Wrapping It Up and Starting All Over Again

Here are a few things you will want to keep in mind as you wrap up the fall semester and prepare for the spring semester.

Wrapping It Up

• Backup your course
• Make your course unavailable

Starting All Over Again

Something to consider for the new year is to review your courses to see what you could do to improve them.  The Online Teaching and Learning Committee (OTLC) has created a document to help you with this process called the "Guidelines for Effective Online Instruction."  Take a look at it and see how well your courses meet these guidelines.

I'm Moving and On Vacation

I will be moving to my new office on Friday, 12/17.  My new office is in Room C-118.  To find me, take a left once you're inside the library and go through the glass doors.  I'm in the last office on the left.  

I'll be on vacation from 12/20/10 - 1/2/11.  If you want to work with me before the spring semester, please find a time that works for you on my schedule. I am not available for appointments during Flex Week because I am teaching so many workshops during that time, so please plan ahead.

I wish you all a very happy holiday season and winter recess!

Prezi - The Coolest Presentation Tool

According to Robin Wauters blog post, "Prezi is the coolest online presentation tool I've ever seen."  I think many of you will agree with Robin after you see this tool in action.  If you're tired of PowerPoint and looking for new ways to present material, give Prezi a try.

If you decide to sign up, be sure to use the educational license page to get a free upgrade to the Enjoy version, or reduced price of $59/year on the Pro version (a $100/year savings).

Just keep in mind that since Prezi creates Flash files that are not accessible, these should be used in the classroom only.

SafeAssign Delays

This information came from Blackboard today:

On Tuesday, November 2nd, papers submitted to SafeAssign were not being processed. The outage was caused by a storage failure related to continued high submission volume. It took some time to identify the cause, but thereafter service was quickly resolved. As part of the resolution, we have added storage capacity to be more reliable and robust. We believe the system is stabilized and papers are now being processed. There remains a backlog of papers that are queued for processing; this will occur over the next few days and we expect the system to be completely caught up by November 9th.

We apologize for this inconvenience. Our teams are working diligently to monitor the situation and correct any further problems.

Saving Time in the Online Class

CenterPoint is an online video magazine for online teachers. Each quarter CenterPoint publishes a new video covering topics of interest to faculty teaching online. This episode includes "Saving Time in the Online Class." They suggest collecting the emails from your students for a semester, then compiling them into an FAQ to post the next semester to save you the time it takes to answer the same questions over and over. 

Of course we all know, getting the students to read the FAQ is another topic altogether!  You may want to incorporate the information into your syllabus or into the assignment that generates the question.

Here's the link to watch the CenterPoint video in case the link above doesn't work:
http://www.regent.edu/admin/ctl/onlinetraining/centerpoint/home.htm

Camtasia Captions Just Got Easier

Camtasia is screen recording and video editing software that many faculty use to enhance teaching and learning. This week a new version of Camtasia came out.  The biggest change in this version is enhanced ways captions can be added to videos. They even added text-to-speech capability from within the program. Check out a video showing how it works at http://www.techsmith.com/learn/camtasia/7/captions-overview/

SafeAssign Slowdowns

Blackboard sent us the following message about SafeAssign performance issues. If you get an error when trying to access SafeAssign, wait 10 - 30 minutes and try again.

"This message is to notify our clients of two intermittent SafeAssign issues due to an increase in volume of papers processed.

Extended time to receive submission results. Typically papers submitted into SafeAssign take a few minutes to process. However, during this peak season there have been multiple occurrences of SafeAssign paper submissions building up in queue. This causes a lag in processing time. While the papers are processed successfully, it can take several minutes up to 2 to 3 hours, due to the current high volume. Note that any papers that accumulate in the queue are processed and do not need to be re-submitted.

Intermittent errors when submitting papers or accessing submissions. Occasionally when a student attempts to submit a SafeAssign paper or an instructor attempts to access a SafeAssign submission,rather than processing the paper or accessing the paper, the user receives an error message. This error signifies that one of the SafeAssign servers is unresponsive due to load. Our team is automatically notified when this occurs and takes immediate action to restart the services, which typically is accomplished in a matter of minutes. Submissions that result in an error need to be re-submitted.

Peak utilization of our SafeAssign product typically occurs during the months of October and November. While we made adjustments to our environment to prepare for this high volume season, we’ve seen a 60% increase in submissions over last year. Therefore, we are currently working to address this additional usage in our SafeAssign environment. We will send a follow up bulletin within the month to share our progress."

New Video for Students - "How to Submit an Assignment"

An instructional video on "How to Submit an Assignment" was created so that faculty can provide the link to their students.

If you were linking to the old video, please update the link to the new one at
 http://www.gcccd.edu/online/tutorials/bb/videos/submit-assignment/

Pasting from Word into Blackboard

When you copy from a Word document and paste it into Blackboard, all kinds of havoc can result.  Word has a lot of code sitting behind the text that you see that can interfere with Blackboard's code.  There are a few ways to get around this.

1.  Before pasting into Blackboard, click the < > icon in the Bb Editor toolbar to switch to HTML mode, then paste.  You can then click the < > icon again and go back to the normal editing mode and do your formatting.

• Advantages: easy and convenient
• Disadvantages: it strips out everything, including carriage returns

2.  Copy from Word, then paste into Wordpad or Notepad.  Copy from Wordpad or Notepad, then paste into Blackboard

• Advantages: leaves in carriage returns
• Disadvantages: have to open another program, and copy twice

3.  Use PureText's Windows key - v to paste into Bb instead of Ctrl - v.

• Advantages: leaves in carriage returns, just a keystroke to make it work
• Disadvantages: none (except all formatting is lost, which will happen no matter what method is chosen)

PureText is a free program that you can install from http://www.stevemiller.net/puretext/ that will strip Word's destructive codes before you paste into Blackboard.  You can then do all your formatting within Blackboard.  

To install PureText:

1. Install the program.  See a video showing how to download using Internet Explorer, or follow these instructions:
1. Go to http://www.stevemiller.net/puretext/ and click the link at the bottom of the page.  This will download a zip file.  
2. Extract the zip file using Windows Explorer.  
3. Run the PureText.exe file to start the program.  This will show a black PT icon in your system tray.
2. Right-click the PT icon in the system tray and choose options
3. In the options dialog, you can change the key combination that will paste the cleaned up text, although that's not necessary.  Windows-v is easy to remember because it's close to Ctrl-v
4. In the options dialog, put a check next to "Automatically run PureText each time I log on to Windows.  This will make sure it's ready to work whenever you want to paste clean text from Word.  If you don't want it to run every time you start windows, locate the .exe file using Windows Explorer and send it to your desktop as a shortcut..

How to See a List of Students in Your Course

One thing that is not very intuitive in Blackboard 9 is how to see a list of your students.  It's clear some programmer and not an instructor thought of these terms.

You can list your students by

1. Select Control Panel > Users and Groups > Users
2. In the two search dropdowns, choose Username for the first one and Not Blank for the second one
3. Click Go.

@ONE Courses

@ONE offers free online workshops and low cost online courses relevant to online teachers.  See the full list of course offerings at cccone.org.

Software For Home

A new order form is available that allows you to purchase either Microsoft Office 2007 or 2010 for $19 at http://www.gcccd.edu/faculty.staff/ .  The link is about half way down the text of the page and says "Office 2010 Form."  


You do not have to purchase SharePoint Designer 2007 for home.  Microsoft allows you to download it free from http://tinyurl.com/cz22uy.  The SharePoint Designer offered on that form is only there in case you want a disk for the program, you can pay $19.


This software is for use on your home computers only.  A date for updating campus computers to Office 2010 has not been determined yet, so please do not use the disks you purchase to update your office PC.

Announcements Will Send Emails Now!

The bug that was preventing emails from being sent when an announcement is posted has been fixed.

In Blackboard 9, the text of your announcement is no longer sent.  Students will be given a link to the announcement and they'll have to log in to Blackboard to read it.

There are two more posts from me today, so be sure to keep reading.

Safari version 5 on the Mac will not work with Blackboard

Before even getting to the login page in Blackboard, Safari 5 users may think Blackboard is down because they see this error message.  This has been verified only on Mac computers; PC's do not get this error.  Please have any students experiencing this problem use Firefox instead.

Here is Blackboard's list of compatible browsers:
http://kb.blackboard.com/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56821440

Comments Not Showing for Assignments and SafeAssignments

When your students view their grades for regular Assignments or SafeAssignments, they cannot see your comments in the Comments column within My Grades. However, the student will see the comment if they click on the score for the assignment.  Please explain to your students how to see your comments.

This problem is slated to be fixed in a future release of Blackboard.

Online Teaching and Learning Committee Needs YOU!

We need four full-time faculty members on the Online Teaching and Learning Committee (OTLC).  The OTLC currently meets on the second Friday of the month from 10 am to noon, however we are open to changing this meeting time to best meet our members' needs.  This is a great group of people, and if you teach online, it's an excellent opportunity to contribute to Cuyamaca College's online teaching directions and focus.  Please contact Jodi Reed  for more information.

OTLC is a sub-committee of the Instructional Technology Council (ITC).  You can find out information about the OTLC charge in the current Organizational & Governance Structures Handbook.

My Tasks Error Workaround

According to Blackboard, this error occurs when copying a course without copying the settings. This will not be fixed permanently until we upgrade to version 9.1, which I don't believe will happen until perhaps sometime next year. In the meantime, we have a manual workaround for this error.

Please try the following steps to reset the announcements and tasks that are causing the error.

1. Show all your courses and announcements in the My Courses module
   
   1. Click the gear icon in the upper right corner of the My Courses module on the Welcome page
   2. Place a check mark for every class in the Display Course ID and Display Announcements columns
   3. Click Submit
2. When you are returned to the Welcome page, hopefully not all of your courses will show in the My Courses module. The last course listed should be the course that is causing the error. You will need to go into that course and access Announcements and Tasks to clear it.
   
   1. Click the last course that shows in the My Courses module
   2. In the Control Panel expand Course Tools
   3. Click Announcements and wait for the page to refresh
   4. Click Tasks and wait for the page to refresh
3. Click the Welcome tab to return to the Welcome page. Hopefully all your courses will display now and the red error message will be gone.  If this worked, you can use the gear icon again to uncheck the courses you don't want to display anymore.  Having the Display Announcements column checked should no longer cause only a partial list of your courses to display, so you can choose whether you want those checked or not.

I have seen one case where the course that was causing the problem was not the last in the list, but was in the middle of the list. The only way we found this was to follow the steps above for every course until we hit the one causing the error. That seems to be a rare situation though.

I am working hard to convince Bb to give us a better fix for this if you want to wait to see if that happens, but I wanted to get this information out to those of you that are willing to go through these steps to fix the problem. When you fix the problem for your courses, your students will no longer see the error message.

Show the Menu in Blackboard

Sometimes the course menu just disappears in Blackboard 9.  When this happens, students can become confused about how to get the menu to show again.  I made a video to show students how to show the menu again so that you can give them the link to help them out.  Feel free to share this link as needed.

Here is the link:

http://www.cuyamaca.edu/rhonda.bauerlein/bb/show-menus/show-menus.html

How to Hide Students in the Bb Grade Center

When students drop your class they remain visible in Blackboard. This is to protect student work that would otherwise be completely lost if a student was accidentally dropped for any reason. However, having all those extra names in your Grade Center can be distracting or even frustrating. Fortunately, there are two ways to hide students in the Blackboard Grade Center.

Method One
This method is best when you only have a few students to hide.  It will not work in some versions of Firefox until that is fixed by Bb.

• Go to the Grade Center (Control Panel > Evaluation > Grade Center)
• Click the chevron next to a student's name
• Click Hide User

Method Two
This method is best when you have several students to hide.

• Go to the Grade Center (Control Panel > Evaluation > Grade Center)
• Hover over the blue Manage button
• Click Student Visibility
• Put a check mark next to each of the students you wish to hide
• Click the light blue Hide Users button
• The students you selected will now show Hidden in the status column
• Click Submit to keep your changes

How to Embed YouTube Video Into Blackboard

Here is something a little more fun than my recent posts to give us a change of pace for the weekend.

How to Embed YouTube Video Into Blackboard

1. Go to the YouTube page of the video you want to post
2. Click the Embed button
   
3. Uncheck Include Related Videos (or your students will go watch other videos!), then copy the code that appears on the YouTube page
   
   
   
4. In the Bb Visual Editor click the < > icon in to switch to HTML view
   
   
   
5. Press a Ctrl-v to paste in your code
   
6. Click Submit
   

Blackboard Browser Wars

Overall, Firefox tends to be a faster and more reliable browser to use for Blackboard than IE. However, we are seeing a problem with hiding users in Firefox that works okay in IE. In the Grade Center, when you click the chevron next to a student's name, then click Hide User the student will be hidden in IE, but not in Firefox. To work around this in Firefox you can hover over the Manage button, then click Student Visibility and hide your students there. This bug isn't slated to be fixed until version 9.2, so it will be quite a while before it gets fixed. We're currently on version 9.0 SP4.

We've seen cases where the scroll bars in the Grade Center weren't showing in IE 8, so those using IE 8 may want to try using Firefox instead. This bug will be fixed in the next Service Pack (SP5) update.

Another bug challenge we're seeing is the Mark as Read button doesn't work in the discussion board when using IE. This does work in Firefox. Grading discussion boards is faster in Firefox, so you may want to switch just for that reason.

You might want to suggest that your students use a different browser anytime they're having problems with Blackboard as the first possible solution.  This very often fixes problems.  Here is a list of the most compatible browsers for Blackboard that you can give your students.

My Tasks Error

If you or your students see this error, just ignore it.  It does no harm that we've been able to discover.  We have a call in to Blackboard for a fix.  Please pass this information on to your students, so they don't worry about it.

Send Blackboard Announcements by Email

When you create an announcement in Blackboard, usually an email is sent to your students that tells them they have an announcement to read in Bb. However, at the moment, emails are not being sent. So for now, it's best to use the "Send Email" tool in Bb to send announcements to your students. This has been reported to Bb and we hope for a fix soon on this.

Also, my workaround for getting rid of the "show courses" error message in the My Tasks module on the Welcome page only worked for some people. We're hoping Bb will give us a fix for this one soon as well.

The good news is that quizzes are working as expected and no one has reported any further problems with them!

Quiz Problem and My Tasks Error Message Solved

The quiz problems we've seen since last Thursday seem to have been solved.  Blackboard restarted 2 of our app servers today and that seems to have done the trick.  You should no longer be seeing the HTTP Status 500 error messages or just a white screen when clicking on a quiz to take it.  If you are still experiencing any problems with quizzes, please let me know.

Those of you that have been seeing the red "show course" error message in the My Tasks module on the Welcome page can possibly fix this error by going into any course.  In the Control Panel expand Customization then click Style.  Don't make any changes, but do click Submit to get Blackboard to reread the settings on this page.  Hopefully your error message will be gone.  If this doesn't work for you, please let me know.

Quiz HTTP Status 500 Error

The problem with quizzes just going blank that I reported in my last blog post has morphed into a new problem with quizzes.  The new error you may see when you click on a quiz to take it is:

HTTP Status 500 -

---

type Exception report

message

description The server encountered an internal error () that prevented it from fulfilling this request.

exception

javax.servlet.ServletException: org.apache.struts.chain.commands.InvalidPathException: No action config found for the specified url.

---

This new error seems to occur in IE 7 and 8.  If you experience it in other browsers, please let me know.  We put in a request for a fix to Blackboard and hope to see a fix soon.

Quiz Whiteout Problem in Some Browsers

This is a good news/bad news post.  The good news is that the upgrade to Bb 9.0 SP4 is finished a bit early and you can go back to getting your courses ready for the fall semester.

The bad news is that in some browsers, you get a white screen when clicking on a test or quiz to take it (see the picture below).  This has been reported to Blackboard and we're looking forward to a fix as soon as possible.  Right now quizzes are working as expected in Firefox 3.6.6 and IE 7.  The browsers known to have problems are IE 8, Safari 5.0.1, and Firefox 3.6.8.

I'll post an update as soon as we find out any more information about this.

Poll Everywhere

As summer comes to a close and we start gearing up for a new semester, a cool new toy to play with will take the pressure off. The cool toy I have for you today is called Poll Everywhere. It's like clickers without the need for special hardware. Your students can use their phones to answer questions, either through a text message, or through a web site if they have a smart phone. Students in a computer lab can answer questions by going to the web site as well.

Poll Everywhere creates a PowerPoint slide you can copy into your presentation which will show the results live as they come in. For Higher Ed, they have a pricing plan that will allow many faculty to use it free. You can poll as many as 32 students for each class, for an unlimited number of classes.

Teaching with Blogs

Now that Blackboard has the capability to add blogs and journals to your courses, you may be wondering how you might use them to enhance student learning.  Here are some resources for you to explore to find out more about using blogs for teaching and learning.

• Annette Vee provides good information on using blogs for teaching at http://www.annettevee.com/blogstoteach/.
• Lanny Arvan has written an excellent article for Inside Higher Ed called "Teaching With Blogs" that you might find interesting.
• Joe Sanchez shares his experiences using blogs in his class at http://www.educause.edu/blog/joesanchez/TeachingwithBlogs/166276
• A slide presentation on 11 Advantages of Using a Blog for Teaching
• Rubrics to Evaluate Classroom Blogging
  

Bb Server Maintenance

A Blackboard server upgrade is scheduled to start on Wednesday, August 11th at 3:30am PDT. It should complete on or before 6:30pm PDT the same day. Blackboard will not be available during that time. Bb 9.0 SP4 (Service Pack 4) will be installed at this time.  This upgrade will fix a few bugs we have been experiencing over the summer, but will not change or add functionality to Bb.

Avatars Now Available in Bb 9

An avatar is a picture or image that represents you. Avatars can be used to personalize the Blackboard experience and will appear by your name in certain areas of your courses such as journals and blogs. Both faculty and students can upload avatars.

Instructions on how to use avatars can be found at:
http://www.gcccd.edu/online/tutorials/bb/avatars.pdf

Blackboard Acquires Elluminate & Wimba

This news came today in a letter to Blackboard clients.  Elluminate is web conferencing software that is available for faculty to use free right now through CCCConfer. If you've ever taken a webinar through @ONE (which I highly recommend), then you've used Elluminate. Look for these workshops during Professional Development week on Intelligent Integration: Elluminate Bridge for Blackboard and CCC Confer Training for Online Conferencing  for more information on how you can use this tool to enhance your teaching..

Wimba "brings students and teachers together with a combination of interactive technologies such as voice, video, podcasting, instant messaging, application sharing, polling, and whiteboarding."

This acquisition will form a new Blackboard Platform called Blackboard Collaborate.

@ONE Online Teaching Certification Program

@One is offering a new Online Teaching Certification Program that will help you excel in the digital age. It’s extremely affordable, comprehensive and easy to fit within your busy schedule. Plus it’s designed with your instructional needs in mind, so you’ll receive usable tips every step of the way from the highest rated instructors in online education. You’ll increase your student success and retention rates, better use your existing course management tools and learn to leverage new media to inspire your students to excel.

For more information about the program visit www.onefortraining.org/certification.

Bb 9 Important Information!

Please Report Blackboard Slowness/Timeouts

If you experience Blackboard running slowly, crashing, or timing out, could you please send me an email immediately with the following information:

1. Date and Time you experienced this
2. What you were doing in Blackboard at the time
3. What you experienced (i.e. slow, crash) with as much detail as you can including error messages
4. What internet provider were you using (i.e. Cox cable, AT&T DSL, or on campus)

Check the End Date for Tests

There was a serious problem with dates for tests, and Blackboard ran a script to fix that problem.  This fix may impact your courses.  If you previously set begin dates for your tests, please double check to make sure the end dates are the dates you want.  The script may have reset the end date to a date 30 days after the start date.

Copy Settings when Copying a Course

Copying a course to a new course without copying course settings can create a situation where the new course does not have any settings for one or more course tools. If a course that is copied without settings has one of the checkboxes selected in "My Courses" (using the gear icon) to show Announcements or Tasks, the system will fail while trying to determine whether this tool is even enabled in that course, and any courses later in the list will fail to display in My Courses.  This problem may also result in a red error message in the My Tasks module that says: Error reading 'showCourse' on type blackboard.webapps.portal.bbtasks.BbTasksHelper$CourseTasksHelper.

Blackboard has run a script to clear up the current instances of this issue. This fix will not be permanent, but should clear up any current lack of settings.   A workaround you can apply is visiting each tool enabled in the course after copying it. A full fix for this issue will be available in a later version of Blackboard.

To prevent this from happening, it is important that Settings is checked every time you use Course Copy, so please keep this in mind when you prepare for your Fall classes.

Course Entry Point

Make sure you set your Course Entry Point (Control Panel > Customization > Style) to Announcements, a content area, or a module page.  If you set your Course Entry Point to either My Grades or an External Link, you will not be able to access your course.

Students are not receiving Announcement emails from Blackboard

When you post an announcement to your courses, normally Blackboard sends that announcement to your students through email.  Right now, some announcement emails are not being sent by Blackboard.  To make sure your announcements are reaching your students, please use the Send Email tool (Control Panel > Course Tools > Send Email) to send your students the information they need to begin your courses.

This issue has been reported to Blackboard and has been given the highest priority.  I am hopeful for a fast fix for this, but wanted to give you an alternative to use until it is fixed.

A Few Tips For Bb 9

As anticipated, there are a few things that need to be adjusted for Blackboard 9.  I'll address a few of them here.

1.  SafeAssign needs to be enabled
This only pertains to course containers that were created for the summer semester.  Fall semester containers should be set correctly for this.  In order to use SafeAssign you need to change these settings.

• Control Panel > Customization > Tool Availability
• Scroll down and make sure that both SafeAssign and SafeAssignment are checked, then click Submit

2. My Courses list

Some people have had problems getting all their courses to show in the My Courses section on the Welcome page.  If you are experiencing this problem, follow these steps to get your courses to display.

• Click on the gear icon in the upper right corner of the My Courses section
• Uncheck every check that appears in the Display Announcements column
• To have a course show, check the Display Course Name and Display Course ID columns
• To hide a course from My Courses, uncheck everything in the row for that course
• Click Submit when done

3. Always choose a Display Until date if you choose a Display After date

For an item, test, discussion board, or just about anywhere you can choose a date range, make sure you choose both a Display Until date and a Display After date.  An error can occur if both dates are not defined.

4. Use dates for announcements

When you create an announcement, you have the option to set the announcement duration to Permanent or Date Restricted.  If you choose Permanent, your announcement will not show up in the My Announcements section on the Welcome page.  To make sure it shows up there, you need to choose Date Restricted and assign both a Display After and Display Until date.

Blackboard 9 Resources

Now that we're up and running with Blackboard 9, I'd like to point you to a few resources to help you find the information you need to use it.  Chris Rodgers and I are combining our efforts and creating resources that will help both colleges.  You can find a page on the GCCCD Online site that has all the Bb 9 tutorials we've rewritten at http://www.gcccd.edu/online/fac/.  More will be coming soon.

The section containers that were created for the summer semester have incorrect instructions on how to make your containers available.  The Bb 9 way of making a course available can be found at http://www.gcccd.edu/online/tutorials/bb/course-availability-9.pdf.   In short, the steps are:
Control Panel > Customization > Properties > Set Availability (yes or no) > Submit.

Other resources for Blackboard 9 are the videos that Blackboard has created which you can find at http://ondemand.blackboard.com/r9/index.htm.   They're really done quite well.

And as always, please contact me if you have any questions!

End of Semester To Do List for Blackboard

It's the end of the semester and for those of you using Blackboard there are just a couple of things you still need to do to finish out the semester. You need to make your course unavailable to students and it's a good idea to create a backup of your course so all the student work and your work is archived to your hard drive.

• To make your course unavailable:
  Control Panel > Settings > Course Availability > Make Course Available: No
  
• To make a backup of your course:
  web version of instructions
  pdf version of instructions 

Be sure to do all this and turn in your grades before the system goes down for the upgrade to Blackboard 9 on June 3rd.

Opportunities to Enhance Your Skills This Summer

Here are some opportunities to enhance your online teaching skills this summer.

@ONE Online Classes
These courses will count towards certification to teach online at Cuyamaca College.

• Creating Accessible Online Courses
  Mon, 07/05/2010 - Fri, 07/30/2010
  
• Introduction to Online Teaching and Learning (2nd Session)
  Mon, 08/02/2010 - Fri, 08/27/2010
  
• Introduction to Teaching with Blackboard 9
  Mon, 07/12/2010 - Fri, 08/06/2010

Merrit College Online Educator Program

These classes are taught totally online and are appropriate for anyone whether they are new to online instruction or want to learn more about specific areas of online teaching.  More information about these EDT classes is found at http://alexandereducation.org/EDT/?p=110.

• EDT 1 Introduction to Online Teacher
• EDT 3 Introduction to Hybrid Teaching
• EDT 6 Providing Support to Online Learners

Online Teaching Conference 2010
The Online Teaching Conference 2010 will be held June 16, 17, 18 at San Diego City College in San Diego, CA.  This conference can be attended online from wherever you may be this summer, and online attendance is free!  See http://www.otc10.org/ for more information.

Bb 9 - Upgrade Schedule

Here is the sequence of events that will take place to complete the upgrade to Blackboard version 9.

• Friday, May 28 - Snapshot stops running.  This means that information regarding class enrollments, email address changes, etc. will stop being transferred from WebAdvisor to Blackboard.
• Wednesday, June 2 - Grade deadline. 
• Thursday, June 3 at 10 pm until Saturday, June 5 at 5am  - The upgrade will be installed.  Blackboard will not be available during this time.  (time approximate)
• Saturday, June 5 - if all has gone well, faculty can begin working on Summer semester containers in Blackboard.
• Monday, June 7 - templates will be copied from the test server to the live server to prepare for the creation of Fall semester containers and other settings will be adjusted as needed.
• Tuesday, June 8 at approximately 6 am - Snapshot begins running again.  Fall semester containers are created and enrollments for Summer semester are updated.
• Monday, June 14 - Summer Semester begins and everything runs smoothly!

Bb 9 - You Need To Add Tools To Your Course Menu

In Blackboard 8, there are links below your menu that allow students to access Communication and Course Tools such as Email, Messages, Discussion Board, Calendar, My Grades, and the User Manual.

In Blackboard 9, these links are no longer available to students, so you will need to give your students access to these tools by adding a menu item for them.  Bb 9 has a "Tools Area" tool that you can add to your menu that contains all the tools that you want to make available to your students. 

 Here is how to add this "Tools Area" to your menu in Bb 9:

1. Make sure Edit Mode is On
2. Hover over the + sign in the menu
3. Click on Create Tool Link
   
4. Name: Tools (it will help our students if everyone names this the same thing!)
5. Type: Tools Area
6. Check Available to Users
7. Submit
   
   

When you click on the Tools link you just created, you will see the Tools area. This new tool makes it very easy for you to control which tools you want your students see.  Just click the Hide Link or Show Link buttons next to each tool to customize this page to meet your needs.

2009 Distance Education Survey Results

With six years of accumulated data and tracking of pertinent developments, the annual "Trends in eLearning" survey has emerged as a recognized tool that both confirms trends and points to best practices for Distance Education programs.

Some key results from the survey:

• The completion rate gap between distance learning and face-to-face student has significantly narrowed. Completion rates jumped to a reported 72 percent, just below the 76 rate for face-to-face classes.
• Campuses reported an 22 percent increase for distance learning enrollments, while Sloan-C reports increases in overall campus enrollments averaged less than two percent.
• Growth in the use of blended/hybrid and Web-assisted/Web-enhanced/Web-facilitated classes continues.

Read the full survey results.

Bb 9 - Problems with Test Banks from Publishers

Some colleges already using Blackboard 9 have reported issues with some test banks provided by publishers.  Please be aware that you may need to contact your publisher to get the most recent test bank software from them.

 

Known to work correctly with Bb 9:

• Diploma version 6.67
• ExamView version 6.2.x
• TestGen 7.4.4

 EZ Test needs to be loaded in Bb 8 before the upgrade.

If you are copying a course that is already using a test bank in Bb 8, it should work okay in Bb 9.

Bb 9 - Blogs and Journals: FAQ's

Last week I posted links to some videos about how to use blogs and journals and that post raised a few questions that are answered here.

Blogs and Journals provide students and instructors with a social learning tool for expressing their thoughts and reflecting on their learning, either privately (with the instructor) or publicly (with others in the course). These tools empower all course users to create and share ideas, while instructors maintain the ability to edit or remove any inappropriate material.

What is the difference between Journals, Blogs, and Discussion Board forums?

• A journal is like a private diary that the student shares with the instructor.
• A blog is like an open diary that everyone in the class can read and comment on.
• A discussion board forum is like an open meeting where anyone can participate equally.

An example of when to use an individual blog instead of a discussion board would be when you want students to post an essay and have other students comment on it.  Using a blog for this assignment would keep the essay intact with all the comments attached to it.  In a discussion board forum this type of assignment often spawns other threads and it can be confusing where the original essay is located and difficult to find all the comments it generated.

Where Do Blogs and Journals Appear?

Instructors can find them in the Control Panel under Course Tools.  Instructors can provide access to students through links in content areas, blog or journal links on the course menu, or a Tools Area link on the course menu.

Can I make Blogs and Journals Public?

No. The privacy of students' course work needs to be respected. Opening these tools to the outside world may violate privacy laws.

Bb 9 - Blogs and Journals

New tools available in Blackboard 9 are Blogs and Journals.  Here are some videos that show you how to add them to your class and post to them.  You can provide links to these videos within your course for your students to view to explain to them how to use these tools.  These videos aren't perfect for student use because some instructor view stuff shows on the pages, but I think it's better than having to create instructions yourself.  See my recommendations below for alternative ways of providing links to these tools within your course.

• Creating a Blog
  (I recommend creating a link to a specific blog using Collaborate > Create Blog Link from within your content area instead of the process shown in this video)
• Creating and Editing Blog Entries (for students)
• Commenting on a Blog Entry (for students)

• Creating a Journal
  (I recommend creating a link to a specific journal using Collaborate > Create Journals from within your content area instead of the process shown in this video)
• Creating Journal Entries (for students)

Safeguard your Passwords

Last week there was a report of a 9-year-old student that hacked into Blackboard.  How did this 9-year-old do it?  Very simply, he obtained a teacher's password.

If a 9-year-old can do this, so can your students.  Please make sure you're using a password that students cannot figure out, such as a birthdate.  To change your password in Blackboard, on the welcome page, click on Personal Information, then Change Password.

Bb 9 - New Group Sets and Group Assignments

A new feature in Blackboard 9 allows you to create groups in sets.  For example, you want to split your class into 5 groups to do a project.  The old way of doing this would be to create 5 groups, with all those clicks for each group.  Now you can just create one Group Set and all 5 groups are created at once.  See this video to learn more: http://ondemand.blackboard.com/r9/movies/Bb9_Groups_Create_Group_Sets.htm

Blackboard didn't stop there!  They also created Group Assignments.  This tool allows one student in the group to turn in the assignment and you grade it once, and every member of the group receives that grade.  This grade can be overridden for individuals as needed.  Here's another short video that shows how:
http://ondemand.blackboard.com/r9/movies/Bb9_Assignments_Deploying_Group_Assignments.htm

Bb 9 Workshops Start this Week

I will begin offering Introduction to Blackboard 9 workshops starting this week.

These workshops will be limited to 15 participants.  Please sign up to reserve your place at http://www.cuyamaca.edu/tlc/workshops/bb9-signup.asp.

Date	Day	Time	Room
4/9	Friday	1 - 3 pm	E-206
4/14	Wednesday	9 - 11 am	E-206
4/16	Friday	9 - 11 am	E-206
4/20	Tuesday	9 - 11 am	E-210
4/22	Thursday	1 - 3 pm	E-206
4/23	Friday	9 - 11 am	E-206
4/30	Friday	9 - 11 am	E-206
5/1	Saturday *	10 - Noon	E-206

* The Saturday workshop is tentative at this time.

Help Me Help You!

I will start offering Blackboard 9 workshops in April.  Please help me choose the best times to offer these workshops by filling out a short survey at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Z2XGFJM. 

The survey will expire after April 4th, so just take 2 minutes right now to fill it out.

Bb 9 - Number of Rows Displayed in the Grade Center

You're going to love this enhancement to Blackboard 9.  In the Grade Center, you will see a button that says "Edit Rows Displayed."  Click on it and you'll have the option to display from 5 - 50 rows in the Grade Center.

Bb 9 - Your Questions Answered

It seems everywhere I go these days, I get asked questions about the transition to Blackboard 9.  Here is a list of the questions I get most often and the answers.

1. When will the upgrade to Bb 9 happen?

Sometime between June 2 and June 14, 2010.  The exact date for the upgrade hasn't been set yet, but we want to do it between the Spring and Summer semesters.


2.  Will I have to completely redo my courses for Bb 9?

No.  Your courses from this semester will work the same in Bb 9 as they do now.  Course copy will work the same, so you can copy your courses from this semester into future semester containers without any problems.


3.  What has been removed from Bb 9?

• The DropBox. The more robust Assignments tool allows students to submit their assignments to their instructors.
• The Electric Blackboard.  This tool isn't used much.  Let me know if you need an alternative.
• Student Homepages will not be available.  The new Blogs tool enables students to express their thoughts and reflect on learning within the course.

4. What changes will there be in Bb 9 that I may not like?

Other colleges have expressed frustration with the following items.  They are controversial and many people already on Bb 9 have requested they be changed.  By the time we're on Bb 9, these may work better.

• If you select a Display Until date, you must select a Display After date as well.  This one is a real gotcha. 
• Students need to click an extra "Attach File" button when submitting assignments.
• Announcement emails link to the announcement, rather than give the actual text of the announcement. 

5. What's good about Bb 9?

• Fewer clicks!! 
• Drag and drop on the course menu and other areas
• Quick way to see the course from a student perspective
• Multiple attempts for assignments, each can be graded separately
• Improved group features, such as multiple group creation and group assignment grading
• New "Home Page" in courses allow instructors to add modules that show students what is due, the calendar, and announcements in the same place
• Class blogs, group blogs, personal journals

6. If the Digital Dropbox goes away, where will work already submitted to it go?
You will need to download any files you want to keep that are in the Digital DropBox to your hard drive before we do the upgrade.  These files will not be accessible in Bb 9.

2010 Online Teaching Conference

The 2010 Online Teaching Conference will be held this year at San Diego City College on June 17th and 18th.  Early bird registration is available until April 18th for $125 or you can register and attend virtually (watch and listen on your computer) for free!  

I attended last year's conference virtually and it was great to get all this information from the comfort of my office.  You must register to attend virtually, but again, it's free so there's no reason not to!

Bb 9 - No Digital Dropbox!!!

In Blackboard 9, the Dropbox tool has been replaced with the Assignment tool.  If you want to modify your courses now to use the Assignment tool, I have created two videos that will show you how to create an assignment, and another video that you can link to for your students to them how to submit an assignment in Blackboard 8.

Creating an Assignment
Submitting an Assignment

Of course, this process has changed quite a bit in Bb 9.  Here is a PDF created by Blackboard to show you how to Get Started with Assignments in Bb 9.

Bb 9 - Adding Tools to the Course Menu

Blackboard has created a 2 minute video showing how to add a Blackboard tool, such as My Grades, Announcements, Discussion Board, or Blog to your course menu in Blackboard 9.  As you'll see, it's a completely different way of doing things than in Bb 8.

To quickly find all my posts about Bb 9 you can go to http://cuyamaca-online.blogspot.com/search/label/Bb9.

Cool Tools to Improve Online Communication

This week I found two tools that can help you improve communications with your students. 

The first tool is called Broadtexter.  Broadtexter allows you to contact a group of people (a.k.a. students) by sending text messages en masse to their cell phones.  We all know that the primary communication device for our students is their cell phones.  With this website, you get a Flash widget that you can embed into a Blackboard item or web page that students can use to sign up with their cell phone numbers.  You can also use this same widget to send them messages.  I can see a lot of uses for this in an online class such as sending reminders that tests or assignments are due.  This could also be used to send announcements to students about upcoming events that your student group or organization is offering.

The second tool is called EditGrid which allows you to embed a spreadsheet that can be edited live by several people at once from within a Blackboard content item.  This blog post by Melissa Koenig from DePaul University shows how to use EditGrid to creat a virtual sign-up sheet right in Bb.

Bb 9 - Adding Content Areas

The steps to create content areas in Bb 9 have changed quite a bit.  Please take a look at this 2:30 minute  video to see how to add content areas in Blackboard 9.

How to Help Your Students with Computer Problems

Solving computer problems can be like trying to thread a needle in the dark if you can't see what the person you're trying to help sees on their computer.  ShowMeWhatsWrong.com is a new tool being offered for free that will help you help your students with computer problems.  It will generate a URL so students can send you instant screen recordings. Watch a demo at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNqO_uKui6s

I took the URL they gave me, and turned it into a tinyurl.com link that is easier to remember.  Now whenever anyone is having a problem with their computer, I can just send them my URL at http://tinyurl.com/showrhonda and they can record their screen to show me what the problem is.  When they're done recording, the site sends me an email telling me the video is ready to be reviewed and who sent it.

They've made it very easy to use and dead simple for both the student and the instructor.  If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth a million.  This is a great resource that I highly recommend.

Bb 9 - @ONE Lunchtime Series

@ONE is offering three Blackboard 9 online workshops that you can watch at lunchtime.  If that time doesn't work for you, you can watch the recording at a later time.  Here is the signup information:

1. What's New on Blackboard 9: Getting Acquainted
   Wed, 03/03/2010 - 12:00pm
2. What's New on Blackboard 9: Increase Student Retention and Establish Community with Communication and Collaboration Tools
   Wed, 03/10/2010 - 12:00pm
3. What's New on Blackboard 9: Increase Student Success with Blackboard Performance Monitoring Tools
   Wed, 03/17/2010 - 12:00pm

Bb 9 - Course Environment

This week I'd like you to watch a 5 minute video that demonstrates some of the new features in Blackboard 9.  This video will introduce you to the new look and feel of Bb 9 which will be the biggest challenge when we upgrade.

For those of you that missed my blog post last week, we will be upgrading to version 9 during the break between Spring 2010 and Summer 2010.  I will be posting regularly with resources that will help you transition from Bb 8 to Bb 9.

Each of these Bb 9 posts will be tagged with "Bb9" so that you can review them all on one page by going to this blog and clicking on the Bb9 link in the Categories section on the right hand side of the page.

Blackboard 9

A question that came up at both of my Blackboard FAQs workshops during Professional Development week was, "When are we going to upgrade to the new version of Blackboard?"

At this time, we anticipate moving to the next version of Blackboard, which is known as Blackboard 9, or Bb 9, during the break between Spring 2010 and Summer 2010.

I'm often asked, "how big are the changes in Bb 9?"  The best analogy I've heard is that switching to Bb 9 is a lot like switching from Word 2003 to Word 2007 when they added the ribbon.  Word pretty much still did the same thing, but where you found the tools you were used to using was completely different.

The upgrade to Bb 9 will be a lot like that.  It still basically does all the same things it did before; it's just that the way you interact with it will be different.  You will no longer have to go to the Control Panel to make a lot of your changes.

I am planning on offering workshops in Bb 9 later in the semester.  I think it will be helpful to start everyone thinking about this now and will begin regularly posting to this blog about the new features.  The first resource I will give you is a video overview of Bb 9 that was created by Blackboard.

Please ask any of your colleagues who are not subscribed to this blog to do so, so they can get this information as well. Just have them go to http://cuyamaca-online.blogspot.com/ and put their email address in the email subscription box on the right side.