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April 30, 2008

CS Major Wins "Students & IT" Focus Group Drawing

Junior Computer Science major Andrew Winder won the iPod Touch "door prize" drawing at yesterday's UMBC student focus group sessions for the 2008 "Undergraduates and IT" study sponsored by the Educause Center for Applied Research (ECAR). Pictured with Andrew is Judy Caruso, principal investigator of the 2008 ECAR study, and Director of Policy and Planning in the CIO's office at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Thanks to all of the students who participated.

Posted by fritz at 3:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 29, 2008

Students Provide Insight Through Fall Blackboard Survey

As we've done in the past, OIT again conducted it's Undergraduate student survey in Fall 2007 with 759 students participating. The survey was divided into several sections including general demographics, an open-ended section for students to recommend instructors that they perceive to be strong users of BlackBoard, tool usage and functionality, and suggestions for improvements.

The most original comments were received when students were asked to recommend an instructor who they viewed as a strong user of Blackboard. Respondents listed numerous faculty members with the following faculty receiving the highest number of positive comments:

• Phil Sokolove (Biology)


• Lili Cui (Physics)


• Clayton Laurie (History)


• Tara Carpenter (Chemistry)


• Eileen O’Brien (Psychology)

Lili Cui and Clayton Laurie have also been highlighted in the Interviews section of the Blackboard Best Practices site as faculty who use Blackboard well.

Students reported the most frequently used tools in Blackboard included:

• Posting Course Content (91%)


• Announcements (80%)


• E-mail (54%)


• Discussion boards (47%)

Major advantages to the use of Blackboard were:

• 24/7 access to course content (78%)


• Prompt visibility of posted grades (56%)

The biggest disadvantage to using Blackboard was the reliance on technology (53%) and the most needed improvements were server reliability and performance (59% combined). Overall, the respondents scored faculty as “Good” (59%) when it came to the use of Blackboard.

Students provided a number of suggestions for improving Blackboard including:

• More online student help


• Mandatory usage of Blackboard for all faculty


• Improved design and functionality


• Improve performance and reliability

Respondents provided a number of suggestions in how to improve Blackboard that included providing more online student help and mandatory usage of Blackboard for all faculty. The respondents overwhelmingly supported Blackboard as a great tool despite its occasional problems. Other input included the suggestion for Blackboard.com to improve its design and functionality and the most received comment was the need to improve performance and reliability. Respondents noted that the system always seems to be down.

From this sampling of undergraduate students, it appears that Blackboard is perceived as an asset to the educational process at UMBC. Faculty that incorporated the use of Blackboard into the classroom setting received appreciation from undergraduate students. OIT needs to continue to address issues that impact usage in order to increase end-user acceptance of this online course management tool.

Complete survey results can be found online.

Posted by rarmstro at 8:55 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Course Shells Created for Summer 2008

Today, May 1, 2008 OIT created an empty Blackboard course shell for all Summer 2008 courses listed in the UMBC Schedule of Classes with assigned instructors. Courses that don’t have assigned instructors will be created as they are added to the Schedule of Classes by the Registrar’s office. Only officially registered students should be automatically enrolled in all Bb courses. Students who have dropped will be "disabled" in the course once they have completed the process in myUMBC. Students that have been disabled will be clearly noted in the roster inside each course shell. All courses for both summer 2008 sessions will be conducted on the Blackboard production server.

Notes:

• To copy content from an old Bb course to a new course shell, click here.
  
• To request a new course shell earlier than the typical month all course shells are created before a semester starts, click here.
  
• If you no longer need an old course, please submit a request to delete it.
  

Posted by rarmstro at 8:34 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Spring 2008 Course Shells Expire on 6/15

Spring 2008 Bb course "shells" are set to expire on June 15, 2008 after grades are due. This means the course will automatically revert to being unavailable to students, but faculty will still see the course link. This will help students who frequently complain about having numerous links to old courses in Blackboard. They can request ongoing access from the instructor, who can override the duration settings manually. This may be helpful for processing incompletes, but the majority of students will not have to request to be un-enrolled from old courses.

If you don’t need your old Bb course site, please consider deleting it by completing the “Bb Course Delete” request form on the Bb Blackboard Help tab.

Posted by rarmstro at 8:33 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

FYI: BbWorld'08 World Conference is July 15-17 in Las Vegas

Registration for the BbWorld '08 conference has begun. The conference is being held in sunny Las Vegas from July 15-17, 2008 and is described as a "client-centered program built on client feedback, innovation and success."

To register for the conference, just complete the form on the Blackboard website. Several staff from OIT will be attending the conference and we look forward to seeing you there.

Posted by rarmstro at 8:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 9, 2008

Bogus E-mails From UMBC.EDU

Recently UMBC e-mail users have been receiving bogus e-mail messages, From: UMBC.EDU ONLINE SERVICE, requesting sensitive information. A sample fraudulent e-mail message is below. E-mails such as these are known as Phishing (Click HERE for more information on Phishing). These e-mails are fraudulent and have not originated from the Office of Information Technology at UMBC. Under no circumstances should you reply to these or other similarly worded e-mails.

The fraudulent e-mails are requesting information such as:
Email Username :
EMAIL Password :
Address :
City :

The Office of Information Technology Will NOT:
• Request Your Username in Unsolicited E-mails
• Request Your Password
• Send You an Unsolicited Attachment
• Request Other Sensitive Information (e.g. SSN, Banking Information, Date of Birth, Address etc.)

Under no circumstances should you respond to unsolicited e-mails, web links or attachments. If in doubt don’t open it and contact the OIT Help Desk for assistance.

helpdesk@umbc.edu
410-455-3838

Sincerely,
Michael Carlin
Assistant VP, Infrastructure and Support
Office of Information Technology

------BEGIN BOGUS EMAIL SAMPLE----------------
From: UMBC. EDU ONLINE SERVICE [mailto:sjmain@btinternet.com]
Sent: Tuesday, March 18, 2008 1:53 PM
To: pe_doggezzidik@yahoo.com
Subject: Dear UMBC.EDU Email Account Owner: ACCOUNT VERIFICATION NOTICE!!!
Dear UMBC.EDU Email Account Owner,
This message is from UMBC.EDU messaging center to all UMBC.EDU email account
owners. We are currently upgrading our data base and e-mail account center. We are
deleting all unused UMBC.EDU email account to create more space for new
accounts.
To prevent your account from closing you will have to update it below so that we
will know that it's a present used account.
CONFIRM YOUR EMAIL IDENTITY BELOW
Email Username :
EMAIL Password :
Address :
City :
Attention!!! Account owner that refuses to update his or her account within Seven
days of receiving this warning will lose his or her account permanently.
Thank you for using UMBC.EDU!
Warning Code:VX2G99AAJ
Sandra Andrews
ONLINE SERVICES
--------END BOGUS EMAIL SAMPLE---------

Posted by mikec at 11:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 8, 2008

4/30 Team Based Learning Demo

If you want to make sure students are prepared for class and group work, come to this demo of Team Based Learning (TBL) and its Readiness Assurance Process (RAP) that includes the following:

1. An individual quiz over assigned readings;
   
2. A team quiz over the same material using immediate feedback "scratch off" cards;
   
3. An open book "appeals" phase for incorrect "team answers" only.
   
4. Corrective instruction (mini lecture) by the instructor based on a real-time understanding of what students didn't understand.
   

John Fritz and Jack Prostko will lead the first half of the demo, including a short TBL quiz of L. Dee Fink's "Integrated Course Design" summary paper from the IDEA Center at Kansas State University. Then, Anna Rubin (Music) will share lessons learned from her use of TBL in her Winter 2008 hybrid course, "Introduction to Music."

For more information and to register, visit www.umbc.edu/fdc/training

Posted by fritz at 9:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack