UPDATE: 1/24/12
As of 10:30 a.m. today, course enrollment updates are now occurring hourly.
Current SA to Bb Update Schedule:
As reported previously, there have been a number of issues with auto creation and enrollment of Blackboard courses since the December 23 upgrade:
12/29/11: Spring 2012 Bb courses were auto created but auto enrollment is still once a day
12/28/11: Bb auto enrollment changed from every two hours to once a day
12/26/11: Winter 2012 courses were manually created by hand, not auto created
Basically, DoIT has had to completely re-engineer Bb's integration with the Student Administration (SA) system, a project we'd planned for Summer 2012. Good news? It is nearly completed and appears to be working. Bad news? It is not fully tested.
Current Status & Next Steps
- Blackboard courses are being auto-enrolled ONCE A DAY at 3 a.m. using the new "snapshot" process.
- This process can take up to 90 minutes to complete and has impacted performance.
- Enrolling courses more frequently risks overall performance and usability of the system at the hectic start of semester.
- DoIT is testing a new "event driven" process that would update Bb course enrollments every hour, based on incremental changes in SA. If it doesn't work, we can and will roll back to the once-at-3 a.m. approach.
What You Can Do To Help?
Students
If you cannot access your Bb course 24 hours after officially enrolling in it via SA, please submit an RT ticket via myUMBC help or directly at rt.umbc.edu. Please include the following:
- The specific date & time you officially enrolled;
- The course title, section number and instructor of your Bb course;
- Very helpful: Attach a screen capture or recording of your official class schedule in SA.
Faculty
Similarly, if you do not see your Bb course, confirm you are the official instructor of record in the Schedule of Classes (SOC). If not, contact your department scheduling coordinator so you can be added to the course in SA, which updates Bb instructor enrollment, just like students.
If you ARE the instructor of record but still can't access your Bb course, follow the same steps as students (above), but also include your Blackboard courseID.