[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

 

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