[BB] Spring course sites

1. The spring course sites are created and currently available from the "All Courses" tab. Registrations should be current, with a nightly update.

 

2. I expect to add the spring course sites to the "My Current Courses" module on Thursday, December 15.  If someone needs it done before then, please contact me.  It is an all-or-none setting, but it doesn't really matter to me when they appear.

 

3. If you want us to merge your sites so that multiple course sections or multiple listings use a single course site on Blackboard, please fill out the on-line form and we will set things up to accomplish it.  You can find the form from Blackboard > "Support" tab > "Online Forms" link > "Course Merge" form.  It takes overnight during a weeknight to process a merge request.

 

Bill Vilberg

305-284-3949 (work); 786-218-3052 (cell); 305-255-9138 (home)

 

[BB] Security change coming on Friday morning

The security on the Blackboard system will be changed on Friday morning at 3:00 AM.  All requests to Blackboard will be encrypted.  This is done by using https instead of http.  This is also known as SSL.  If you are on-line at that time, you will probably be required to login again.  There should be no noticeable down time.

 

This change is not supposed to cause any trouble.  I am letting you know so that you can notify me if you see anything that needs our attention after the switch. 

 

Friday morning 3-5 AM is our standard window for doing any work on the system.  This is one of the few times that we are using it. 

 

Bill Vilberg

305-284-3949 (work); 786-218-3052 (cell); 305-255-9138 (home)

 

[BB] Spring enrollments should be current

The student enrollments in the spring 2006 (062) course sites on Blackboard should be current.  We ran the snapshot update at 3:00 PM today.

 

Bill Vilberg

305-284-3949 (work); 786-218-3052 (cell); 305-255-9138 (home)

 

[BB] Spring course sites created

The spring course sites have been created.  The sites are currently available through the "All Courses" tab.

 

The student enrollment reflects the status as of Tuesday, November 15.  I am working on obtaining the data to bring the enrollments up to date.

 

Bill Vilberg

305-284-3949 (work); 786-218-3052 (cell); 305-255-9138 (home)

 

[BB] Spring course site load

I am trying to run the spring course load on Blackboard again tonight.  I will let you know the status tomorrow morning.  When created the courses will contain, at best, the enrollment as of a week ago.  I will bring things up to date as quickly as possible.  To those of you who need access to this information I sincerely apologize for the delays.

 

Bill Vilberg

305-284-3949 (work); 786-218-3052 (cell); 305-255-9138 (home)

 

[BB] Spring (062) course sites - Still not ready

Blackboard users,

 

Early last week we tried to create the Spring 2006 (062) course sites on Blackboard.  We ran into a problem.  We create our sites from a template so new sites will have the settings that we want.  Instead of using the menu settings from the template, the system used something called the "Default Course Settings"  so the menus on the new sites were messed up.  For example, the Tools menu was enabled in all the new sites, and ALL the tools were enabled.  We didn't want that.

 

We sent the support people at Blackboard the list of all the courses that had been created.  They said that they would remove them all within a couple of hours.  Then we could recreate them, after making the Default Course Settings work as best we could.  Unfortunately the process of removing the old courses is failing.  Out of 7,000+ sites, it can't remove the last 700 or so.  The support people have been working on the issue.  As soon as it is resolved we will get things going so sites will be available for you.

 

I am aware that some special courses are starting in the near future and that some of you need to access the system to send notices to students and such.  I will keep you informed of the process. I apologize for the delay.

 

Bill Vilberg

305-284-3949 (work); 786-218-3052 (cell); 305-255-9138 (home)

 

[BB] Please don't use the 062 sites yet

The 062 (spring 2006) sites were created last night, but there appear to be problems.  Please do not work on these sites yet as we may need to remove them and recreate them again.  I will work on it and give you an update later today.

 

Bill Vilberg

305-284-3949 (work); 786-218-3052 (cell); 305-255-9138 (home)

 

[BB] Spring courses

We are scheduled to roll-in the spring courses starting this evening.  It usually takes more than 24 hours to generate all the sections for one semester.  I will send out a notification when the process is completed.

 

Bill Vilberg

305-284-3949 (work); 786-218-3052 (cell); 305-255-9138 (home)

 

[BB] Virtual Classroom and Chat are working again

As of 6:10 PM last night the virtual classroom and chat functionality of the Blackboard system were restored.  The "collaboration server" had to be restarted.

 

Bill Vilberg

305-284-3949 (work); 786-218-3052 (cell); 305-255-9138 (home)

 

[BB] Collaboration server problem

It appears that there is a problem with the collaboration server on the Blackboard system.  I am not able to open a Chat or Virtual Classroom connection. I have opened a ticket with Blackboard, Inc.  I will let you know when I hear something.

 

Bill Vilberg

305-284-3949 (work); 786-218-3052 (cell); 305-255-9138 (home)

 

[BB] SafeAssignment update

I just updated SafeAssignment from version 1.6.5 to 1.6.6.  One faculty member reported a situation where students were seeing a huge java error message after submitting a paper.  This upgrade corrected that error. 

 

The documentation lists the following improvements that are included in version 1.6.6.

a. Access to Reports from the My Grades section of the Student Interface – this feature allows students to view their SafeAssignment matching reports directly from the My Grades sections of their Blackboard accounts.
b. Removal of Deleted Assignments from Gradebook – deletion of assignments is properly reflected in the Blackboard Gradebook with all grades remaining intact but an option to view submitted papers and reports becoming unavailable.
c. Reprocessing Enabled for 0% Reports – now reports with 0% matching can also be reprocessed whenever needed.
d. SafeAssignment Access for Graders and CourseBuilders – users with Grader and CourseBuilder roles now can use SafeAssignment in the corresponding courses according to their Blackboard access privileges.

If you experience any problems or notice anything odd, please let me know so I can inform the developers and they can resolve it.

 

Bill Vilberg

305-284-3949 (work); 786-218-3052 (cell); 305-255-9138 (home)

 

[BB] Bb outage report

Bb went down at 8:15 am today and came back at 9:45 am. Our data base locked up, according to to support people. They are investigating what might have caused this. It is not a common problem.

 

Sorry for the delay in sending this report. I am at the Educause conference in Orland and couldn't get back on the net until now.

 

Bill Vilberg

305-284-3949 (work); 786-218-3052 (cell); 305-255-9138 (home)

 

[BB] Blackboard - Service_In_Progress

-----Original Message-----
From: asp.notify@blackboard.com [mailto:asp.notify@blackboard.com]
Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2005 8:13 AM
To: aspnotify@opsmart.blackboard.com
Subject: Blackboard ASP - Notification 1098982410 - Service_In_Progress

Service In Progress: Dear Valued Customer, We have
been alerted to a problem with your hosted Blackboard system which is
preventing your site from operating properly. We currently have our ASP
Engineers working on the situation and should have the problem resolved
shortly.

As with all technical contacts, if you have any questions concerning
this email, please contact our 24/7 ASP Call Center at 1-888-788-5264
and choosing option 3 or via the web at http://support.blackboard.com.

[BB] Blackboard down?

It appears, from Orland, where I am attending Educause , that our Blackboard is down. I will get more info and send an update.

 

Bill Vilberg

305-284-3949 (work); 786-218-3052 (cell); 305-255-9138 (home)

 

[BB] Blackboard bought WebCT

FYI - Blackboard has announced that it is buying WebCT, its primary competitor.  See http://www.blackboard.com/webct/index.aspx for the announcement. They have done this before with two or three other competitors.  Within a few years the competitor's product has ceased to exist.

 

Bill Vilberg

305-284-3949 (work); 786-218-3052 (cell); 305-255-9138 (home)

 

[BB] Discussion Grader add in to Blackboard

The Discussion Grader is now available on our Blackboard system.  It allows you to assign participation points to each student, based on their postings to a discussion forum.  When posting the grades you can see all the messages from that student.

 

Note that this is by forum, not thread.  If you are going to use this you will probably want to make individual forums for each graded unit.

 

The Discussion Grader can be found in the Course Tools area of the Control Panel of your course sites.  Let me know if you have any questions.

 

Bill Vilberg

305-284-3949 (work); 786-218-3052 (cell); 305-255-9138 (home)

 

[BB] New way to add people to your Blackboard sites

It is now possible to add someone to your course and give them special rights (TA, instructor, etc.) in one step, "Add Users by Role."  This link is found in the "Course Tools" section of the Control Panel.   I would encourage you to use it all the time, even if you are adding someone as a student, since it also provides more feedback than the "Enroll User" system in Blackboard.

 

The Course Tools section of the Control Panel contains links to the based Blackboard tools and the add ins that we have installed.  Advanced Group Management, Discussion Grader, Safe Assignments, and now Add Users by Role are all in this area.

 

Bill Vilberg

305-284-3949 (work); 786-218-3052 (cell); 305-255-9138 (home)

 

[BB] Advanced Group Management

The Advanced Group Management tool had a problem.  You could not use it to create a group.  I have installed the latest version so it should be functioning now. 

 

This tool is an improvement over the Group Management tool that is still available.  If you use groups, I encourage you to use the Advanced Group Management tool to create the groups and assign the users.  It provides more options and power than the Blackboard tool. 

 

Bill Vilberg

305-284-3949 (work); 786-218-3052 (cell); 305-255-9138 (home)

 

[BB] Warning - Archive your courses, please

I hate to report this, but there seem to be a serious problem in the Blackboard system that may cause all of your content to disappear or your course site to become completely unavailable, even to me.  I have only had it reported in two sites, so far, but Blackboard is unable to identify the cause and reports that they have seen it at other universities.

 

As a precaution I encourage you to go to the Control Panel of each of your courses and use the Archive Course link to create a zip file on your computer with everything in it from your course as it currently exists.  If anything happens we can use that backup to restore things the way they are right now.  If you are using the gradebook you should also go to it and export it so that you will have multiple copies of any grades you have posted.

 

 

I fully subscribe to Keller's ARCS model of motivation.  The four things that are necessary to motivate you to use Blackboard are Awareness that it exists and what it can do, Relevance to what you are trying to accomplish, Confidence both in the system itself and in your ability to use it, and Satisfaction after using it that it was worth the effort.  This problem is not helping with the confidence scores, but I believe it is imperative that you know about any issue that might affect your teaching of your classes.  I will continue to work with Blackboard to try to identify the problem and resolve it.

 

Bill Vilberg

305-284-3949 (work); 786-218-3052 (cell); 305-255-9138 (home)

 

[BB] My Current Courses update

I have set My Current Courses so that the courses from last Spring and Summer I do not show up any longer.  If you need to get to them, use the All Courses tab.

 

Bill Vilberg

305-284-3949 (work); 786-218-3052 (cell); 305-255-9138 (home)