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"