Tuesday, August 24, 2010

[BB] Important Blackboard Updates

Bb Users,

 

Please be aware of the following:

 

1.      Announcements can not be emailed automatically at this time
Faculty can email students via Blackboard and can also post announcements. The “Email Announcement” feature that automatically sends an email to students when the box is checked is not currently working. We are working with Blackboard to resolve this issue as quickly as possible.

 

2.      The Collaboration Tools (chat) are not currently working
The virtual classroom and office hours tools are not currently working. The tools never finish loading. We are working with Blackboard to resolve this issue.

 

3.      Freshmen (and new students) have been added to Blackboard
New undergraduate students do not have access to Blackboard until their schedules are made available to them. These students should all have access to Blackboard now.

 

4.      Course adds/drops are only processed once a night
When a student adds or drops a class, that adjustment is not made in Blackboard in real time. That data is passed to Blackboard once a night and is usually processed between 12-4am. *

 

Thank you, and we will send out an update as soon as the announcements and collaboration tools issues are resolved.

 

-Jennifer


* Please keep in mind when you manually add students to your course that they will NOT be removed if they drop the course. Faculty have the right to manually add any student to their Blackboard course, but that creates a condition where the Registrar’s data feed can’t undo that manual add. If your students can’t wait until night when their enrollments will be processed, you can call the Blackboard Help Desk, and we can add them in a way that they can still be removed should they drop the class. (You can also manually remove any students that you added should you discover they are no longer participating in your course.)

 

___________________________

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