Blackboard Tips

Northeastern University posted a few useful tips in their blog today that might come in handy.

• How to Sync your Blackboard Calendar to your Outlook Web Mail / Office365 Calendar
  (We don't have Office 365 yet, but we will probably have it next year)
• How to Sync your Blackboard Calendar to your Google Calendar
• How to Post a Link to a Google Spreadsheet into your Blackboard Course
• Creating a Non-anonymous Survey in Blackboard
• Give Audio Feedback on an Assignment in Blackboard Using an MP3 Recorder

Improve Presentations with "Resonate"

Nancy Duarte is a communication expert and the creator of some of the most influential visual messages of our times. Her fabulous book, "Resonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences," is now available FREE online in multimedia format. This is an extraordinarily well done compilation of techniques for improving presentations.

The free version is available at http://resonate.duarte.com/.

Fix for Firefox Copy/Paste Blackboard Bug

You may recognize this situation: using Firefox, you copy some text from Blackboard or some other website, then you try to paste it into a Blackboard content editor by using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-v. But nothing gets pasted! You look at your fingers and the screen in disbelief, mutter a few choice words, then end up trying to find another way to get that text typed in.

If you've been having this problem, there are three options to solve this problem:

• Option 1: Paste the text into another program, like a text editor, then copy it again from that program and paste it into the Content Editor.
• Option 2: Use the Chrome browser instead of Firefox.
• Option 3: Make changes to the advanced configuration in Firefox. Warning - this option is not for the faint of heart or tech challenged.
1. Open Firefox
2. Type about:config in the address bar (where you would normally type the URL of a website)
3. Click the button that says "I'll be careful, I promise!"
4. Type dom.event.clipboardevents.enabled in the search box just above "Preference Name"
5. Double click the search result item to toggle value from "true" to "false"
6. Close Firefox
7. Open Firefox again and login to Blackboard
8. Test copy/pasting

Please note, you still need to use Ctrl-v to paste instead of right-clicking and this fix has no effect on copy/pasting from Word or programs other than Firefox. 

Change the Time Blackboard Assignments and Tests Are Due

If you have Blackboard tests and assignments that are due at 11:55 pm or 11:59 pm, please consider changing the due and availability times to 11:00 pm or earlier. 

Blackboard periodically needs to take their servers down for maintenance or emergency repair and they usually do this at 11 pm. If your assignments are due later than 11 pm, some students may find it difficult to submit their tests and papers. We try to give enough notice through Blackboard announcements prior to any maintenance, but I know how easy it is for both students and faculty to just skip past these announcements to go to the course they want to work on.

Changing the due and availability times to 11 pm will make it less disruptive for students when Blackboard maintenance is performed. The Date Management tool is a great way to do this for many assignments and tests all in one place. Just select "List all dates for review" to get started.

Please remember to change the time assignments are due on September 4th to 11 pm because we will definitely be down for about 4 hours that night to do a minor Blackboard update.

Two Snapshot Runs Per Day

District IS listened to our request from last semester and they are now running Snapshot twice per day to transfer information from WebAdvisor to Blackboard.  Below is the new schedule.

A quick summary is:

• If a student enrolls between 1:00am and 11:45am today, they will have access to Blackboard about 4:30pm today
  
• If a student enrolls between 11:45am today and 1:00am tomorrow, they will have access to Blackboard about 7:30am tomorrow

	1st Run	2nd Run
IS data process starts	1:00am	11:45am
Data files on ftp server (times will vary according to length of process)	2:30am	1:30pm
Blackboard picks up files	4:45am	1:45pm
Blackboard starts Snapshot process	5:00am	2:00pm
Snapshot updates completed (times will vary according to number of updates)	7:30am	4:30pm
Updates the data entered between	11:45am previous day- 1:00am current day	1:00am-11:45am current day

Note: If the previous Snapshot process is still running, the next one will be aborted

Thanks go to Brian Nath and Debbi Smith for implementing this so our students can access their online classes sooner after adding!

Online Teaching Conference Virtual Sessions

The Online Teaching Conference on June 20 & 21 is sold out, but if you don't already have tickets, you can still attend virtually and it's free! You can sign up for the virtual conference at http://www.onlineteachingconference.org/TopNav/Registration.html.

They've released many of the virtual presentations already so everyone can get a head start on the conference. These videos can be viewed at http://contentconversations.blogspot.com/2014/06/all-virtual-sessions-at-online-teaching.html.

Update: I tried viewing a few of the YouTube videos that have been released, however they don't include links posted to the chat window and screen sharing from the presenter. Instead of using the link above, go to http://cccconfer.org/MyConfer/OpenArchives.aspx?ShowType=Webinars and type OTC14 into the Content search box, then click Find Archives. On the search result page, click the blue Archive link next to a video you want to watch.

Guest Access to Blackboard Courses

At the beginning of each semester you may want to allow some students access to your course before their add is processed in both WebAdvisor and Blackboard. Turn on guest access to do this.

1. Make the course available
   Customization > Properties > Make Course Available = Yes
2. Allow Guest Access
   Customization > Guest and Observer Access > Allow Guests = Yes
3. Choose the areas guests can access
   Customization > Tool Availability > Check the “Visible to Guests” column for item types you want to show, such as Announcements and Content Area

After doing the above steps you will see a choice on the course menu for items you selected in step 3 to Permit or Deny Guests. 

1. Click the options arrow next to the menu item
   
   
2. Choose Permit Guests.
   
   

End of Semester Update

Congratulations on another successful semester!

Before you leave for the summer, please download the Grade Center to your hard drive and Archive (backup) your course to your hard drive.

We will not be upgrading Blackboard before the summer semester. Each spring we evaluate our options for upgrading, and this year it was determined by committees at both colleges that the risk of new bugs far outweighed the advantages for any of the upgrades that are available to us during the break between spring and summer semesters. So enjoy the summer; there's nothing new to learn on the Blackboard front!

@ONE Online Summer Classes for Faculty

@ONE offers some of the best online courses for faculty interested in or already teaching online. Some of the topics will also interest faculty who teach only in the classroom. Their courses are taught fully online, so no matter where you're travelling this summer, you can take these courses.

These courses run from 7/7/14 - 8/1/14:

• Building Online Community with Social Media  
• Creating Accessible Online Courses  
• Designing Effective Online Assessments  
• Introduction to Teaching with Blackboard 9.1  
• Introduction to Online Teaching and Learning

These classes fill up fast, so register as soon as possible at http://onefortraining.org/online-courses.