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