subscription allows you to view some simple videos explaining much of this newer Bb.

As always, we are help to help or answer questions, as well as offer ongoing workshops and training. Please contact our office if we can be of service!

EXPORTING AND ARCHIVING COURSES AND DOWNLOADING YOUR GRADE CENTERS

This is just a gentle and friendly reminder from your pesky old technology training coordinator about archiving courses in Blackboard. As many of you know, I am cautious, even overly-cautious, where technology is concerned, and I recommend taking every precaution against losing materials and/or content. If you’ve been to my Blackboard Basics training, for instance, I always recommend that you both archive and export courses at two points, mid-semester and the end of the semester, once work is completed and grades are in. (Remember, a course archive includes all students’ work, grades, etc. along with the content and materials, and a course export only includes content and materials.)

Another suggestion or tip is to download your grade center. Periodically, it is prudent to download the Blackboard Grade Center as a backup, especially after a major assessment or exam, and at the end of the semester. The Grade Center will be a CSV (comma delimited) file that can be opened in Excel or other spreadsheet programs. Instructions for the functions and tools mentioned above are linked below. As always, if you have any questions at all, please don’t hesitate to contact me!

Archiving a Course

Exporting a Course

Downloading and Uploading the Grade Center

 

BLACKBOARD WILL WANT ME TO BE A BbWORLD BLOGGER BECAUSE….

…I am a Blackboard user, trainer, fan, proponent, cheerleader, regular Bb World attendee and presenter, a Bb user group leader, conference planner, and former system administrator! I guess I’m also articulate (mostly), eloquent (when appropriate), I have a great sense of humor, and I never (EVER) take myself too seriously!

I’d love the opportunity to blog again, to share feedback, give attendees a glimpse of sessions or activities that perhaps they didn’t get to attend, and to help extend the benefits of Bb World to those who perhaps were not able to participate at all.

(Here are a few photos of past BbWorld conferences)

SOME NEW FEATURES COMING TO BLACKBOARD!

Some new features will be added to Blackboard with the next upgrade, coming in May! "Service pack 11" comes with some great new tools and functions that you will want to know about! Below are just a few of the new items to peruse:

INLINE ASSIGNMENT GRADING
Inline Assignment Grading allows an instructor to view and comment on student submitted assignment files right in his or her web browser.  You will no longer have to download documents to add comments.  With Inline Assignment Grading, you will have a ready supply of annotation tools available in Blackboard – including the ability to type comments, highlight and draw.  Check out the Bb Inline Assignment Grading video to find out more.

RETENTION CENTER FOR FACULTY AND ADMINISTRATION
The Retention Center provides an easy-to-use data visualization and pre-configured rules for identifying at-risk students in a course. Because it requires no set up on the part of the instructor or administrator, it automatically calls out students who may need the instructor’s attention, making it easy for instructors to catch and respond to risk factors quickly, while there is time to help the at-risk students succeed in the course. 

NEW GLOBAL NAVIGATION MENU -New Feature for All Users

The entry point to My Blackboard is a new Global Navigation Menu. This new menu is always available in the top right corner of the Learn interface and provides one-click access to your Courses, Organizations, Settings, Blackboard Help, and the new My Blackboard tools. With this new Global Navigation menu, you can access everything you need quickly and easily, from wherever you are in the Blackboard Learn platform.

NEW CONTENT EDITOR -Enhancement for All Users

The new and improved Content Editor enables simple content creation through an easy to use interface. The editor reads, writes and renders modern HTML – so the content you created in Microsoft Word and the course pages you designed so carefully in Dreamweaver will render with great fidelity within Blackboard Learn. We’ve made sure that the essential functions you need are there – the ability to re-size images, find/replace, and simple icons in the toolbar for everyday tasks. And you can easily add rich content by pulling in mash-ups from YouTube, Flickr, Slideshare, Twitter, and more. Another great feature of the new Content Editor is that you can expand it for full-frame editing, giving you a lot more real estate to build rich content.

ITEM ANALYSIS -New Feature for Educators

The new Item Analysis feature helps you easily refine your tests and quizzes by evaluating the quality and validity of each question and that question’s ability to discriminate between students who understand the material and those who do not. Ineffective questions can be easily identified and then you can quickly correct them with the Automatic Regrade feature. As an educator, you will be able to access an at-a-glance summary of your Blackboard assessments. This summary provides insight into student performance on that assessment and how the question items performed.

INTEGRATING EXTERNAL TOOLS -Enhancement for Educators

Blackboard Learn allows you to integrate third-party tools into your course. These tools use the LTI (Learning Tools Interoperability) standard to connect Blackboard to the tool. If you use external resources that require logins for activities, such as virtual science experiments, interactive demonstrations, or assessments, you can specify a web link as a Link to a Tool Provider. Depending on configuration, this can then pass user information to the Tool Provider, creating a seamless experience for your students. Service Pack 10 now allows these Tool Providers to post grades directly to the Blackboard Learn Grade Center, making management of assignments much easier for you. 

CALENDAR UPDATE - New Feature for All Users

The updated calendar will allow all users to view institution level, course, and personal events in a single calendar view. When accessed from My Blackboard or the Tools menu on the My Institution tab, the calendar displays a consolidated view of all institution, course, organization, and personal calendar events for a user. Calendar events are color coded as a helpful indicator. When accessed from a course, instructors and students see the course calendar from the course menu on the Tools page. Instructors can use the calendar course tool as a primary way of managing and communicating the schedule of events and assignments in the course. Calendar supports due dates, if set, for gradable items. Clicking on calendar items allows an instructor to view or edit the item, or grade attempts on the associated item. Students can use filtering options to selectively view only course level items. They can then click on an item to view item details, and if supported, create an attempt against the item. You can export your Blackboard calendar into your Google calendar now. 

VIDEO EVERYWHERE - New Feature for All Users

Video Everywhere is available every place the content editor is. Users will be able to record video and upload it directly to YouTube safely. The feature provides the ability for faculty and students to record a video on the fly using a webcam, and have it seamlessly embedded in course materials, interactions, and feedback through the content editor. One can also reuse previously recorded videos by choosing from one’s own “library” of videos. All you need is Blackboard a a webcam.

Visit the Bb Support site System News page to see what else you can expect with the upgrade in May.

Merging Blackboard Courses Before the Holidays

We are still getting a lot of emails and questions regarding the merging of Blackboard courses, so we thought it may help to clarify what the process is.

Blackboard course sections can be merged, which basically redirects the enrollments from two or more sections (“child” courses) into one “parent” course.  Requests for merging your courses must be done through the online form which is available on our Blackboard Support site, under the FORMS tab, or directly at FORMS.

The child courses become inactive, but remain available to the instructor, so it is imperative that instructors be very careful to actually work in the correct MERGED course once the merge is done.

Because the staff at SU is off for the holidays the entire time between Christmas and New Years, it is important that you get your requests in by noon on Friday, December 21st, in order that the requests can be processed before the holidays.

As always, if you have any questions, please direct them to bbsupport@su.edu.

REUSING BLACKBOARD COURSE MATERIALS

REUSING BLACKBOARD COURSE MATERIALS FROM PRIOR TERMS: Best Practices

Midterm time is a good point to be sure your Blackboard materials are backed up and to make plans if you expect to re-use course material in future terms.

As you may know, our Blackboard system is not designed to be a storage bin. Right now, there are over 7,400 courses and nearly 25,000 users on our Bb system.  So Institutional Computing has to manage the load on the server by periodically removing older courses.

We have recently extended the time that courses are left on the server so that two terms of the same semester are on the server for a period of time. For example, at the beginning of the fall 2012 semester, the fall 2011 semester courses remain on the server for a short time into the semester. This is so that instructors may still have access to export course materials from the old course to the new one. However, soon after the newer semester begins, IC needs to remove the old courses from the server to free up space so that materials can be added for the new term.

We strongly recommend keeping a backup or archive of your classes, both after mid-term grading, and once the course is completed. This is a safeguard in the unlikely event that the Blackboard files become corrupt or unavailable.  The best way to do this is to use the ARCHIVE function in the ARCHIVE/EXPORT manager, and store the copy on your own computer or on CourseSites.com (see below).

Note: When reusing content from one semester to another, we recommend using the EXPORT/IMPORT method, rather than COURSE COPY. We experience far fewer mechanical issues when courses are exported and imported.

SHORT LIST:

·         Twice each semester, after midterm and final grading, create a backup or archive of your own course and save that file (.zip format) to your computer. Do not open an archive file (or it doesn’t work). It can only be restored on a test server by Institutional Computing, or uploaded into a Blackboard course shell (materials only) by the instructor.

·         PLEASE do not go back to an older inactive course and make changes…i.e. remove or change assignments, tests, etc.  Doing so will compromise the integrity of the official archive that the Bb Admin must create. Consult bbsupport@su.edu for a safe work-around.

·         PLEASE do not store materials in a course that is no longer active for later use. The course may not be there when you need it. Instead, consider creating an account at CourseSites.com (a free server), and building courses there, from which you can export full packages or tests, etc.   Many faculty like this easy method that gives them full control over managing their content that is backed up for them.

·         At the END of each semester, if you plan to use your course materials again, we recommend you create an EXPORT file from your course(s). Save that .zip file safely on your computer, hard drive, thumb drive, or whatever is best for you. Again, DO NOT OPEN that .zip file. It must be IMPORTED into another Bb course shell to be functional.

·         Instructions for some of the above-mentioned functions are contained in our Bb Support page of How-To’s, or directly at:

·         Archiving a Course

·         Exporting a Course

·         Importing a Course Package

As always, the Center for Teaching and Learning, and George Hoffman, the Technology Training Coordinator, are here to answer questions and to help you through these processes if you need us.