While the campus Blackboard server was successfully upgraded on Friday, December 23, DoIT has encountered issues with the planned auto-creation of Winter and Spring 2012 Bb course shells. We are still investigating the issue, but as of today here is a status update:
- All 100 or so WT 2012 Bb course shells have been manually created by DoIT staff, and the instructor of record has been enrolled. Faculty can now begin to export old Bb courses and import them into these new WT 2012 Bb shells.
- However, NO students have been "auto-enrolled" in these WT 2012 Bb course shells, and will none will be able to until DoIT has determined the nature of the current problem.
- Instructors of WT 2012 Bb courses can use the Student Administration (SA) system to view a class roster. If you need to email students before Winter courses begin on Tuesday, January 3, either download the SA roster and email students directly or manually enroll your students into Blackboard and send email through the Bb course site. When DoIT fixes the auto-enroll function, all officially-registered students will remain in the Bb course site, regardless of how they were initially enrolled in it.
Reminder: Instructors need to make their Bb courses available for students to see AND log into them.
- Spring 2012 Bb course sites have not been created or enrolled. DoIT will provide another update as we learn more.
We apologize for this inconvenience, especially to Winter 2012 Bb faculty. If you have questions or concerns not addressed by this update, please consult the specific Blackboard Help section of the IT support FAQs or submit a Request Tracker (RT) ticket via the myUMBC Help menu or directly at http://rt.umbc.edu.
Sincerely,
John Fritz
Asst. VP, Instructional Technology & New Media
UMBC Div. of Information Technology (DoIT)