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 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.

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"