Recently in Blackboard Category

On Dec. 2, IT will perform a cleanup of all Blackboard courses older than two years as part of Missouri S&T's two year Blackboard course retention policy. After Dec. 2, any course content, enrollment, and entire courses themselves which are older than two years, will be purged from Blackboard and will not be recoverable.

If you wish to retain content in any of these courses, it is important that you archive, export, or copy off any content you wish to retain for these courses prior to the remove date.If you require assistance with archiving or copying off any of the course information, please contact the Educational Technology team at 341-4131 or edtech@mst.edu.

You should receive several email reminders during November, listing your specific courses that are set to expire. If you are one of multiple instructors for any of these courses, please coordinate efforts with other instructors in the course to ensure any data which needs to be retained is archived or copied by Dec. 2.

If you have any questions about this issue, please contact the IT Help Desk at 573-341-HELP (4357).

On the evening of September 26, courses in Blackboard from Summer Semester 2008 will become unavailable to students. If they choose, instructors will be able to make courses available again on a course-by-course basis by using the course control panel.

If you have any questions about this issue, please contact the IT Help Desk at 573-341-HELP.

EdTech and CERTI are hosting our first Blackboard Seminar Series for the semester on Wednesday, September 10, 2008 in the Carver / Turner Room of the Havener Center from noon to 1 p.m.

We will be discussing the new Grade Center features of Blackboard along with any other issues that anyone wants to bring up regarding Blackboard 8.

There have been quite a few changes in Blackboard, with the introduction of a host of new features (and, unfortunately, a host of new problems).

If you are unable to attend this one, we will be hosting another Blackboard Seminar Series in October. Stay tuned to IT Press, EdTech Connect, and the eConnection for more information!

Students and instructors have reported problems uploading files into Blackboard using the Firefox 3 web browser. Specifically, when attempting to upload an attachment to an assignment, a javascript error message pops up: "Please enter a valid file", even when the file is valid. This issue only appears to occur in Firefox 3 on a Windows machine. Firefox 3 on a Mac or Linux system seems to work fine.

IT is working with Blackboard to develop a solution for this issue. In the meantime, we strongly recommend that students and instructors use Internet Explorer (IE) or Firefox 2 to upload attachments to Blackboard assignments.

A follow-up announcement will be posted when this issue has been resolved.

IT will be upgrading Blackboard on August 7-8. Due to the upgrade, Blackboard will be unavailable starting on the morning of Thursday, August 7, until early afternoon on Friday, August 8

The new version of Blackboard includes:
• A new, easier-to-use Grade Center
• The ability to integrate blogs and wikis for online collaboration
• New timesaving features to help students and instructors organize course loads and assignments

The campus Educational Technology team is offering two training sessions on Aug. 19 to review the new Blackboard features. Click here to register (login required) or visit http://edtech.mst.edu for more information about the scheduled training sessions.

If you have questions about the Aug. 7-8 maintenance window, please contact the IT Help Desk at 341-HELP (4357).

Educational Technology and Blackboard will be providing training on Blackboard 8 Grade Center. Grade Center is a new and improved version of the previous Blackboard grade book. It supports an interface similar to a spreadsheet, directed email to students, and the ability for instructors to generate progress reports. Other features include Smart Views, Grading Schemas, Grade Histories, and Hide/Freeze Columns. See a short video clip about Blackboard 8 Grade Center below.

Date:
   Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Times:
   10 a.m. – Noon
   12:30 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.

Location:
   105 University Center (Technology Classroom)

To sign up for one of the Blackboard 8 Grade Center Training Sessions, follow the steps below:

1. Go to http://edtech.mst.edu
2. Click Register for Training.
3. Type in your Missouri S&T userid and password and click OK.
4. Click on the training session you want to sign up for.
5. Click Register.

On the evening of June 27, Blackboard will be unavailable for up to one hour between 5:30 p.m. and 10 p.m.

After this maintenance window is complete, courses in Blackboard from previous semesters will become unavailable to students. If they choose, instructors will be able to make courses available again on a course-by-course basis by using the course control panel.

If you have any questions about this issue, please contact the IT Help Desk at 573-341-HELP.

On Sunday, June 8, from 6-9 a.m., Blackboard will be intermittently unavailable while maintenance is performed on the Blackboard application.

Although you may be able to login and access your courses, you are advised to not make updates in Blackboard during this maintenance window, as any changes made may be lost.

If you have any questions about this issue, please contact the IT Help Desk at 573-341-HELP.

Blackboard will be upgraded to version 8.0 over the summer. This version includes vast improvements in functionality and features. Here are just a few of the features that will become available:

• Grade Center – A new and much improved way of keeping track of students’ grades. This feature supports an interface similar to a spreadsheet, directed e-mail to students and the ability to generate progress reports.
• Blogs – Gives instructors and students the ability to create blogs and journals within a course, providing a structured and engaging forum for writing about course-related topics, projects and ideas, reinforcing critical thinking and reflective learning strategies.
• Wikis – Enables students and instructors to collaboratively create interactive, multimedia websites within a Blackboard course. In a collaborative online workspace, individuals and teams author, organize and present their work.
• Blackboard Scholar – This is a social bookmarking website that allows students and instructors to collect and tag links to online resources and share those resources with other interested individuals.

Blackboard is temporarily unavailable, but we expect it to be returned to service around 12 noon today. Thank you for your continuing patience as we make updates to campus networks and applications related to the Jan.1 name change.

If you have any questions regarding Blackboard or the availability of the Blackboard application, please call the IT Help Desk at 573-341-HELP.