Spring 2010 Courses in Blackboard

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

---

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.

---

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.

---

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.

---

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)

---

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.)

---

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.