This update is provided by the Office of Information Technology for students, faculty and staff using Blackboard at UMBC. If you have questions or suggestions, contact John Fritz (fritz@umbc.edu or 410.455.6596). For more information about using Blackboard, visit http://blackboard.umbc.edu or send email to blackboard@umbc.edu.

SUMMARY

1. Blackboard Course "Shells" Created for All Spring 2005 Courses
2. Reminder: Fall 2004 Bb Course "Shells" Expire January 15, 2005
3. Blackboard Down Wed., January 12, 2005 for Hardware Upgrade
4. Winter 2005 Bb Courses to Operate from Alternate Server
5. Scantron ("Bubblesheet") Grades Now Import into Bb for Secure Display
6. FYI: New Documentation Added to Bb Help Tab
7. FYI: Training Options: Workshops, Small Group and Consults
8. FYI: Blackboard Announces $25k and $5k Community "Content" Grants

Faculty can now move content from one course to another

As of today, Friday, December 17, 2004, OIT created an empty Blackboard course for all Spring 2005 courses listed in the UMBC Schedule of Classes. As announced in the Fall 2004 Blackboard Update earlier in the semester, any faculty member who wants to use Blackboard simply needs to login via myUMBC or http://blackboard.umbc.edu and follow the instructions on the Blackboard Help Tab.

If you do not wish to use Blackboard, do nothing. By default, all UMBC Blackboard course "shells" remain unavailable to students until the instructor of record makes his or her course available.

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As announced earlier in the semester, Fall 2004 auto-created Bb course "shells" were set to expire on January 15, 2005 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. Remember: they can’t do this for themselves.

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The UMBC Blackboard server accessed via myUMBC or at http://blackboard.umbc.edu will be down for maintenance on Wed., January 12, 2005. Among other things, OIT will be applying a hardware upgrade to improve performance. The server will be back up on Thursday, January 13, 2005.

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Because of the January 12 hardware upgrade when the production version of Blackboard will be down--and to recover a much needed window in the academic year when OIT can apply and test upgrades--all Winter 2005 Blackboard courses will be operating on a development Blackboard server called http://weblock.umbc.edu. They will stay on this server throughout the Winter semester.

OIT will export all Winter 2005 Bb courses to the http://weblock.umbc.edu server during the afternoon next Tuesday, December 22, and will email all affected professors when the process is complete. We will also be posting notices inside the production server of Blackboard alerting Winter 2005 students that their courses are on a different server. We will also provide a direct link to that server where they should find their courses.

Note: Because Winter 2005 courses will be on a separate server, they will NOT be auto-created with empty course "shells" as is the case with Spring 2005 courses (described above). Winter 2005 courses will be created upon request by faculty using the course request form on the Blackboard Help Tab. In addition, Winter 2005 courses will NOT be "auto-enrolled." Faculty can either enroll students one-at-a-time, allow students to "self-enroll" or contact OIT for a one-time "batch-enroll" their course rosters for them (faculty can then augment the course roster by enrolling or deleting students manually). To request a one-time batch enroll of your Winter 2005 course, send email to blackboard@umbc.edu.

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Instead of posting scantron ("bubblesheet") grades on a door by student SSN, faculty can now import these grades into Blackboard for secure display. OIT’s Testing Services group piloted with Chemistry last spring to import results of scantron assessments into Blackboard, the process of mapping student SSN to UMBC userid was manually intensive. Thanks to OIT's Rob Banz, faculty can now use a scantron gradebook upload tool to import the Comma Separated Values (CSV) scantron file they receive from OIT's Testing Services group. Then, using Blackboard's own "upload grades" tool, the converted Scantron CSV file can be imported into the Blackboard gradebook. For more information, see the new helpsheet on the Blackboard Help Tab. For help, contact Bob Armstrong at 410.455.3885 or rarmstro@umbc.edu, or send email to blackboard@umbc.edu.

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In an effort to assist faculty in effectively using Blackboard, OIT has continued to develop help sheets and tools to make building and administering a Blackboard course much easier. Recent additions include:

• Uploading grades using the Scantron Gradebook Tool : This tool gives faculty members who use the Scantron testing system an easy conversion tool for modifying and uploading an Excel .csv file into their course Gradebook. No matter the size of your class, this tool will save you a lot of time when you want to update your course Gradebook.

• TurnItIn Assignments in Blackboard: TurnItIn.com has been highlighted before in past issues of the UMBC Blackboard Update. However, with the increased use of the tool we have created a help sheet that outlines some of the tricks to effectively using the TurnItIn.com Assignment tool in your course.

• List of Supported Browsers: This is a list of browsers that are officially supported by the Blackboard application. If you are having trouble accessing some of the features in Blackboard, you might want to consult this list to see if your Internet browser is included.

During the Winter break and the upcoming Spring semester, OIT will continue to develop help sheets and tips and tricks to make administering your course a little easier. We also want to encourage faculty to use the Blackboard course manual that can be found under “Help” in your course/community Control Panel.

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If you want to refresh your current skills or explore new territory, including how to move content from an old Bb course into the auto-created shell for Spring 2005, OIT is offering Blackboard faculty training weekly from mid-January to the end of February. Most workshops are 1-2 hours, and have been scheduled during the day, evening and some weekends. Sample topics include the following:

• Blackboard: The Basics to Get Started
• Creating and Managing Assignments (Basic & TurnItIn)
• Utilizing the Course Gradebook
• Creating Tests and Surveys
• Creating and Managing Groups
• Multi-Media Applications in Blackboard
• Blackboard Tools for Inter-activity

To sign up for a workshop, visit http://www.umbc.edu/training.

Note: For Blackboard training after the start of the semester (March 1, 2005), OIT will arrange these workshops upon request, for a minimum of four (4) participants. Departmental TAs are welcome to attend any faculty/staff Blackboard workshop. Also, OIT is happy to present short Blackboard demos at departmental faculty meetings or to discuss custom departmental training for faculty and/or TAs, which has been successful for the English and history departments. For more information, send email to blackboard@umbc.edu or contact Bob Armstrong (rarmstro@umbc.edu or 5-3885).

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Blackboard has announced $25k and $5k development grants for its Bbionic course content contest and Greenhouse community projects. The deadline for each is January 25, 2005. For more information, visit the following: http://communities.blackboard.com/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp

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