Course Availability and Blackboard Fall 2009 Courses

As you wrap up your Fall 2009 courses, don't forget to make these course areas on Blackboard unavailable to students.

There is only one way to do this, and those instructions have been included below. If you are hiding courses from your view on the SVCC and/or Teach tab, by clicking on the "pencil" icon (picture) and making selections to no longer display course names on your list...this is NOT making the course(s) unavailable. This only hides the course from your view. You need to make the course unavailable to students so they no longer have access to it on Blackboard.

If you have a 1 or 2 students who will need to continue to have access to your course through the Spring semester due to incompletes, I can make the course unavailable to all students but those 1 or 2 who need continued access. Just submit a ticket to Issuetrak stating what you need and make sure that you identify the course or courses (ex. ENG 241 A6) and the full names of the students who need to maintain access. https://southside.issuetrak.com/login.asp

Just remember that when those students are finished, you then need to make the course area unavailable.

Changing Course Availability
1. Go to https://my.vccs.edu/
2. Log-in
3. Click on "Blackboard" under the "My Tools" list.
4. Click on the course (listed on either your "Teach" tab or "SVCC" tab)
5. Click on the "Control Panel" option (from within the course)
6. Click "Settings" in the "Course Options" box
7. Click on "Course Availability"
8. Click "No" to make it unavailable to all students enrolled; Click "Yes" to make it available to all students enrolled
9. Click on "Submit"

Let me know if you have any questions, and I hope that you have a great holiday!!
(kelly.goscinski@southside.edu)

Fall 2008 Courses to Be Removed From Blackboard

All FAll 2008 (and prior) courses will be removed from Blackboard. The criteria for removal at this stage is:

1. Course ID's ending in "FA08"


2. Or course areas created before August 1, 2008

Courses marked for deletion, have had the statement "Will delete December 15, 2009" added to their title within Blackboard. Check your courses!!! On December 15, 2009, all of these flagged courses will be removed from the Blackboard production area.

I highly recommend that you create your own archive of your course(s) that will contain all of your content and student data. Although the VCCS does archive copies of the courses, it is a good rule of thumb to keep your own copy. The VCCS will only keep the Fall 2008 archived course files until Fall of 2010.

To create and save an archive (zipped file) of your course,

1. Go to the "Control Panel" of your course area on Blackboard


2. Click on "Archive Course" in the "Course Options" box. (Exporting will allow you to create a back-up file of only your content without student grades, etc. To do this, you would select "Export Course" instead of archive. The procedure is very similar to archiving.)


3. Click on "Archive".


4. Make sure that "Include Grade Center History" to maintain an archived file that includes student grades.


5. Click "Submit".

It will take time for this archived file to be created. You will receive an email when it is available. You will need to repeat steps 1 and 2 above to find the file to then save to your computer, flash drive, or alternate storage device.

If you have any questions or need any assistance, please contact me at kelly.goscinski@southside.edu.

Spring 2010 Courses in Blackboard

Course shells have been created for all cyber, hybrid, and seated Spring 2010 courses.

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Blackboard Template

Once again, course shells were created in Blackboard based on a template. This template was used for both Summer and Fall 09 courses, and it was reviewed again this fall to address any needed modifications. Within the template a course menu was created with the minimum expectations on what should be found and used in all SVCC cyber courses (Announcements, Syllabus, Instructor, Assignments, Discussion Board, External Links, Student's Grades, Email, and Student Help). You can add areas as needed, but the areas that are on the menu should be utilized appropriately. (Ex. Your syllabus should be in the syllabus area.) The hope is to have some consistency from course to course.

More information has been added to the "Student Help" section. Take a look at what is now available, so that you will be able to direct students to that area as needed. DO NOT REMOVE this button!!! If you remove that button from the course menu, all of the content located there will be removed from your course as well.

The Course Evaluation button has been hidden on the course menu. Be careful not to remove this from the menu, just leave it as unavailable to students for now. Near the end of the semester, all cyber course instructors will need to make this area available to students on the course menu for online students to complete. This is only for CYBER COURSES. This online evaluation will not be completed by either hybrid or seated courses. There is a link at the bottom of this entry that will take you to a handout concerning adjusting the course menu.

An "Instructor Resources" area has been added as well, but it is not available to students and should not be made available to them on the course menu. You can take a look at this through the "Control Panel". There are links to materials and information on online resources that may be of interest to you. There is also a link to Southside's course syllabus template which you can download.

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Course Copy

If you course copy from a previous course into your new course shell in Blackboard or use a publisher cartridge, you may unintentionally bring over additional buttons that you don't need. You shouldn't have empty buttons on your course menu. Please either remove those or make them unavailable to students. (See the Blackboard Training Materials below.) Here are some tips to keep in mind before you begin the course copy process.

• View this tutorial on course copy. http://southside.edu/academics/disted/tutorials/coursecopy/
  
  
• Be prepared to wait. When copying, it might take a few minutes, a few hours or even over a day for your course to copy. Do NOT under any circumstances run the copy process more than once for a course. If a course copy takes more than a day, submit a ticket to Issuetrak to have this checked, but do not start it again. If you do, you will end up with multiple copies of your course content and deleting the duplicate content will take you quite a bit of time.
  
  
• Select "Grade Center Columns and Settings during course copy if you utilize tests in Blackboard or the Assignment feature that allows students to upload work into BB. If you want your grade center columns to copy over or if you have anything linked to the Grade Center, this must be selected during course copy. This does not bring over your students' names or grades from a previous semester.

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Course Cartridges

Course cartridges are publisher supplied content. If you plan on going this route, please pay careful attention to the following:

• Publishers are not always clear about whether there cartridges require additional access keys to be purchased by students. Before ordering a cartridge, make sure that your students will not have to buy access keys. If they do, it is up to you to make arrangements with the Bookstore. Managing access keys is NOT supported by the Blackboard Administrator--it is an issue completely between the publisher and the instructor.
  
  
• Course cartridges can take several hours to load, and they can load a tremendous amount of content into your class. Be sure to budget time to review the loaded content before your class starts.
  
  
• When you order your cartridge, be sure and ask the publisher to copy blackboard@southside.edu when they send the key. Also, be sure to submit a ticket to Issuetrak or email me at the blackboard address above when the publisher sends you the key to request that the cartridge be loaded into your course.

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Blackboard Training Handouts

Blackboard Training Materials
Here you can find handouts on the following:
Adjusting the Course Navigation Menu (How to make the Course Evaluation Available to students)

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Blackboard Enrollments

Remember as students enroll in courses, do not enroll the students in your course(s)yourself. Please click on the BB/SIS link below for information concerning enrollments.

BB/SIS Integration Tool (This will be utilized for Blackboard enrollments this Spring.)

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Contact Information

Let me know if you have any questions or need any assistance with Blackboard. You can contact me at kelly.goscinski@southside.edu.

• Please submit all help requests concerning Blackboard through Issuetrak.
• Contact Ashley Leslie (ashley.leslie@southside.edu) for help in designing and developing your course content.

Student Information/Blackboard Integration Tool

Very Important For All SVCC Instructors

Course shells are in the process of being created for all cyber, hybrid, and seated Spring 2010 courses. Unless we encounter a problem, they should all be up with instructors enrolled by tomorrow morning (11/21/09). A new Blackboard/SIS integration tool was used to create all of these courses, and as new courses are added into SIS...the course shells will be created and instructors enrolled automatically. Courses are created based on the information in SIS every evening and morning. Instructor and student enrollments in these courses will be updated every morning based on SIS. Student enrollments for the Spring courses will not begin processing within Blackboard until the morning of the first day of the Spring semester.

Since we are using this new tool, it is important that you DO NOT MANUALLY ENROLL YOUR STUDENTS!!! By using this tool and letting it enroll your students, it can update your Blackboard enrollment every morning. If a student drops your class, then they will be deactivated in your course (this is different than simply making the course unavailable to them) the next morning. This means that they will no longer have access. You will not be able to see them in your course, but if they have posted assignments or commented on the discussion board, nothing is actually removed. You just can't see it. If someone is dropped for non-payment, the same rules apply and they will be deactivated. However if they do make their payment, they will then be reactivated the day after they are added back into SIS. You no longer have to keep comparing your enrollment list in SIS to your Blackboard enrollments. You should not be changing the availability of the course to individual students. This tool takes care of it for you, unless you manually enroll someone. The SIS/BB tool would still work with your other students, just not for those you enroll on your own.Now, you might be thinking this is great...but what is the downside. There is usually always at least one. : )

The primary downside that I see at this point is that we have lost some control over student access and enrollment in our courses. Where I see this causing a problem is with students who might be dropped from your course after the semester begins due to financial aid problems. Once they are dropped in SIS, they will then lose access to your course the next day. If it takes a while to resolve this issue...we then have a problem. Right now, the only way to reenable a students access before all is fixed in SIS, is by asking the VCCS to reactivate at the system level. To do this, you would have to let me know, and I would have to file a ticket with them. Even if they reactivate, it is only temporary. When SIS and Blackboard update the next morning....the students will once again be deactivated. The VCCS is currently working on an update that would allow me to temporarily reactivate if needed. Hopefully this update is right around the corner. Just remember, that beginning in January, if you need to see the grades or assignments of a student who has been deactivated, you will need to put the request in through Issuetrak for me to temporarily reactivate your student.

I think that this tool is a step in the right direction and will be a real time saver. You will no longer have to request for courses to be created or to have enrollments run. This should all be done automatically as long as your course is in SIS. When the courses are created, they will automatically be set to "unavailable", so even when the students are enrolled....they won't see your course until you change its availability. I will send out instructions on this later in December just in case you aren't sure how to do this.

Remember that there are always growing pains with a new tool, and although we tested this successfully with several courses this fall...there are always problems that we can't predict. Please be patient as we encounter these, and let me know if you have any questions. Remember that Blackboard Help requests can be submitted through Issuetrak, but that if you just have a question, feel free to call me or email me at kelly.goscinski@southside.edu.

The Grade Center and Blackboard

The Grade Center is a great tool that can be used to keep students updated on their progress through a course, but there are many bells and whistles in the Blackboard 8 Grade Center...which also means more things that can go wrong. : )

I just recently became aware of a new gliche in the Grade Center related to weighting grades. If you weight grades and use the "drop lowest grade" feature of this calculated column, it may not actually be dropping the lowest grade. If you utilize this feature, you may want to use the exempt option below instead. This "drop lowest grade" feature does not appear to be reliable, so until Blackboard addresses this issue...don't use it.

The only work around at this point is to exempt individual grades for students. Please see the image to the left. If you have a grade that you would like to exempt from a student's grade calculation, you will need to do the following. (To drop the lowest grade for every student though, you would need to follow this process for each student.)

1. Go to the Grade Center within your course.

2. Go to the cell that contains the score that you would like to exempt from that student's grade.

3. Hover over the cell and then click on the double arrow button that appears.

4. Click on "Exempt Grade"from this menu.

I will let you know if hear that Blackboard has corrected this problem, but I wanted you to be aware of this possible issue.

Don't forget to clean up your grade center and check your grade center for user error issues. We all make mistakes!! : )

• Clean up categories that you are not using (some categories are in by default and can't be removed, but others should be removed). As you course copy from semester to semester, your categories will be duplicated...get rid of the duplicates. Be careful of having both "exam" and "tests" as categories...if you apply the wrong category to a column, this will cause problems if you are weighting grades by category.
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• Go to Manage and Organize Grade Center and check the categories and point totals applied to your assignments throughout the semester. Catch errors before they cause problems.
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• Enroll yourself in your course(s) as a student. Log-in as a students, go to "My Grades" on the course menu, and see what the student sees. Click here for more information on how to do this.
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• Get rid of calculated columns in the grade center that you are not using (Average, Total Points, Weighted Total). If it is a column that can't be removed, modify the column to not display the column in "My Grades". Just because you "hide" a column from your view in the Grade Center does not mean that students can not see it.

H1N1 and Blackboard

I know that we have been hearing a lot concerning H1N1 as of late, and many colleges are looking at plans on how to manage an outbreak. The VCCS is no different, and each college is looking at what will happen if their college must close down temporarily. Most schools, including Southside, have decided that all seated courses will go online utilizing Blackboard in the event of a closure.

Blackboard can be used to post lecture notes, instructional materials, assignments, announcements, and tests. You can also use the email tool as an easy, quick way to send mass emails to your students.

It is time to be prepared and ready with your seated courses. Waiting until the college is effected by H1N1 to then look into Blackboard is not the way to go. If you are not already using Blackboard with your courses, check to see that you have a course area set-up for each of your seated courses in Blackboard, make sure your students are enrolled, and begin using some tools in Blackboard to familiarize yourself with this resource. For example, begin by posting your syllabus, post your instructor contact information, and begin using the Announcement tool .

Go to the web address below for information on accessing Blackboard. There are also training handouts on listing the users in your course (to check your student enrollments), how to modify the course navigation menu, organizing/adding course content, and adding an assignment upload area into your course for students to submit assignments within Blackboard. There are also Blackboard 8 tutorials within Atomic Learning that could help you navigate Blackboard as well.

There are multiple steps involved with using testing within Blackboard, so if you wish to try out the testing feature, you may want to request some assistance.

Send an email to blackboard@southside.edu if you have questions or need assistance. Ashley Leslie (ashley.leslie@southside.edu), our Instructional Technologist, is also an excellent resource in designing and organizing your course on Blackboard.

If you find that you need a course area created or you just need your students enrolled in your Blackboard area, please submit a ticket through our help request system. Please note what you need and for what course (example: ENG 111 02) in the ticket. These requests should only be for Fall 2009 courses. https://southside.issuetrak.com/login.asp

Blackboard Instructor Information:
https://sites.google.com/a/email.vccs.edu/southside-information-technology-site/blackboard-1
Atomic Learning Information:
https://sites.google.com/a/email.vccs.edu/southside-information-technology-site/atomiclearning

Students Dropped From Courses

We have hit that point again in the semester where students have been dropped for non-payment. Although I am testing out a new tool that integrates Student Information and Blackboard, this has only been used with a few courses this fall (those instructors have been notified). This means that when students are dropped for non-payment, this does not translate into removal or disabling of access to their course areas in Blackboard.

The process is the same as it has been in previous semesters. Instructors must compare their class roster from SIS with their listing of students within their Blackboard course areas. DO NOT REMOVE STUDENTS FROM YOUR COURSE IN BLACKBOARD!! Many students who are dropped for non-payment will bring their account up-to-date and will reenroll in their courses. If you remove the student, all submitted work, discussion board postings, and grades in the Grade Center are gone. We can not get them back!! As I said, this is no different from previous semesters, so I am sorry that this is repetitive for many of you. This process will be changing for the spring semester and should be much easier on your end. I will send more information out about that at a later date.

For now, the correct process is to make the course area unavailable to these students. If they are reenrolled later, you can then make the course available to them again without losing any of their previous work. The link below has information about this process and steps to change the availability status of individual students.

http://svtechtime.blogspot.com/2009/06/removing-students-from-your-course-in.html

The Fall Semester Begins!!

I am in the process of preparing the student enrollments for our first day of classes. I will enroll students in all of the online and hybrid courses tonight. Student enrollments for seated courses are done by request only. If you are a seated instructor, when your course is ready for student access, let me know and I will set it up so your course will be included in the daily student enrollment the following business day. Some of you have already given the okay to begin running your seated course enrollments, so I will begin those tonight as well.

• Is your course available or unavailable? Double check the status of your course within Blackboard and make any necessary modifications. Click here for instructions on changing course availability.

• If your content isn't quite up and ready to go, at the start of your session, keep or make your course available, but post a welcome announcement with information for your students. Let them know when you will have the content ready. Students become very concerned if they can not access the course on time.

• Check your course menu, do you have duplicate buttons or areas that are empty? When you copied over course content into your new course, you probably copied buttons that you don't need. You need to get rid of those to clean up your course menu. Click here to view, download, and/or print a handout on modifying your course menu.
• Are your students enrolled in your Blackboard course area? Go to the "Control Panel" in your course and click on "List/Modify Users", then "List All", and "List All" again. From this screen you can see all of the students enrolled and compare to your enrollment list in SIS. If you don't see any students enrolled but they are on your enrollment list...let me know. You can submit a ticket through IssueTrak, and let me know that you are not seeing any students enrolled and include your 5 digit course id number in the request.

• Check your email address that is set-up in Blackboard. Go to the "Control Panel" in your course and click on "List/Modify Users", then "List All", and "List All" again. Find your own information in the list and verify that the email that is set-up within Blackboard is the email account that you are utilizing. If students send you emails using the "email" tool in Blackboard, it will go to that account.

Fall Course Information and Enrollments

Welcome Back Everyone...of course some of us lucky ones never left. : )

As you begin to prepare for the start of classes on Friday, you may want to review the information I sent out in April concerning your course areas that were set-up in Blackboard.

http://svtechtime.blogspot.com/2009/04/fall-course-shells-have-been-created-in.html

When working on your course areas, be careful of the following...

*Watch the course copy tutorial.
You can view a tutorial explaining the process of copying content at http://southside.edu/academics/disted/tutorials/coursecopy/. When copying, it might take a few minutes, a few hours or even over a day for your course to copy. Budget your time accordingly. Also do NOT under any circumstances run the copy process more than once for a course. If a course copy takes more than a day, report it to this e-mail address but do not start it again. If you do, you will end up with multiple copies of your course content and deleting the duplicate content will take you quite a bit of time. You also do not want to copy your enrollments--beware of this when copying content.

*Contact your publisher concerning course cartridges.

• Publishers are not always clear about whether there cartridges require additional access keys to be purchased by students. Before ordering a cartridge, make sure that your students will not have to buy access keys. If they do, it is up to you to make arrangements with the Bookstore. Managing access keys is NOT supported by the Blackboard Administrator--it is an issue completely between the publisher and the instructor.
  
• Course cartridges can take several hours to load, and they can load a tremendous amount of content into your class. Be sure to budget time to review the loaded content before your class starts.
  
• When you order your cartridge, be sure and ask the publisher to copy blackboard@southside.edu when they send the key. Also, be sure and contact blackboard@southside.edu yourself when the publisher sends you the key.

*Clean up your Course Menu!!!!
Click here to view, save, and/or print a handout concerning adjusting your course navigation menu in Blackboard.
http://www.scribd.com/full/15707877?access_key=key-avw8aev9x04v7hwpguu

*Clean up your Categories in Blackboard
If you utilize categories, and assign these to assignments within the Grade Center in Blackboard for weighting grades...these need to be cleaned up. They will copy over when you do course copies, so you can end up with multiple "test", "homework", etc. categories within one course. Check your list of categories in Blackboard and remove duplicates. Having duplicates can cause problems as you begin assigning categories and eventually want to weight your grades.

Go to the Grade Center within your Blackboard course --> Manage -- > Categories

*Do not enroll your students!!! The VCCS is currently working on linking Blackboard and SIS. When this happens, I will send you more information on what this means, but it will be important that you have not added any of your students manually to your course. I will begin running enrollments for all Fall cyber and hybrid courses Thursday night. Check your course availability and make sure that your course is ready and available to students by Friday morning. If you have a seated course, I will run your enrollments upon request. Keep in mind that when you request to have the enrollments run for your seated course, that the enrollments will show up in your course the following day.

Summer 08 Courses To Be Removed From Blackboard

The VCCS has marked all Blackboard Summer 08 courses (SU08) for archival, and they will be removed from the Blackboard "production" area on August 5th. Blackboard is, of course, not designed as a permanent storage area for course materials. Keeping old courses can negatively impact the overall performance of the system and needs to be cleaned-up periodically. All archived courses will be available through the VCCS for about 1 year after they are removed from Blackboard.

If you have taught online, login to your "MySVCC" page and click on "Blackboard" to see which courses you are enrolled in as an instructor. You will need to click on the "pencil" icon found on the upper right corner of your "My Blackboard Courses" module. This will allow you to see all courses that you have taught that are currently in Blackboard, even if you have chosen to not have them displayed in your "My Blackboard Courses" module.You may want to export content from your SU08 courses and save the zipped files on your computer for future use.

Directions to Export Course Content
1. Go to the "Control Panel" within your course.
2. Click on "Export Course" within the "Course Options" box.
3. Click "Export" again.
4. Select all materials you wish to export...including "Grade Center Columns and Settings".
5. Click "Submit".
6. When you receive an email confirmation that this has been processed, go back to "Export Course", you should see the zipped file with your content. Click on the zipped file and save to your computer or flash drive.

End of Summer Sessions and Blackboard

It is almost the end of the summer session. There are a couple of things that will need to be done soon or after the end of your session.

1. If you taught a cyber course during any of the summer sessions and have not posted an announcement concerning completing the online course evaluation, please do so ASAP!! There is a button located on the course menu that will direct students to the evaluation. Please place a permanent announcement in your course asking students to click on that button to complete the online survey of the course.
   
2. Once the summer session is completed, please make the course area in Blackboard unavailable to students. Click here to view instructions on how to alter course availability.

Summer Session Course Evaluations

Cyber course evaluations are now available within your online course(s). First summer session (5-week) courses are nearing an end, so it is time for students in these online courses to complete their evaluation.

If you are an instructor of an online course for the first five week session, please post an announcement in your course instructing students to complete the end of course evaluation by clicking on the "Course Evaluation" button on the course menu.

Students were instructed on the "Course Evaluation" page to click on "Mark Reviewed" after completing the evaluation. If they do this : ) , then you will be able to see who has complete it by following the steps noted below.

1. Go to your course within Blackboard
2. Click on "Course Evaluation" on your course menu on the left
3. Click "Edit View" in the upper right corner
4. Click the "Manage" button found on the right
5. Click on "Adaptive Release and Review Status: User Progress"

From that screen you will be able to see who has clicked on "Mark Reviewed".

Granted, this is assuming that students will read the directions and will be honest, but it may at least give you some idea of student completion of the course evaluation surveys. We appreciate your assistance in encouraging students to complete these evaluations.

Removing Students From Your Course In Blackboard

It is best to not remove students from your course area in Blackboard. When you remove a student, all information on that student's access and all submitted work, including discussion board postings, is removed as well.

Continue to check your class roster and compare this to your student enrollment in Blackboard. If students are dropped due to nonpayment, withdraw on their own, or if you administratively drop...you need to make the course unavailable to the individual students. They will no longer have access to the course, but if their enrollment status changes or if the student(s) file a complaint...all of the student's (students') statistical information and work is still there.

To Change Individual Student Course Access (Availability)

1. Go to your course in Blackboard
2. Go into the "Control Panel"
3. Click on "List/Modify Users"
4. Click on the "List All" tab
5. Click on "List All" button
6. Click on the "Properties" button to the right of the student's name
7. Scroll down to part 4 of the "Modify User Properties" window
8. Under "Available"...change this to "no" to make the course unavailable to that student; change this to "yes" if you wish to give access back to that student
9. Click "Submit" (Bottom Right)

Spring 09 Courses

If you have not made your Spring 09 course(s) unavailable to students, please do so immediately unless you have incompletes. If you do have incompletes, as soon as they are resolved, the status of your course should change to unavailable.

The college gets complaints from students when they continue to have access to courses that are not part of their current semester. It can be confusing for students to see links to courses in Blackboard in which they are no longer enrolled.

Here is a link to instructions on how to change the availability of your course.

http://svtechtime.blogspot.com/2009/05/changing-course-availability-in.html

The Summer Session Begins

May 22nd begins our Summer Schedule of courses at Southside. I began running the enrollments for the summer session tonight, May 21st, at 10:00 pm. for all online and hybrid courses. Enrollments for seated courses with an area established in Blackboard were run for those who submitted a request to blackboard@southside.edu.

Since we are ready to roll, there are a few things that should be checked as we start this new session.

1. Is your course available or unavailable? If your course is part of the first five-week session or the ten-week session, your course should be available by the morning of May 22nd. Double check the status of your course within Blackboard and make any necessary modifications. There is a posting in my blog on changing availability. Please see that for step-by-step instructions.
   
   
2. If your content isn't quite up and ready to go, keep your course available, but post a welcome announcement with information for your students. Let them know when you will have the content ready. Students become very concerned if they can not access the course on time.
   
   
3. Check your course menu, do you have duplicate buttons or areas that are empty? When you copied over course content into your new course, you probably copied buttons that you don't need. You need to get rid of those to clean up your course menu. Click here to view, download, and/or print a handout on modifying your course menu.
   
   
4. Are your students enrolled in your Blackboard course area? Go to the "Control Panel" in your course and click on "List/Modify Users", then "List All", and "List All" again. From this screen you can see all of the students enrolled and compare to your enrollment list in SIS. If you don't see any students enrolled but they are on your enrollment list...let me know. Send me an email at blackboard@southside.edu. Let me know that you are not seeing any students enrolled and include your 5 digit course id number in the email.

Changing Course Availability in Blackboard

1. Go to https://my.vccs.edu/
2. Log-in
3. Click on "Blackboard" under the "My Tools" list.
4. Click on the course (listed on either your "Teach" tab or "SVCC" tab)
5. Click on the "Control Panel" option (from within the course)
6. Click "Settings" in the "Course Options" box
7. Click on "Course Availability"
8. Click "No" to make it unavailable to all students enrolled; Click "Yes" to make it available to all students enrolled
9. Click on "Submit"

Blackboard Enrollments for Summer Courses

Summer Session Blackboard Enrollment Information
(Seated, Online, and Hybrid Courses)

• Summer Online and Hybrid Courses that begin May 22nd--Enrollments will be run on May 21st after 9:00 pm to place students into the appropriate Blackboard course areas. The summer courses are already available, unless the status was changed by the instructor after they were created. If your course is not ready on the 22nd, please add an announcement to the course explaining when students can expect the content to be ready.
  
• Online or Hybrid Summer Courses that begin after May 22nd--If you do not want students to have access to your course early, then you will need to change the availability status of your course to make it unavailable. (Instructions can be found below.)
  Just don't forget to change it back to available when your class begins!!
  
• Seated Courses --Seated courses had blackboard course areas automatically created for the summer. If you plan to utilize this area with your students, send an email to blackboard@southside.edu with the 5-digit course id number. These courses will be included in the enrollments run for the next business day.
  
• Cancelled Courses (Online or Hybrid) -- If your class is cancelled before the 21st, please send an email to blackboard@southside.edu with the 5 digit course id number. If the course did have a Blackboard area created, then it will not be included when enrollments are run and can be removed from Blackboard. If your course is cancelled after the 21st (after enrollments are run) and a Blackboard area was created, you will need to change the status of the course to unavailable following the instructions provided below.
  

Additional Note: Courses that were added to SIS after the batch course creation would not have had a Blackboard area created. If you will be utilizing Blackboard this summer and do not see a link to your course within Blackboard on your "Teach" tab, send an email request to blackboard@southside.edu and include the 5-digit course id number of your course.

How To Change the Availability of a Blackboard Course

1. Go to https://my.vccs.edu/
2. Log-in
3. Click on "Blackboard" under the "My Tools" list.
4. Click on the course (listed on either your "Teach" tab or "SVCC" tab)
5. Click on the "Control Panel" option (from within the course)
6. Click "Settings" in the "Course Options" box
7. Click on "Course Availability"
8. Click "No" to make it unavailable to all students enrolled; Click "Yes" to make it available to all students enrolled
9. Click on "Submit"

Update Concerning Removal of Spring 08 Courses from Blackboard

All Spring 2008 (and prior) courses will be removed from Blackboard.

The criteria for removal at this stage is:
1. Course ID ending in "SP08"
2. Or course areas created before Jan 1, 2008

Courses marked for deletion, had the statement "Will delete May 30, 2009" added to their title within Blackboard on April 15th. Check your courses!!!

On April 30, 2008, all of these flagged courses will be removed from the Blackboard production area.

Fall course shells have been created in Blackboard!!

Course shells have been created for all cyber, hybrid, and seated Fall courses. If your course was in SIS by Friday, April 17th, your Blackboard area was created for you. Any BB sections needed for courses added to the Fall schedule after April 17th will be created upon request. Email the request including the 5 digit course id number to blackboard@southside.edu, and you will have a Blackboard section.

The same template used for the summer courses was used for the fall. The course menu includes buttons for the following: Announcements, Syllabus, Instructor, Assignments, Discussion Board, External Links, My Grades, Email, and Help. All cyber courses also include a button for the course evaluation. You can add more areas to the course menu if needed. Be careful not to remove the "Help", "Course Evaluation", or "Assignments" buttons from the course menu. They already contain content for the students, so removing them from the menu would delete out this content. A banner image has also been included at the top of the "Announcements" page. If you have another image that you would rather use, feel free to replace it.

Student Enrollment
Students are not enrolled in your course shell yet. Remember as students begin to enroll in courses, do not add the students to the courses yourself. I will run the enrollments for the summer semester the day before classes start. It is best to wait because so many students are adding, then dropping, and then adding courses before the start of the semester.

Copying Content and Using a Publisher Cartridge
Before you begin creating your course, review the information below on copying content and using Publisher cartridges.

You can view a tutorial explaining the process of copying content at http://southside.edu/academics/disted/tutorials/coursecopy/. When copying, it might take a few minutes, a few hours or even over a day for your course to copy. Budget your time accordingly. Also do NOT under any circumstances run the copy process more than once for a course. If a course copy takes more than a day, report it to this e-mail address but do not start it again. If you do, you will end up with multiple copies of your course content and deleting the duplicate content will take you quite a bit of time. You also do not want to copy your enrollments--beware of this when copying content.

Course Cartridges
Some of you use course cartridges. Course cartridges are publisher supplied content. If you plan on going this route, please pay careful attention to the following:

• Publishers are not always clear about whether there cartridges require additional access keys to be purchased by students. Before ordering a cartridge, make sure that your students will not have to buy access keys. If they do, it is up to you to make arrangements with the Bookstore. Managing access keys is NOT supported by the Blackboard Administrator--it is an issue completely between the publisher and the instructor.
  
• Course cartridges can take several hours to load, and they can load a tremendous amount of content into your class. Be sure to budget time to review the loaded content before your class starts.
  
• When you order your cartridge, be sure and ask the publisher to copy blackboard@southside.edu when they send the key. Also, be sure and contact blackboard@southside.edu yourself when the publisher sends you the key.

Please send all requests for technical assistance to that address as well. Contact Ashley Leslie for help in designing and developing your course content. All issues with usernames and passwords should be directed to sishelp@southside.edu.

Blackboard Spring 08 Courses Will Soon Be Archived

On April 15th, the VCCS will flag/mark all Blackboard Spring 08 courses (SP08) for archival, and they will soon be removed from the Blackboard "production" area. I do not have a definite date as of yet for when they will be removed. Blackboard is, of course, not designed as a permanent storage area for course materials. Keeping old courses can negatively impact the overall performance of the system and needs to be cleaned-up periodically. All archived courses will be available through the VCCS for about 1 year after they are removed from Blackboard.

If you have taught online, login to your "MySVCC" page and click on "Blackboard" to see which courses you are enrolled in as an instructor. You will need to click on the "pencil" icon found on the upper right corner of your "My Blackboard Courses" module. This will allow you to see all courses that you have taught that are currently in Blackboard, even if you have chosen to not have them displayed in your "My Blackboard Courses" module.


You may want to export content from your SP08 courses and save the zipped files on your computer to use with future courses.

Direction to Export Course Content

1. Go to the "Control Panel" within your course.
2. Click on "Export Course" within the "Course Options" box.
3. Click "Export" again.
4. Select all materials you wish to export...including "Grade Center Columns and Settings".
5. Click "Submit".
6. When you receive an email confirmation that this has been processed, go back to "Export Course", you should see the zipped file with your content. Click on the zipped file and save to your computer or flash drive.

Math Modules Available in Blackboard

The VCCS has purchased Math Modules from Pearson Publishing that are available for course copy within Blackboard. There are twelve modules that include objectives, lessons, practice activities, and assessments. I have included links to two documents that can provide you with more information concerning these modules. One document, "Math Modules Correlation", is a Math Modules and COMPASS Test correlation document that gives you the objectives of each lesson. The second document, "About Math Modules", provides information on the purpose of these modules, what is included in each, and an example of how a student would proceed through a module area.

After looking at the documents, if you think that you could use these materials in your own Blackboard course, email your user id to blackboard@southside.edu. You will be enrolled in the course as an instructor to copy any content that you want.

About Math Modules
Math Modules Correlation

Welcome to My Blog!!

Welcome to my Tech Time Blog. I will use this blog to help update the faculty of Southside Virginia Community College concerning our course management tool for our online courses....Blackboard. Here I will post information, updates, and wonderful little tidbits that I pick up that might help you with your online course(s). So stay tuned and subscribe to the RSS feed for this blog so you will automatically know when new posts have been added.

Faculty and Staff Now Have Student Accounts

If you are teaching an online course, it can be beneficial to see the course from a student's perspective. Many of you in the past have enrolled the "svstudent" into your course and used this as a way to access your course and view it as a student. Due to new security issues, this account will soon be deactivated. Because of this change, the VCCS has created student accounts for faculty and most staff based on your current user id and password. You can now use your student user id to enroll yourself in your course as a student, and view the course as your students see it. Here is the formula for your student user id...add " _student" to your current user id (minus the quotation marks of course), and your password will stay the same. The user id just has a minor addition with no changes to the password.

Remember: userid_student; password is the same

Don't forget that you will need to enroll yourself in your course(s) using the user ID noted above (youruserid_student), so here are some instructions on how to do just that.

1. Either go to Blackboard through your MyVCCS page or log-in at http://learn.vccs.edu/
2. Log-in and click on your course (Use your normal user id)
3. Go to the Control Panel within your course>Enroll User in the User Management box>Select to search by User Name>Type in your student user id (username_student) in the Search box>click Search>check Add box next to the user> click Submit>click OK.
4. To view as a student, you will need to log-out, go to http://learn.vccs.edu/ and log-in using your student log-in. To use your student account, you can only go into Blackboard through http://learn.vccs.edu/ since these student accounts only have Blackboard access.

If you have any questions about this, send an email to blackboard@southside.edu.