Blackboard Update (Fall 2013)
On the weekend of Nov. 9th, Blackboard was updated to Blackboard 9.1 SP13. There were some great new features and updates to existing features, including a new date management tool. If you are copying content from a course shell for a previous semester, this new date management tool is a great option to update the availability dates for items in your course and due dates.
To review the primary additions from that update, including date management, please go to the following website. Update Information
Publisher Content
We now have the Blackboard building blocks (integration) for four Publishers: McGraw-Hill Connect (which we have had for a few semesters), Pearson MyLabs/Mastering, Cengage Learning MindLinks, and Wiley Plus. If you are using any of these Publisher tools, you can now integrate your content and grades into your Blackboard course areas. Information is linked below for using these integrations. When you go to one of the links, review the information on the resources tab.
Before you can utilize these tools in your courses, you may need to enable them in your classes. You do this through the Control Panel in your Blackboard course area. From the Control Panel, click on Customization and then Tool Availability. From the Tool Availability window, scroll down through the list of tools until you locate your publisher tools. The first column (Available) and last column (Available in Content Area) need checks in them for your publisher tools to be accessible. Once you add any checks that are needed by clicking in the boxes, scroll either up or down and click the submit button in the right corner of the page.
Smarthinking
Smarthinking is an online tutoring service that Southside students have access to use. This is integrated with our Blackboard system. There is a link to Smarthinking, using this integration, on the SVCC tab in Blackboard and in the Student Help area of our course shells. You can direct students to Smarthinking through either of these options, or you can use the Smarthinking tool in Blackboard to make a link to this resource on your course menu or from within any content area (for ex. assignments). Students do not have to create a Smarthinking account. By accessing Smarthinking through the Blackboard integration, an account is set-up based on their Blackboard account and they are automatically signed in.
Atomic Learning
Atomic
Learning provides thousands of short, easy-to-understand tutorial
movies and a library of curriculum resources, including tutorials on
Gmail, Google Docs, Microsoft Word, etc. This is not a new resource for
Southside, but it is now integrated into our Blackboard System.
This will allow you to easily add links to videos on various topics
within your course(s). For example, if you have a project in which
students must create a PowerPoint slideshow, add links to PowerPoint
tutorials for your students to view before completing the project.
There are even videos on using graphing calculators for those math
instructors. : )
There
is information on this resource and how to integrate the videos into
your courses in the instructor resources section of all Blackboard
course shells, and there is information for students in the
student help section. Atomic
Learning site is also accessible through the Atomic Learning module on the SVCC tab in
Blackboard.
If
you already have links to Atomic Learning videos that you created in a course prior to the Spring 2014 semester and you course copy that content into your summer 2014 or fall 2014 course area, you will need to
update those video links using the Atomic Learning Blackboard tool that was introduced at the end of the fall 2013 semester.
Course Availability
Instructors are to make course areas available by 8:00 AM on the day that the session begins. Make sure that your content is ready to go and course is available to students on time.
Modifying Course Availability
Student Enrollments and Instructor Student Accounts
Student enrollments within Blackboard will be activated on May 19th, so students should be "enrolled" in Blackboard course areas by the 20th. They will not have access to your course areas until you make the areas available within Blackboard at the start of your session.
Remember that your instructor student accounts are automatically enrolled in all course shells (as students). Guide to Using Your Student Account
Requirements
Requirements for Online Classes
Training/User Guides
Blackboard User Guides
Export and Import Course Content or Course Copy
You can copy your content from one course to another by using either "Course Copy" or "Export/Import". Neither option seems to be a perfect solution, so remember to always gives yourself time to review the copied content. Export/Import does give you a back-up copy of your content saved to either your computer or other storage device, and Blackboard reps have stated that this is a more reliable process, especially if you have a lot of content. At Southside, however, we have seen some problems when using export/import related to copying tests in Blackboard, so please be aware of that.
- Review these handouts on export/import if you plan to use this process to copy content. Exporting Content and Importing Content
- Review this handout on course copy if you plan to go this route.
- Be prepared to wait. When copying content, it might take a few minutes, a few hours, or even over a day for your course to copy. The course copy process should not be run more than once. If a course copy takes more than a 24 hours and you still do not see your content, submit a ticket to Issuetrak to have this checked, but do not start it again. If you do, you could 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 and export/import if you utilize tests in Blackboard, the Assignment feature that allows students to upload work into BB, or the grading option with discussion boards, wikis, journals, or blogs. 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 or export/import. This DOES NOT bring over your students' names or grades from a previous semester.
- No matter what process you decide to use, if you copy content, review it carefully after the process is completed. Correct dates, modify content, and reorganize as needed. Within the assignments area, you will have more that one SmarterMeasure assignment due to the copy. Keep only one. This is the updated item that was in our template. Also, if you have two "Student Grades" buttons on your course menu, get rid of one. (See the template information below.)
- DO NOT include the "Instructor Resources", "Course Evaluation", or "Student Help" content areas in the course copy or export. These areas are set-up in our course shell template that we use to create all course areas in Blackboard. If you include these in the copy, you are going to end up with duplicate content that will need to be deleted.
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