Wrap it up and start all over again

At the same time you're wrapping up the Fall Semester, many of you are starting to prepare for Intersession or the Spring semester.  Below are some reminders that may help you in this process.

Wrap up Fall

• Double-check your Grade Center Total column to make sure it is calculating correctly.
• Check to make sure you haven't hidden any students that have actually been in the class.  (Grade Center > Manage > Row Visibility)
• Download the Grade Center to your hard drive
• Archive (backup) your course.

New Semester Preparations 

There are a few resources to help you prepare for the new semester on the Online Success website. There is a Blackboard Semester Checklist web page that lists things you'll need to do in your Blackboard containers. There is a very useful Word file ("downloadable checklist") on that page with a more detailed list that you can print out and check things off as you finish them. There is a video tutorial that you can link to in your first announcement that explains to students how to log in to Blackboard.

There is an important emerging legal issue that I'd like to remind you about as you prepare your syllabi. It is increasingly important that online instructors establish an ongoing drop policy and implement it. It is the responsibility of the instructor and the college to assure that students receiving federal and state financial assistance be dropped from online classes when they cease to be active. The most common measure of inactivity is the passing of a week without communication with the faculty member or submission of course work (simply accessing the Blackboard container is not sufficient to demonstrate “activity”). The federal government has audited colleges to see if students are receiving financial aid for periods longer than they were actively involved in the class. Further, they are asking colleges to reimburse them for money paid to inactive students!

Information about your drop policy should be included on your syllabus that defines exactly when and under what circumstances students will be dropped for inactivity. For example, “Students who are inactive will be dropped from the course. If an entire week goes by with no activity on your part either through discussion board participation, email communication, or submission of work, quiz, or exam, you will be dropped. Therefore, it is imperative that you let me know if, for some reason, your contribution to the class will be interrupted.” In reality, we recommend you send a warning notification to students after a week of inactivity and allow a few days for them to respond.

I hope you have wonderful holidays and a very happy new year!

New Date Management Tool

On December 20th we will install a new Blackboard tool called "Date Management." This tool will make it easy for you to adjust all the due dates and item availability dates in your course. If you have a lot of dates to change in your courses, you may want to wait until this tool is available before changing them one-by-one.

Watch a short video to see how it will work at http://youtu.be/TF1kRIh8cZc. We do not use terms on our system, so follow the steps below to adjust the dates for a normal full semester course from Fall 2013 to Spring 2014.

Steps to use the Date Management Tool in Spring 2014:

1. Copy your course from this semester into the spring semester container as usual
2. Go into the spring semester container
3. Go to Control Panel > Course Tools > Date Management
4. Click "Use Course Start Date"
5. Current Start Date: 08/19/2013 (a late start class would have had a different start date)
6. New: 01/27/2014 (adjust as needed for shorter classes)
7. Click the Start button

Once this process completes, you can easily fine tune all the dates in your course using the Date Management Review page. This review page will be available from then on through Control Panel > Course Tools > Date Management.

If you want to play with this tool now, it's available on the Blackboard test server at https://gcccdtest.blackboard.com. 

For more information, see https://help.blackboard.com/en-us/Learn/9.1_SP_12_and_SP_13/Instructor/070_Course_Content/010_Reusing_Content/Date_Management.

Free Video Hosting - 3C Media Solutions

3C Media Solutions is a CCC Chancellor's Office project that provides free video hosting for all California Community College faculty. I wasn't aware of some of the useful ways this can be used until I watched the recording of a webinar they gave a couple of weeks ago through CCC Confer. This service allows you to upload and host your college video content. You then get a link to your video that you can give to your students through email or Blackboard. 

Another interesting feature they offer is that they will host YouTube content, so that when you link to it, it doesn't have links to other videos tempting your students to watch funny cat videos instead of working on your course. 

This webinar also talks about several other ways you can use 3C Media Solutions and CCC Confer to provide video or audio files for your courses. Watch the recorded workshop at http://goo.gl/kvW7Ma.

Academic Dishonesty

Debbi Smith took these notes during a workshop on academic dishonesty at the Blackboard Tour held at Southwestern College a couple of weeks ago.

Methods:

• One person takes the exam and lets others know what is on it – they then claim technical issues after viewing the whole exam. 
• Groups take the test at the same place and time, such as in a library or tech mall, so they can talk to each other during the test and give answers. They will have similar test times and answers. 
• Facebook users contact ‘friends’ who pass Word docs around with entire test banks. 
• Claim of unreal technology issues. 
• Hire someone to do their work. 
• Keep content open while testing. 
• Use cellphones to look up answers. 
• Google test questions. 
• Try to open Blackboard on two different devices. 
• Record screenshots of entire exam or capture with video and post on YouTube as private.

Prevention:

• Easier to prevent than catch cheating. Let students know up front that you can pull activity reports and put it in the syllabi. 
• Blackboard will kick a student out of a test if they have Blackboard open on 2 devices – tell students this. 
• Randomize test questions. 
• Use Test Pools – a different test for each student 
• Pull Activity reports (will show if students are flipping between content and test – will show test, content, test, content, logout; will show if they looked at the whole test; will show if group of students took the test at the same time in the same building) 
• Use SafeAssign (checks for plagiarism) 
• Check for a difference between education level, grammar, and writing style of minor assignments and major assignments. 
• Check consistency/location of IP Addresses. 
• Show one question at a time (makes it harder for students to see if questions are the same) 
• Reduce time per question to 60-75 seconds. 
• Adjust text of test questions so Google doesn't find them quickly.

Using Item Analysis to Assess SLOs

Guest post by Anthony Zambelli.

Blackboard now allows you to run an item analysis on any test you've deployed in it. Although not necessarily the intent of item analysis, you now have a new and powerful tool to assess your students’ achievement of student learning outcomes when you administer your assessments in Blackboard.

Item analysis provides statistics on overall test performance and individual test questions. Although item analysis is intended to help you recognize questions that might be poor discriminators of student performance so that you can improve questions for future test administrations or to adjust credit on current attempts, it can also be used to assess student achievement of student learning outcomes.

You will be using the Question Statistics Table on the Item Analysis Page to assess your SLOs. You can run item analyses on deployed tests with submitted attempts, but not on surveys. Access previously run item analyses under the Available Analysis heading or select a deployed test from the drop-down list and click Run to generate a new report. The new report's link appears under the Available Analysis heading or in the status receipt at the top of the page. For best results, run item analyses on single-attempt tests after all attempts have been submitted and all manually graded questions are scored.

Just follow the following instructions on running item analysis on a test:

You can access item analysis in three locations within the assessment workflow. It is available in the contextual menu for a:

• Test deployed in a content area.
• Deployed test listed on the Tests page.
• Grade Center column.

1. Access the test's contextual menu.
2. Select Item Analysis.
3. In the Select Test drop-down list, select a test. Only deployed tests are listed.
4. Click Run.
5. View the item analysis by clicking the new report's link under the Available Analysis heading or by clicking View Analysis in the status receipt at the top of the page.

You are now ready to use the data that is generated to assess your students’ achievement of SLOs. The question statistics table provides item analysis statistics for each question in the test.

1. Filter the question table by question type, discrimination category, and difficulty category.
2. Investigate a specific question by clicking its title and reviewing its Question Details page.
3. Statistics for each question are displayed in the table, including:
   • Discrimination: Indicates how well a question differentiates between students who know the subject matter those who do not. A question is a good discriminator when students who answer the question correctly also do well on the test. Values can range from -1.0 to +1.0. Questions are flagged for review if their discrimination value is less than 0.1 or is negative. Discrimination values cannot be calculated when the question's difficulty score is 100% or when all students receive the same score on a question.
   • Difficulty: The percentage of students who answered the question correctly. Difficulty values can range from 0% to 100%, with a high percentage indicating that the question was easy. Questions in the Easy (greater than 80%) or Hard (less than 30%) categories are flagged for review.
   • Graded Attempts: Number of question attempts where grading is complete. Higher numbers of graded attempt produce more reliable calculated statistics.
   • Average Score: Scores denoted with an * indicate that some attempts are not graded and that the average score might change after all attempts are graded. The score displayed here is the average score reported for the test in the Grade Center.
   • Standard Deviation: Measure of how far the scores deviate from the average score. If the scores are tightly grouped, with most of the values being close to the average, the standard deviation is small. If the data set is widely dispersed, with values far from the average, the standard deviation is larger.
   • Standard Error: An estimate of the amount of variability in a student's score due to chance. The smaller the standard error of measurement, the more accurate the measurement provided by the test question.

You will be only interested in the Average Score column when assessing student achievement of SLOs by following the following steps:

1. Identify the SLO that is being assessed by the question.
2. Determine a satisfactory score that indicates that your students have achieved that SLO.
3. Compare your satisfactory score to the average score. If that score is greater than or equal to the satisfactory score then your students have achieved the SLO which you will report in TracDat. If the average score is less than your satisfactory score, then the students didn’t achieve the SLO and that may be an SLO you may want to work on the next time the course is taught, again reporting in TracDat.

For more information see the Blackboard Help.

Regular Effective Contact in Online Courses

Title V of the California Education Code requires regular effective contact in online teaching. Federal regulatory requirements (ACCJC) require regular and substantive interaction. Section 55200 of Title V says that “any portion of a course conducted through distance education includes regular effective contact between instructor and students, through group or individual meetings, orientation and  review sessions, supplemental seminar or study sessions, field trips, library workshops, telephone contact, correspondence, voice mail, e-mail, or other activities.” All distance education sections are subject to the same local and state approval standards and procedures and should be considered a “virtual equivalent” to a classroom-based course.

Some approaches to satisfying regular effective contact requirements are:

• Learning activities that foster instructor-student, content-student, and if appropriate to the course, student-student interaction (e.g. e-mail, discussion, phone, online conferences).
• Instructor responsiveness and availability standards (turn-around time for email, grade posting, etc.) are clearly stated and are commensurate to that of face-to-face class (3 hours for 3-unit class).
• Requirements for student interaction are clearly articulated
• Instructor reads online discussions and responds as appropriate.
• The instructor posts weekly announcements that help students navigate the course.
• The instructor provides constructive and timely feedback on assignments.

Please note, a part of demonstrating regular effective contact is ensuring that the interaction is faculty-initiated, as opposed to student-initiated.

For more information see:

• Cuyamaca College Guide to Best Practices in Online Teaching
• Mt. San Jacinto College Regular Effective Contact Policy
• Palomar College Instructor/Student Contact Policy for Distance Learning Courses
• Online Teaching Presence & Reflective Practice Resources

Grading Discussion Board Forums

Navigating from one student to the next has changed a bit when grading a Blackboard Discussion Board forum. In a forum, click on the Grade Discussion Forum button, then click on a student's name to grade them, just as you've always done. The navigation from one student to the next has changed here. See the image below to see how to use these new navigation buttons to go from one student to the next and experiment with them to see how they work.

Perfect Storm

Monday we had a perfect storm converge on our Blackboard system. Three things went wrong in one day, which caused things to go a bit haywire on us.

The first thing that went wrong was an update to the Discussion Board. Unfortunately, this update shouldn't have been installed without installing a different update first, but that information was in the fine print and not as clear as it could have been. The bottom line is that the Discussion Board problems we had yesterday were caused by an honest mistake on our part, not by something Blackboard did to cause us problems. We sincerely apologize for this and will take extra steps in the future to prevent this kind of mistake from happening again.

The second thing to go wrong yesterday was that one of our 5 or 6 Blackboard servers wasn't working correctly. When this happens, things start behaving strangely. One person would have problems submitting an assignment, yet that same assignment would work fine for someone else. When this happens, we often suggest trying another browser because sometimes switching browsers will get you onto a better server, or it may be a browser issue. Assignments were not the only symptom of this rogue server problem. Some instructors had problems accessing the Grade Center, and a number of other strange, non-reproducible things were happening.

The third thing to go wrong was the cloud service that runs the new inline grading feature went down for a short period of time on Monday. Fortunately, since this is a cloud service, it was able to be fixed more quickly than the other two problems.

So that's the trio of storms that hit us Monday to create the perfect storm. Fortunately, following every storm is a clear sunny day and that is where we were on Tuesday with Blackboard. Blackboard performed some magic between midnight and 2am Tuesday morning that fixed the first and second problems, and by all accounts, everything is running smoothly now.

Please remember to take a look at the system announcements in Blackboard when you experience problems. There might be information there that can help you and your students stay informed in situations like this.

Blackboard Innovative Teaching Webinars

The Blackboard Innovative Teaching Series (BITS) will share the top strategies and pedagogy for increasing educator efficiency and improving learning outcomes. BITS is free to Blackboard’s clients and is easy to participate. The program consists of weekly faculty training webinars that are taught by faculty and supported by Blackboard experts.

Learn more and register for the webinars at http://www.blackboard.com/Platforms/Learn/Resources/Webinars/Events.aspx?categoryType=BITS

Upcoming @ONE Desktop Webinars and Courses

Make your lunch hour productive with free @ONE desktop webinars. These webinars are just one hour long, starting at 12 noon, Pacific time, and are delivered via a web browser.

• GoogleDrive vs Microsoft Office 365 - Let the Competition Begin!
  Tue, 09/10/2013, Noon to 1pm 
• Authenticating Online Students: Practically Speaking
  Tue, 09/17/2013, Noon to 1pm  
• Is my Instructor there for me? A Study of Reflective Practice and Student Perceptions of Online Teaching Presence
  Wed, 09/25/2013, Noon to 1pm 

There is still time to sign up for the Teaching with Blackboard @ONE online course. This course runs from 10/07/2013 - Fri, 11/01/2013. While you're there, check out the other online courses that lead to a certification to teach online.

The @ONE Project makes it easy for California Community College faculty and staff to learn about technology that will enhance student learning and success.

Help Blackboard Prioritize & Design New Features

Blackboard offers the Product Development Patnership (PDP) which gives Blackboard users the chance to help Blackboard prioritize and design new features. The PDP program is one of the most effective ways to directly impact Blackboard Learn products.

If you are interested in participating, please register for the PDP by Friday, September 6th

To sign up for the PDP go to bbbb.blackboard.com/PDP2013

The Fall 2013 PDP program will focus on the following:

• Grading workflows
• Attendance
• Personalized Learning 
• Portfolio 
• Responsive Design 
• Grade Exchange 

Who's invited? Faculty, Instructional Designers, System Administrators.

What's the time commitment? Approximately 1.5 hours per month from October - February

SAVE THE DATE: The 2013 PDP program will kick off on Wednesday, October 2nd at 1:00PM ET. If you are interested in participating, please block this time on your calendar.

 PDP FAQ

What is a PDP?
A PDP is short for Product Development Partnership and is a formal program which is designed to engage participants during the actual design and development process of a possible new feature. Participants are given the opportunity to help prioritize use cases and review early prototypes.

How long is a PDP?
The 2013 PDP program will begin in October and run through February.

What is my commitment if I participate?
PDP’s are a very hands on way to influence the product direction. The PDP will meet on the first Wednesday of every month for a live one-hour session. We will also communicate 5-10 ad-hoc opportunities per month that you may be eligible to participate in based on your role, experience or background. These opportunities could include formal usability tests, focus groups, interviews, etc where you will partner directly with Blackboard Product Designers.

Additional Questions?
Email BIE@blackboard.com

Synchronize SafeAssign

If you're using Blackboard SafeAssignments, it's a good idea to synchronize SafeAssign each semester before assignments are due just to make sure students won't have any problems submitting their assignments.

You can do this by going to:
Control Panel > Course Tools > SafeAssign > SafeAssignments.

In the upper right you'll see the button for "Synchronize this course." Just click that button and your course will be fully synchronized with the Blackboard SafeAssign server.

Blackboard is Coming to San Diego

Blackboard representatives will be at Southwestern College on Friday, October 11, from 8am to 4pm.

You'll get the chance to:

• Connect with other Blackboard users in your area
• Learn about the latest in new faculty-focused features in Blackboard
• Ask questions or share feedback with Blackboard product experts
• Meet with Blackboard Partners
• Join your regional Blackboard User Group (CaliBUG)

Find out more and register at http://goo.gl/QoK4t9. 

Interested in presenting at the upcoming San Diego event? They're looking for a few good speakers!
Submit Abstract

Apps for Education

Here are two extensive collections of apps and web tools that are useful to educators.

Teaching Apps provides a list of the top eleven mobile applications for education.

464 Digital Learning Tools To Sift Through On A Rainy Day has many unique apps that you may not have run across anywhere else.

Help Your Students Login to Blackboard

Some of your students may have trouble getting logged into Blackboard. You have the ability to check to see what username they should be using and you can change their password if needed. Chris Rodgers, my counterpart at Grossmont College, created a video that shows how to do this that you can find on the Online Success website under "Verifying Usernames & Changing Passwords."

Submit a Blackboard Assignment Video

There is a new video for how to submit an assignment in Blackboard that you can link to for your students to view at http://www.gcccd.edu/online/student/blackboard/how-to-submit-a-blackboard-assignment.html. If you linked to this video previously, it is now at a different URL, so please update your courses.

Most of the Blackboard tutorials for students on the Online Success website at http://www.gcccd.edu/online/student/step-4-blackboard.html  have been updated for the new version of Blackboard. Please share these with your students. Only the submit assignment video needs an updated URL, so if you already have links to the other tutorials, they should be okay.

Introduction Video: Why Your Online Course Needs One

I just read an excellent article on why you should create an introduction video for your online course that I wanted to share that with you. You can read it at http://facultyecommons.org/introduction-video/.

The article includes links to a few tools to help make these videos, but all you really need is a webcam. You can watch an introduction video created by our new Spanish instructor for Cuyamaca College's first online Spanish course at http://youtu.be/wCCW33mO32o. Donna Marques recorded this video using her laptop webcam and the new "Record from  Webcam" tool that is now included in every content editor in Blackboard.

You can edit YouTube's automatically generated captions by following the instructions at https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2734705.

Flex Week Workshops

You might be interested in attending some of the workshops listed below during Flex Week. All workshops shown here are in room E-206.

There are two workshops of particular interest to online teachers on Tuesday -- "Are you a Distance Educator or Correspondence Educator?" and  "Great Practices in Online Teaching and Lunch Discussion."

You can learn how to capture video recordings of what's on your computer monitor (such as a PowerPoint or even input from a tablet) along with your voice as you lecture in the classroom so that students can review the material after class. This workshop is on Wednesday at 3pm.

Find out more about these workshops at http://www.cuyamaca.edu/professionaldev/schedule.asp.

	Monday
		6:00 pm to 7:30pm	What’s New in Blackboard?
	Tuesday
		10:00 am to 11:00 am	Are you a Distance Educator or Correspondence Educator?
		11:00 am to 1:00 pm	Great Practices in Online Teaching and Lunch Discussion
		2:30 pm to 4:00 pm	Accessibility
		5:30 pm to 7:00 pm	Blackboard I: Getting Started
		7:00 pm to 8:00 pm	Blackboard II: Course Menu and Adding Items
	Wednesday
		1:00 pm to 2:30 pm	What’s New in Blackboard?
		3:00 pm to 4:30 pm	Capture It Live!
		5:30 pm to 7:00 pm	Blackboard III: Grade Center
		7:00 pm to 8:00 pm	Blackboard IV: Tests and Quizzes
		8:00 pm to 8:30 pm	Use Blackboard to Assess SLOs
	Thursday
		4:00 pm to 5:00 pm	Blackboard V: Assignments and SafeAssignments
	Friday
		11:30 am to 12:30 pm	Open Lab

EdTech Cheat Sheet

MOOCs, gamification, OER, differentiated learning…it can be exhausting keeping up with the new buzzwords in educational technology. It seems as if every other week there is another new device, term, or concept that is sweeping through social media. Boundless created a cheat sheet infographic that may help. You can view it at http://blog.boundless.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Boundless-EdTech-buzzwords1.jpg. Click on the image to make it bigger.

Problems submitting assignments in Blackboard

A problem has surfaced with submitting regular assignments (not SafeAssignments) in Blackboard. When clicking on an assignment, a student may be bumped out of their course and taken to the Welcome tab in Blackboard. This doesn't always happen, but at this point we know it only happens in the Firefox and IE browsers, but many people using these browsers will not have this problem. Any number of factors may be affecting this issue, but some of the variables are the browser version, the Java version, and if there are any add-ons installed in the browser. So far we haven't determined the exact combination of factors that will cause this error to occur.

The temporary solution is to have students use the Chrome browser to submit assignments. This issue has been reported to Blackboard, and I’ll let you know any further developments on this.

Update: This issue has been fixed. Blackboard runs on several servers, and apparently one of them was goofing off. We had Blackboard reboot this wayward server and assignments can be submitted with any browser now.

Another Blackboard Upgrade in August

An email was sent to faculty teaching classes this summer asking whether or not they thought a bug we were experiencing in the discussion board was worth going to a new look and feel for Blackboard. These faculty reported that they preferred that we wait until the Summer Semester is over before doing this update. Today, at the district-wide ITAC meeting, it was confirmed that we will honor your wishes. For more information about what prompted the question in the first place, please watch the video at  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OR9oebPB5TA. I want to thank the faculty that responded for their quick replies and great input. We just want to do what's right for you!

Since we need to upgrade in August, we anticipate going to version SP13. We will install SP13 on our test server on July 1st. We will test it to make sure it works okay during July, then we'll install SP13 on the live server on August 8th.

This upgrade will bring a slew of bug fixes and two new features over what was already new in SP11 which we're on now.

The first change is the new look and feel for Blackboard which is explained in this video: http://ondemand.blackboard.com/r91/movies/bb91_tools_2012_theme.htm. This new look and feel is required to get full functionality restored to the discussion boards.

The second change provides enhanced test options that will accommodate students with disabilities, allow students who could not take a test during the specified time period to take it later, and the ability to show different detail in the test results when students first take the test than after the test has been closed. I think you're going to love these new test options! David Gray of Palomar College did a video showing these new test features that you can view at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36TBDFwYbZs.

As always, we will do our best to make sure plenty of training is offered about these new features, and that the new version is stable so that you can concentrate on your teaching. I will offer two workshops during Flex Week on the new Blackboard features, and this blog is the best place to find the most recent information about Blackboard. If you know anyone who hasn't subscribed to this blog, please have them visit my web page at http://www.cuyamaca.edu/rhonda.bauerlein/ and put their email address in the "Subscribe to Blog" section at the bottom of the page.

Filenames in Blackboard

There are two known issues in Blackboard that result from improperly naming files.

1. Submitting a file with an apostrophe in the name will prevent Assignment Inline Grading from rendering the file on the first load
2. Error submitting an assignment file with a name that is more than 126 characters long and contains spaces

The Online Success website has been updated to better address these issues at http://www.gcccd.edu/online/student/blackboard/bb-filename-conventions.html. Please give students this link so they have this information handy when they're ready to turn in assignments.

What's New in Blackboard SP11 Workshop

Today, Friday, May 24th, from 10 am to 11:30 am, in room E-210, I am offering a workshop covering what's new in Blackboard SP11. I hope to see you there!

There's another blog post about the new discussion board features below this post, so please keep reading.

New Discussion Board Features in Blackboard

The discussion boards in Blackboard have been revamped for SP11 (the new version we're upgrading to on June 7 & 8).

Post-First Discussion Forums

The most useful of new feature in the discussion board is that now you can force students to post their own thread before they can read other student's threads. This is useful if you want students to post original responses without being influenced by what others in the class are posting.

You can make this setting when creating or editing a forum by clicking "Participants must create a thread in order to view other threads in this forum."

When a student goes to a forum that has this setting, they will see this:

After they click the "Create Thread" button they will see this:

One of the best things they've done is add the forum description to the create thread page, so it's clear to students what you want them to do while they're writing their post. 

Thread Displays

The way threads display is completely changed in the new version. All posts in a thread are visible on the same page. Instructor posts are easy to spot because they've added a little lavender "INSTRUCTOR" sign next to the instructor name in this view. Everyone can now see the student avatars next to each post. Posts can be collapsed and expanded as needed to view this page.

Avatars

You can encourage your students to add their picture to Blackboard by following these steps.

1. Click the global navigation menu (your name in the upper right corner of the page)
2. Click Settings
3. Click Personal Information
4. Click Personalize My Settings
5. Click the Browse My Computer button to look for a picture on your computer that is 150 pixels wide by 150 pixels tall. If you need to crop or resize a picture to get one this size, try http://www.picmonkey.com/ before taking this step.
6. While you're on this page, you might as well fill out part 2 to show only courses visited in the last 150 days or whatever span of time works best for you.
7. Click Submit

Learn more about the Blackboard discussion board updates at https://help.blackboard.com/en-us/Learn/9.1_SP_10_and_SP_11/Student/040_Tools/Discussion_Board_Updates

Or watch this video at http://youtu.be/ObKS6_DB_nI

Inline Grading in Blackboard

Blackboard has added a new feature in the version we're upgrading to on June 7th called "Inline Grading." When assignments are turned in through Blackboard (sadly, this does not include SafeAssignments) you will be able to see the submitted paper without downloading the file.You can draw on the student's paper, highlight text, and comment on it, all from within Blackboard. Watch the video below to see how it works.

http://youtu.be/3X9Rerz0VX0





Supported document types that can be converted are Word (DOC, DOCX), PowerPoint (PPT, PPTX), Excel (XLS, XLSX), and PDF (PDF).

More detailed information is available at https://help.blackboard.com/en-us/Learn/9.1_SP_10_and_SP_11/Instructor/070_Assignments/003_Grading_Assignments/Inline_Grading_For_Assignments.

New Calendar in Blackboard

The new calendar in Blackboard is everything you've wanted it to be for years! One of the most important features of the new calendar is that it links directly to due dates for test and assignments. Once a due date is set, you can change it by just dragging it in the calendar.

If you haven't been using due dates, now is the time to start using them!

Watch the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTdGOMAZhQY&feature=share&list=PLontYaReEU1uivbr7MFnCcdSgLgELAkRP to see how the new calendar works.



 You can find complete documentation for the new calendar at https://help.blackboard.com/en-us/Learn/9.1_SP_10_and_SP_11/Instructor/050_Course_Tools/Calendar.

10 Tech Basics You Think Everybody Knows (But They Don't)

This quick 5 minute TED video gives some great tips for how to make using a computer easier.
http://www.ted.com/talks/david_pogue_10_top_time_saving_tech_tips.html

New Content Editor in Blackboard SP11

One of the new features we'll see in the next version of Blackboard is a new content editor. This is where you type comments in discussion boards, create content for your course, and type announcements.

In addition to the normal features you would expect in a text editor, there is a new math editor and a feature called "Video Everywhere" which allows anyone with a webcam to embed video into the page.

You can login to the test server at http://gcccdtest.blackboard.com to try this out and watch the video below for more information.

Blackboard Learn Feature Overview: Content Editor 
http://youtu.be/ZmaYofCG9NA

Rubrics in Blackboard SP11

In our current version of Blackboard, you can create rubrics and associate them with assignments, but their usefulness ends there. Currently, you can't grade using these rubrics, and students can't view them. This all changes with SP11. In the new version, students are able to see the rubrics so they understand your grading criteria before they start an assignment, and you'll be able to grade and give feedback to students using interactive rubrics. Rubrics can be imported and exported for use across courses.

Rubrics Video Tutorials

To find out more about rubrics, watch these three videos and try them out on our test server.

• Creating a Grading Rubric
• Associating a Rubric with a Gradable Item
• Grading with Rubrics

Rubrics Resources

• "Authentic Assessment and Rubrics" from the University of Central Florida's Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning: http://www.fctl.ucf.edu/TeachingAndLearningResources/CourseDesign/Assessment/AssessmentToolsResources/rubrics.php
• Utah Education Network: http://www.uen.org/rubric/know.shtml
• A Rubric for Evaluating Student Blogs: http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/a-rubric-for-evaluating-student-blogs/27196
• Rubistar - search through their database to get ideas: http://rubistar.4teachers.org/
• NIU guide to rubrics: http://www.niu.edu/blackboard/guides/rubrics.pdf

Import Rubrics

Blackboard has gathered a few rubrics from the higher ed community that can be imported into Blackboard, then edited to meet your needs. These are available at http://www.blackboard.com/Platforms/Learn/Products/Blackboard-Learn/Features/Sharing-Rubrics.aspx.

Test Server For Blackboard SP11 Is Available

The Plan

We plan to upgrade to Blackboard 9.1 SP11 on June 7th and 8th, with the system hopefully coming up sometime early on Saturday, June 8th. See this previous blog post for more information on this upgrade. Your Blackboard containers will continue to be in the same state they were in before the upgrade after the upgrade is finished. That means the menu will be the same, and all the content you've added to your courses will be the same. So there's nothing really to worry about in that regard. The differences in SP11 mostly involves new functionality.

Test Server Log In

There will be some changes to the look and feel of Blackboard and many new features after the upgrade, so we have installed SP11 on our test server so you can to try it out at http://gcccdtest.blackboard.com. Log in using your usual Blackboard username. Your password will be your birth date unless you've changed it on the test server. As soon as you log in, be sure to change your password by clicking on Personal Information on the TEST Site tab. If you have trouble logging in, please send an email to Rhonda using your campus email account so I can be sure it's you.

Summer and Fall Semester Course Containers

Fall containers will be created on May 1st. It is best to continue to copy and modify your Summer and Fall semester courses on the live server just as you normally would. The test server can be used to experiment with new functionality, but it would be best to do course development on the live server and phase in use of new functionality over time once the live server is upgraded.

Open Education, MOOCs, and Student Access: A Panel Discussion

Free CCC Confer Webinar
April 30th at 10 am
Dean Florez, Barbara Illowsky, and Michelle Pilati leaders in the field share their thoughts.

Find out more and sign up at:
http://www.cccconfer.org/webinarEmail/templates/webinar-0413.html

Outlook Web Email May Not Work in IE 10

Some people have discovered that Outlook web email for GCCCD may not work in the Microsoft Internet Explorer 10 browser (IE 10). Sometimes a website you're visiting doesn't look like you expect it to. Images might not show up, menus might be out of place, and text boxes could be jumbled together. This can be caused by a compatibility problem between IE 10 and and the site you're on.

If this happens to you, choose one of the following three options:

1. Tap or click the Compatibility View button in IE 10
   
   
2. Use the Firefox browser
3. Use the Chrome browser

@ONE Technology Training Survey

@ONE, a project of the California Community College Chancellor's Office, is dedicated to providing all Faculty & Staff at the 112 California Community colleges with the best technology training possible.

We want to hear from you!

Please take a few minutes to complete this survey about your technology training preferences. Your participation in this survey should take about 15 minutes. Your participation has the potential to guide future enhanced technology training available to you. The data collected is completely anonymous, you will not be asked for your name, and will not be linked to your identity in any way.

If you work for more than one community college, please complete ONLY one survey based on either your primary college, or the college of your choosing. It is appreciated that you limit your responses to that one college only.

If you have any questions or concerns about this survey, are interested in the data collected from this survey, or would like to view the recommendation report based on the data, please contact @ONE via email at info@onefortraining.org.

Survey Link:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/TT-CCC

If you are not familiar with the training @ONE provides, check out their website at http://www.onefortraining.org/.

New version of Blackboard in June

It's a pleasure to announce that we will be upgrading Blackboard on June 7th and 8th to version 9.1 Service Pack 11 (SP11). We are currently on 9.1 Service Pack 5 (SP5). We haven't upgraded in two years, so this new version will give us some exciting new features. I have listed some of the major improvements below.

New Features:

• Interactive rubrics - grade by clicking directly in the rubric
• Needs grading tool enhancements - option to choose how many interactions will place the item in Needs Grading status
• Timed assessments enhancements - auto submit at time expiration, auto save answers
• New user interface - clean and more modern interface
• Automatic test re-grading - change an answer or throw out a question then Blackboard handles re-grading
• Redesigned discussion boards
• Force first - students have to post before being able to read other posts
• all messages for a forum on one page
• New calendar - vastly improved
• New content editor
• No extra steps to safely paste from Word
• video everywhere – record from your webcam to your YouTube account and embed
• It actually inserts a blank line when you press return
• Course Evaluations & Enterprise Survey Tool built in to core product
• Inline grader for assignments - no more downloading files
• Improved item analysis for assessments

We should have the new version installed on our test server sometime next week. You can also get access to the test server to try it out yourself. Just send me an email requesting access.

You can check out Blackboard's official information about this upgrade at http://go.blackboard.com/faculty. I'll provide in-depth articles about these new features throughout the rest of this semester. I will also give workshops. Stay tuned to this blog for more information and have your colleagues sign up if they haven't already done so.

Syllabus Builder Tool

George Joeckel from Utah State University developed an easy to use interactive tool that any instructor can use to create a course syllabus. This free tool will walk you step by step through the process of creating your syllabus including doing some of the calculations for the grading scale and offering up action verbs to use for learning objectives.

The video at http://youtu.be/K_M1Ii92OY8 shows how to use this tool.



You can access the tool at https://elearn.usu.edu/OAR/PDF_Syllabus_Builder_v1_beta.pdf

Online Course Policies

Laurie Furry sent me this link to a YouTube video about defining course policies to students.
(http://youtu.be/naxrUWXLJy4)



Thanks Laurie!

Online Teaching Certification and Courses at @ONE

@ONE offers an 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. Cuyamaca College, as well as practically every community college in California, honors this certification as preparation to teach online.

Find out more about the Online Teaching Certification Program

Spring 2013 Online Courses

(You don't have to be in the certificate program to take these courses)

Creating Accessible Online Courses
 2/19/13 - 3/15/13

Designing Effective Online Assessments
2/11/13 - 3/08/13

Introduction to Teaching with Blackboard 9.1
3/04/13 - 3/29/13

Introduction to Online Teaching and Learning (New)
4/8/13 -5/3/13

Building Online Community with Social Media (New)
4/15/13 - 5/10/13

We recommend only taking one course at a time to maximize your success.

What do Students [Really] Want in an Online Course?

The Online Learning Insights blog has an interesting post called "What do Students [Really] Want in an Online Course?" that can be read at http://onlinelearninginsights.wordpress.com/2013/01/09/what-do-students-really-want-in-an-online-course/.