[BB] Problems Emailing Attachments in Blackboard

Bb Users,

 

A few people have reported problems emailing attachments with Blackboard today. We have two servers that host our Blackboard system. Every time you access Blackboard, you are seamlessly assigned to one of them. This problem is only happening on one of the servers, so if you experience the problem, then I ask that you access Blackboard via this URL and try again.

 

Blackboard Link: https://64.125.201.81

 

If you do have this email attachment problem (or any other problem that using this URL solves), please let me know.

 

I will send out a message when I either know more or have a solution.

 

Thank you (as always) for your patience,

Jennifer

 

_____________________________________

JENNIFER CLISTER Blackboard System Manager University of Miami IAC 305-284-3949

 

[BB] Flu-Proofing Your Course Session

Bb Users,

 

On Friday, November 20^th at 10:00am in the Faculty Exploratory (Richter 3^rd Floor) we will have a session to talk about how you can “flu-proof” your courses. We will talk about ways to make it easier for you and your students to stay on top of things if illness prohibits anyone from coming to class.

 

Register here: http://www.iacmiami.org/a/events   

 

Thank you,

Jennifer

 

_____________________________________

JENNIFER CLISTER Blackboard System Manager University of Miami IAC 305-284-3949

 

[BB] Archiving & Removing '06-'07 Bb Courses

Bb Users,

 

It is time to start the annual archival/removal of old courses from Blackboard.

 

Every year we archive and remove old courses. This time we will be removing the 2006-2007 (Fall 2006 – Summer 2007) courses from the Blackboard system (ending with -070, -071, -072, -073, -074). Courses from the 2007-2008 school year will be made unavailable to students, but will still be accessible to faculty for another year. You can find your old courses in Blackboard by going to the Courses tab.

 

I will begin disabling these courses so that they can be archived and removed on Tuesday, December 1.

 

I have attached a document that explains how to archive and save your courses to your computer or disk if you would like to maintain your own archive. (We maintain an archive at the Instructional Advancement Center.)

 

QUESTIONS:

1. WHAT IS ARCHIVING?
   Archiving means we take your entire course and save it to a disk. Then we remove it from the Blackboard system. If we ever need to restore the course, we can, but it may take a while for me to dig it out of the archive since we maintain over 100,000 courses.
2. CAN YOU ARCHIVE AND SAVE YOUR OWN COURSE?
   Yes, you can! Attached is a document that explains how to archive your course and how to download a great tool that will make navigating archived courses easier. You can also access these instructions through the Support tab in Blackboard.

 

If you need any more information, please let me know or open a ticket: Blackboard Help Desk.

 

Best wishes for a smooth end-of-the-semester/year,

Jennifer

 

 

_____________________________________

JENNIFER CLISTER Blackboard System Manager University of Miami IAC 305-284-3949

 

[BB] Restarting Bb Saturdays at 3:00am

Bb Users,

 

From now one, we are going to restart our Blackboard servers every Saturday morning between 3:00am and 3:45am. We are going to do a “rolling restart,” which means that we will restart one server at 3am and then the other at 3:30am so that a service interruption is very unlikely – but it’s still something to keep in mind.

 

This is just a precautionary measure recommended by Blackboard to ensure the health of our system.

 

Thank you,

Jennifer

 

_____________________________________

JENNIFER CLISTER Blackboard System Manager University of Miami IAC 305-284-3949

 

[BB] Blackboard URLs

Bb Users,

 

You may (or may not) have noticed that if you ever tried to go to http://courses.miami.edu, you would get a security certificate error. That is because we had only purchased the security certificate for www.courses.miami.edu (you had to type the “www”). We got several suggestions to purchase an additional certificate for “courses.miami.edu” so people would NOT receive a security warning if they left off the “www.”

 

We listened. J

 

Now there are 3 URLS that will get you to Blackboard:

www.miami.edu/blackboard

www.courses.miami.edu

courses.miami.edu

 

You can also go to www.miami.edu and click the “Blackboard” link in the footer of the page.

 

Thanks for the suggestion,

Jennifer

 

_____________________________________

JENNIFER CLISTER Blackboard System Manager University of Miami IAC 305-284-3949

 

[BB] SafeAssign Unavailability This Weekend

Bb Users,

 

I received this message from Blackboard this morning, and due to maintenance, SafeAssign may have some intermittent downtime between Saturday and Sunday morning (10/10-10/11). This maintenance is supposed to improve performance and increase stability.

 

If this is going to cause a real problem for you, please let me know, and we’ll try to find a workaround.

 

I apologize for the late notice.

 

___________________________

JENNIFER CLISTER
Blackboard System Manager
University of Miami IAC
305-284-3949

---

From: Behind the Blackboard [mailto:do.not.reply@blackboard.com]
Sent: Thursday, October 08, 2009 9:06 AM
To: Clister, Jennifer R
Subject: Support Bulletin: Blackboard SafeAssignTM, Blackboard SyncT (including Blackboard LearnT for Apple® iPhone and Facebook® applications) and Blackboard ScholarT Unavailability

 

ATTENTION: Upcoming SafeAssign, Sync and Scholar Maintenance Window

Please note that Blackboard SafeAssign, Blackboard Sync (including the Blackboard Learn for Facebook and iPhone applications) and Blackboard Scholar will be intermittently unavailable while undergoing maintenance on Saturday, October 10th and Sunday, October 11th. This maintenance window is to update the hardware and network infrastructure of these products. The expected outcomes of this update are:

• Increased capacity for all of these services
• Improved performance of these applications
• Increased stability

The systems are expected to be intermittently unavailable from morning (EST) on October 10th through morning (EST) on October 11th. Please notify your institution of this period of the unavailability for these services. Users will not be able to submit assignments to Blackboard SafeAssign, utilize the notification capabilities as part of Blackboard Learn for iPhone and Facebook applications, or access their Blackboard Scholar bookmarks during this maintenance period. No action is required by users during this period of unavailability.

While we realize that no time is particularly convenient for temporarily removing these capabilities from your implementation, this proactive maintenance will improve the stability, capacity and performance of these applications and services following this downtime. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact your Technical Support Manager (TSM).

Sincerely,

Lara Oerter
Vice President, Blackboard Product Management and Marketing

[BB] Keeping sick students home

Blackboard users,

One of the reasons that some students with influenza like illnesses
force themselves out of bed and come to some classes, against the
advise of doctors, is because there is no other way for them to get
the information that is provided in those classes.

PowerPoints or lecture notes can be placed on Blackboard, but it is
your voice that is the most valuable part of the lecture or
presentation. If you would like to see how to record your lectures
and post them on Blackboard, I will be demonstrating and documenting
the process on Friday, October 2, 11:15 am - 12:05 pm, in Memorial
Classroom Building, Room 212.

If you will be attending, please register for the "Audio recording
your lectures" session on the http://www.iacmiami.org/ web page. For
those who cannot attend, we will be recording the session and posting
it on-line on the http://www.iacmiami.edu/ "Past Events" page.

Bill Vilberg
bill.vilberg@miami.edu

[BB] Upcoming Blackboard Training

Bb Users,

 

Here’s a preview of some of the upcoming Blackboard training sessions. Check out our “Events” page for a complete listing or to register.

 

Upcoming Events

www.miami.edu/iac  > Events

 

¨      10/1: Keys to Creating More Engaging Bb Courses 1:00-2:00pm

¨      10/2: Intro to Bb 3:30–4:30pm

¨      10/6: Intro to Bb 10:00-11:00am

¨      10/9: Grade Center 2:00-3:00pm

¨      10/16: Intro to Bb 2:00-3:00pm

¨      10/23: Grade Center 2:00-3:00pm

¨      10/30: Intro to Bb 2:00-3:00pm

 

 

_____________________________________

JENNIFER CLISTER Blackboard System Manager University of Miami IAC 305-284-3949

 

[BB] Blackboard Icon Changes

Blackboard Users,

 

We are currently evaluating some alternatives to the icons we have been using for the last several years.  If you see any changes in the coming weeks, please forgive the sudden change and note that you are not imagining it.

 

Thanks as always for your patience.

 

 

OLD                                                                             NEW               

      

 

_____________________________________

JENNIFER CLISTER Blackboard System Manager University of Miami IAC 305-284-3949

 

Re: [BB] Bb: Email Not Working - OK

It looks like this problem is OK now.

Somehow, the emails got delayed, but since they didn't generate any errors on the Blackboard server, we decided to wait a little longer for them to come through. And I think that they have (because all my test messages have been delivered).

If you have any reason to believe messages that you sent out this afternoon were still not delivered, please let me know, and thank you.

-Jennifer
__________________
JENNIFER CLISTER
Blackboard System Manager
University of Miami IAC
305-284-3949
________________________________________
From: UM Blackboard Announcements [BB@LISTSERV.MIAMI.EDU] On Behalf Of Clister, Jennifer R [jclister@MIAMI.EDU]
Sent: Friday, September 11, 2009 5:21 PM
To: BB@LISTSERV.MIAMI.EDU
Subject: [BB] Bb: Email Not Working

Bb Users,

Something is not working with the Blackboard email, but at this point I still don't know if the emails sent later this afternoon are on a delay and have not been received yet. I am troubleshooting this problem with Blackboard, but if you need to send out an email right away, you will have to copy and paste the emails:

1. Open an email application (like Outlook)
2. Go to the Control Panel and click "List/Modify Users" under "User Management"
3. Click the Search button to display all of your students
4. Hold down the Ctrl key and drag your mouse down the "Username" column to select the student emails
5. Right-click and Copy these emails and then Right-click and paste them into an email
6. If you have more than one page, do this for every page.

I apologize that this is a royal pain. Hopefully this problem will be resolved directly. Very soon.

-Jennifer

_____________________________________
JENNIFER CLISTER
Blackboard System Manager
University of Miami IAC
305-284-3949

[cid:image001.jpg@01CA3304.3F018370]

[BB] Bb: Email Not Working

Bb Users,

 

Something is not working with the Blackboard email, but at this point I still don’t know if the emails sent later this afternoon are on a delay and have not been received yet. I am troubleshooting this problem with Blackboard, but if you need to send out an email right away, you will have to copy and paste the emails:

 

1. Open an email application (like Outlook)
2. Go to the Control Panel and click "List/Modify Users" under "User Management"
3. Click the Search button to display all of your students
4. Hold down the Ctrl key and drag your mouse down the "Username" column to select the student emails
5. Right-click and Copy these emails and then Right-click and paste them into an email
6. If you have more than one page, do this for every page.

 

I apologize that this is a royal pain. Hopefully this problem will be resolved directly. Very soon.

 

-Jennifer

 

_____________________________________

JENNIFER CLISTER Blackboard System Manager University of Miami IAC 305-284-3949

 

[BB] Bb Webinar: Creating a More Engaging Course (10/1)

Bb Users,

 

We are trying a new kind of training activity. We have paid to participate (as a group) in a Webinar with a professional online instructor/designer (whose credentials are below) on how to make your Blackboard course more engaging to students. We will participate as a group from the Faculty Exploratory. If you’re interested, we only ask that you register so that we don’t overcrowd the Exploratory. If interest is high, we may be able to find a bigger room. Register here.

 

Here is all the info:

 

Blackboard Crash Course: Keys to Creating More Engaging College Courses

Thursday, October 1, 2009
1:00 PM - 2:00 PM – Faculty Exploratory

Register here

SUMMARY

Today's students live in an email and Facebook world with their laptops practically attached to their fingertips. They expect to seamlessly transition from class to home, library, wherever, whenever. Blackboard's collaborative teaching and learning tools can help bridge the gap from classroom to anytime, anywhere- but navigating these tools can be confusing. Join us for a 60 minute webinar where you and your colleagues will discover:

• What are Blackboard's collaborative teaching & learning tools?
• How to design & develop a course on Blackboard
• Keys to personalizing your Blackboard course navigation
• Setting up electronic assignment submission & the Grade Center

PROGRAM BENEFITS

This practical 60-minute, webinar will provide you and your colleagues with the basics of designing and developing a course in the Blackboard learning management system.

PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS

• Communicating via Blackboard- Collaborative Teaching & Learning Tools
• Creating effective announcements to convey time-sensitive material
• Chat, discussion board, & virtual classroom- Connecting in real time
• The Digital Drop Box- using Blackboard to send & receive files
• Using Blackboard's Grading & Assessment Tools
• How to Use the Assignment Manager- assign, submit & grade online
• Tips for creating & monitoring online surveys, quizzes, and tests
• The Grade Center- recent changes & improvements you should know
• Blackboard Pre-requisites: What you need to know before getting started
• Blackboard Essentials- How to Create a Course in Blackboard LMS
• Customizing your course: layout & navigation tips & tricks
• Guidelines for creating, storing, and distributing course content
• Question and answer session

SPEAKER

Jason Rhode, Ph.D., is the Assistant Director of the Faculty Development and Instructional Design Center at Northern Illinois University. As an experienced online instructor, instructional designer, course developer, and program director, Jason is responsible for developing and offering training programs and support for faculty and staff on teaching with technology and related topics in addition to providing leadership on technology-related issues.

• Utilizing his nearly 10 years experience in the field of online learning, Jason has spent the past 5 years working closely with various units at NIU on addressing faculty needs related to online teaching. He has designed and taught dozens of online courses in numerous learning management systems, including: Blackboard, WebCT, Desire2Learn, and Moodle and he shares his expertise with others interested in teaching online.
• Jason currently designs and teaches online and blended courses in educational technology and instructional design and is a sought after conference speaker, instructor, and online learning consultant.
• He is member of the Midwest Blackboard User's Group (SLATE), Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT), Illinois Association for Educational Communications and Technology (IAECT), International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), and the United States Distance Learning Association (USDLA).

Register here

 

_____________________________________

JENNIFER CLISTER Blackboard System Manager University of Miami IAC 305-284-3949

 

[BB] Blog/Wiki Upgrade & Grade Center bug

Bb Users,

I have updated our Blog and Wiki tools. Here are some of the new features. If you have any problems with any of these tools, please let me know or submit a help desk ticket.

• Spell-checker
• MathFlow™ equation editor
• Easier options for uploading, linking to, and playing videos
• Email notification of content changes to blogs and wikis
• RSS feeds for wikis

Also, if you experience a problem with the Grade Center where when you enter a grade, it says “Saving…” but never updates the grade, please submit a help desk ticket, and if you’re in a hurry you may want try a different browser. The problem has occurred in both browsers, but hasn’t been reported in both browsers for the same person (yet). I am trying to figure out what causes this very sporadic problem so that I can figure out what will fix it.

Welcome back!

-Jennifer

_____________________________________

JENNIFER CLISTER Blackboard System Manager University of Miami IAC 305-284-3949

 

[BB] REMINDER: Bb unavailable Sat. 8/15

Bb Users,

 

This is just a reminder that Blackboard will be down on Saturday 8/15 starting at 12:00am. The downtime *should* only be 12 hours, but please avoid situations where you would depend upon service being restored before 5pm – just to be safe.

 

This is a small upgrade. We will still be using the same version of Blackboard (version 8), but there are some small security vulnerabilities and enhancements that need to be made. The most noticeable enhancement is to the grade center. Now when two students have the same last name, their first names will also be alphabetized.

 

Taking the time to keep our system up-to-date with Blackboard's updates and patches is important so that we can avoid future problems and also save time troubleshooting problems because we have already applied Blackboard's newest updates and patches.

 

Hopefully one day we will not have to experience a service interruption while these updates are being performed.

 

If you have further questions, please email me:  jclister@miami.edu

 

Thank you for your continued patience and feedback.

 

 

-Jennifer

 

 

PS – We are scheduling lots of back-to-school Blackboard training sessions. Click the IAC tree and then the “Events” link to register.

 

  http://www.miami.edu/iac/

 

_____________________________________

JENNIFER CLISTER Blackboard System Manager University of Miami IAC 305-284-3949

 

[BB] Blackboard Announcements

Bb Users,

 

Here are a few quick announcements as we start preparing for the Fall Semester…

 

1. Upgrade Saturday, 8/15
2. Wimba Voice Tools Updated
3. Course Merges
4. Blackboard’s “New Look”
5. Join the Bb Mailing List
6. Blackboard training
7. Bb Maintenance Last Weekend (Success)

 

Upgrade Saturday, 8/15

We will be doing a small upgrade to Blackboard beginning at 12:00am on Saturday, 8/15. Blackboard has scheduled 12 hours of downtime, but I urge you to play it safe and avoid depending on using Blackboard Saturday afternoon. We performed this upgrade on a replica of our production server, and it took the expected 12 hours, but experience has taught me to be overly conservative rather than overly optimistic when it comes to upgrades.

Wimba Voice Tools Updated

The newest version of the Wimba Voice Tools have been installed. The enhancements in this version are to the Voice Boards.

¨      Faculty can now filter the posts by user.

¨      There is also an option to grade the voice boards. This means that you can enter a number of possible points, and a grade column will be automatically created in the grade center. There will also be a “Grade this board” button visible at the top of the Voice board page.

Course Merges

If you would like to collapse your Blackboard sites into one course site or would like to add an additional site that include all of the students in your courses, let us know. Here’s a shortcut to filling out a Course Merge Request Ticket.

Blackboard’s “New Look”

We updated the UM branding in the top left corner, and replaced the small cluster of links in the top right corner with an Instructional Advancement Center logo and link to our Web page. We didn’t realize that people were using those links as a launchpad to MyUM and the Technology Product Center’s software page. I am working on an appropriate way to re-incorporate those links. In the meantime, you can click the UM logo to go to the UM home page, and access MyUM from there – or you can access it via the MyUM announcement link that currently appears in the Announcements section of the Bb home page. And here is a link to the TPC software page in case you need it: http://www6.miami.edu/software/.

Join the Blackboard Mailing List

Do you know someone who should be receiving these emails? Please pass this information on to them. Join the Bb Mailing list.

Blackboard Training

We will be doing several Into to Blackboard and Grade Center Basics training sessions in August. Please watch the Announcements section for specific dates and times.

Bb Maintenance Last Weekend (Success)

Blackboard was able to replace the switches that caused our outage on July 13^th. The maintenance ended at about 3:30pm.

 

 

 

Please let me know if you have any questions, Thank you for your patience and feedback, and I look forward to working with you throughout the fall semester.

 

-Jennifer

 

_____________________________________

JENNIFER CLISTER Blackboard System Manager University of Miami IAC 305-284-3949

 

Re: [BB] Error logging in to Blackboard - FIXED

Bb Users,

 

I think we fixed this problem.

 

It seems there was a problem with some of our plug-ins, which we re-activate. I think that we have fixed the problem, but if you see any errors, please let me know right away.

 

I’m going to continue to work with Blackboard to figure out why this problem occurred, but in the meantime, I think it is working correctly now.

 

I apologize for the inconvenience, and appreciate your feedback to help solving these problems as quickly as possible.

 

-Jennifer

 

___________________________

JENNIFER CLISTER
Blackboard System Manager
University of Miami IAC
305-284-3949

---

From: UM Blackboard Announcements [mailto:BB@LISTSERV.MIAMI.EDU] On Behalf Of Clister, Jennifer R
Sent: Tuesday, August 04, 2009 2:34 PM
To: BB@LISTSERV.MIAMI.EDU
Subject: [BB] Error logging in to Blackboard?

 

Bb Users,

 

A few people are experiencing an error when they login to Blackboard. You can see that error below. You can still access your courses/organizations via the tabs, but the home page tab displays this error:

 

 

Error:

 

We are trying to figure out what causes the error, but the temporary fix that we found requires that you clear your browser cookies – and here is how you do that in IE and Firefox.

 

If you need assistance, please call the Blackboard Help Desk: 305-284-3949.

 

 

Clearing Cookies in Internet Explorer:

 

 

 

Clearing Cookies in Firefox:

  

_____________________________________

JENNIFER CLISTER Blackboard System Manager University of Miami IAC 305-284-3949

 

[BB] Error logging in to Blackboard?

Bb Users,

 

A few people are experiencing an error when they login to Blackboard. You can see that error below. You can still access your courses/organizations via the tabs, but the home page tab displays this error:

 

 

Error:

 

We are trying to figure out what causes the error, but the temporary fix that we found requires that you clear your browser cookies – and here is how you do that in IE and Firefox.

 

If you need assistance, please call the Blackboard Help Desk: 305-284-3949.

 

 

Clearing Cookies in Internet Explorer:

 

 

 

Clearing Cookies in Firefox:

  

_____________________________________

JENNIFER CLISTER Blackboard System Manager University of Miami IAC 305-284-3949