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On September 23 we sent out a round of email stating that courses created in 2004 and earlier would be removed from the system in 30 days. The message read as follows:
Professor @@lname,
We apologize for the blast of emails today. We are cleaning out 4 semesters of old courses,
and our tool only [...]
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The Blackboard system experienced an operating system kernel error on one server which cascaded and was not handled properly by the cluster, resulting in Blackboard being unavailable for about 45 minutes, Tuesday, September 22, from approximately 9:30-10:15pm. No data was lost as a result of this outage.
We apologize for any inconvenience this [...]
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Last year we released the ability for departments and advisers to communicate with your constituents. We’ve greatly expanded the options for how those sites can be automatically populated with students. In particular, we can now identify students based on:
- Their College, department, major, concentration, or degree code
- Their education level (Freshmen, Sophomore, Undergrad, [...]
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The United States is slowly falling in line with the majority of the Internet connected world and moving to web browsing on their cell phone. Naturally, our students are at least representative of this trend if not slightly skewed even more in the direction of mobile internet use. Blackboard currently supports a limited [...]
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If you are a friend of Google Calendars, and an owner of a Blackboard course or Organization, this will be useful.
Within Google Calendar is a great feature for embedding calendars on other web pages. As you update your Google Calendar, the web page with the embedded calendar is automatically updated. And what is [...]
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It’s been 4 years since this was first posted, enjoy
If your looking for the games recently*cough* added to myUSF / Blackboard, here’s how to find them.
Click on your Welcome tab
Click the Modify Contents button in the upper right side of the frame.
Scroll down a bit until you find the modules you are looking for. [...]
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There is a problem with Internet Explorer 8 and External Links in Blackboard. If you create a link in Blackboard to a non-SSL site (one that begins with http:// rather than https://), IE8 will try to protect you from potentially harmful 3rd party websites by asking, “Do you only want to display content [...]
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The Blackboard sync service that provides for the Facebook and iPhone app integration with USF Blackboard is having problems now. Students htat have already signed up for the service are not receiving updates, and students signing up for the first time are receiving weird errors and references to the Scholar service.
We’ll update this post [...]
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Just a quick tip for instructors. Students really, REALLY appreciate it when you send them email when adding announcements to your course.
It’s dead simple too. When adding an announcement, simply check the box in Step 4. Then submit the announcement as usual.
Your students will (quietly) thank you for your consideration.
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There is a known issue with WebDav in Windows XP. If you try to mount the WebDav folder as a network drive, Windows will continue to ask for your password even after you submit it correctly. After three such attempts, Windows will return a message similar to “The folder cannot be mounted [...]
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The import/export process is superior to the course copy because the export/import process is much more stringent in fixing old course errors. Course copy will continue to replicate errors that were created due to Blackboard bugs from many years ago, while running your course through the export/import will fix those same errors, resulting in [...]
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Every time you visit Blackboard, there a friendly greeting awaiting you, something that the administration of USF thinks is important, timely, or interesting to students and faculty.
Part of the Welcome tab that everyone sees after logging it to Blackboard
In the past this message was static. I would put up the message, and it would [...]
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On June 3, between 5-7pm MyUSF experienced a hardware failure which effected the performance and availability for some users until around 11pm. The hardware problem has also caused course content from Spring 2009 and Content Collection items to become unavailable. Current Summer 2009 content should not have been affected.
The nature of [...]
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updated May 14
Internet Explorer 8 is now generally available, but problems still persist.
In order to use IE8 with Blackboard, you will need to change the compatibility mode of IE8 to emulate IE7
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/features/enhanced-navigation.aspx
It’s still in beta, so it should come as no surprise to anyone who uses it, but there are known problems with [...]
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There are a couple of course roles available in Blackboard. I’ll do my best to explain them and how they come to pass at USF.
The most privileged role is called Instructor. The Instructor role has full access to the course in Blackboard. They can change the roles(promote or demote) of other people [...]
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The Blackboard Grade Center benefits from having a lot of vertical screen space in which to display rows of students. The web browser uses a lot of that space with tool bars, address bars, and other bars. In Windows, you can temporarily reclaim that space by going into FullScreen mode. In [...]
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Update 1:31pm: Blackboard is back to full service levels.
A system error occurred overnight March 4th resulting in Blackboard being completely unavailable from about 7:30-8:30am. Resolving the error introduced an instability in the shared file system that resulted in a bottleneck that backed everything up in Blackboard. The result was [...]
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In previous versions of Blackboard, adding extra credit to your Gradebook was straightforward. Add a zero point column to the gradebook, and add points to it which would be added to the Total without changing the basis.
In Blackboard 8, the same method works, but due to a bug in the Grade Center, a little [...]
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By popular request, a new module has been added to make it easier for students to see if new grades have been posted, and to quickly get to their grades in all courses.
Everyone should currently see the My Grades module on the Welcome Tab, as soon as you log in. This module shows [...]
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If you are a department or adviser looking for a new way to maintain communication with your constituents, we are pleased to offer Blackboard Organizations populated with the students for every College, Department, and Major in OASIS Banner. We’ve set up an automatic process that reads students College, Department, and Major codes from [...]
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In addition to the Online Documentation we’ve created, available at
http://wiki.acomp.usf.edu/index.php/Grade_Center
Blackboard has produced a number of Flash videos showcasing some of the more advanced things you can do with the new Grade Center. Check em out.
Grade Center: Determining Grades and Exemptions
Grade Center: Analyzing Grades (differentiated instruction orientation )
Grade Center: Customizing the Grade [...]
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The upgrade to Blackboard 8 provides Instructors with a powerful new Grade Center to manage grading in a course. This Grade Center replaces the current gradebook. If you are currently using the Blackboard gradebook, the new Grade Center can look different at first, but it improves highly on its predecessor.
Online Documentation is available [...]
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The upgrade has been approved by the Courseware Advisory Committee, all technical concerns have been addressed, the documentation has been created, and we are go for upgrade to Blackboard 8.
The upgrade will begin at 12:01 a.m. on Monday December 29th, and will be done by the end of business Tuesday December 30th. [...]
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We talked a while ago about a web page you can use to submit suggestions directly to Blackboard on how they can improve their product. Your ideas are being heard. At last check they had received almost 200 suggestions from USF. Good job.
Additionally, the recently completed Photo Roster tool [...]
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By popular request, we are pleased to release the first version of our Photo Roster tool. Available to course Instructors and organization Managers, this tool simply presents a roster of the students in your course along with basic contact information and a photograph supplied by the ID Card Center. The tool is available [...]
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It’s still in beta, so it should come as no surprise to anyone who uses it, but there are known problems with IE8 Beta and Blackboard.
The following are known issues with IE 8 Beta
Students trying to upload files to an Assignment will receive an error message
“Please submit a valid file”
When taking a timed quiz, the [...]
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Blackboard’s assessment engine is a powerful set of tools that allow instructors to create and deploy tests to students. Blackboard provides a number of options that can restrict the ways in which students are able to take a test and reduce the incidence of cheating. The more restrictive the test, the less likely [...]
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MyUSF is currently being considered for an upgrade to Blackboard version 8. This version would bring an awesome new Grade Center to Instructors allowing them more flexible control over how they manage grades.
This upgrade is currently penciled in for December 29th, but that date is under review by a number of parties. This [...]
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After way to many years, we finally have a mechanism that allows Blackboard Instructors to view the course as a true student. Simply called “Create Temporary Student”, this tool creates a student account based on your own NetID and password and enrolls them into your Blackboard course.
Use the new temporary student [...]
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Blackboard is offering Blackboard Sync, a Facebook application that delivers course information and updates from Blackboard to you inside Facebook. You can find out if you have a new assignment, grade, new forum posts, etc., without having to leave Facebook. Blackboard Sync also cross-references your courses’ Rosters with Facebook to make it [...]
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Processing began for student enrollments for Fall courses in Blackboard. Students registered for Fall courses in OASIS/Banner should now be enrolled in those courses in Blackboard. The Blackboard course sites are available, and students are now able to view and interact with them.
Happy Fall Semester.
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As we are committed to make improvements as our resources allow, we have resolved some of the performance issues we were experiencing and response times have been reduced considerably.
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For the last 4 years we have seen increases in Blackboard use 20-30% each year. We have also seen an increase in the complexity of how faculty use Blackboard. More are using advanced features like the Discussion Board or the Gradebook than have ever before. Given the budget reductions, new policies have [...]
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The version of the Virtual Classroom / Lightweight Chat included in Blackboard 7.3 is not currently compatible with Java 6. We are planning to patch Blackboard within the next two weeks to correct this issue, but for now, if you have troubles loading the Virtual Classroom, please check if you are using Java 6. [...]
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The Safe Assign migration has finally completed, and Course Copy is
now safe to use across all courses. If you have any questions about
Safe Assign, Course Copy, or any other aspects of myUSF/Blackboard,
please email myusf@acomp.usf.edu.
Thank you for your patience during this process
Academic Computing
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This updated Content Player Blackboard Building Block™ provides improved support for SCORM 2004 v2 content including:
• Improved Content Player interactions with Gradebook
• Improved handling of Flow based packages
• Improved testing using packages provided by a number of content publishers and client partners
• Additional bug fixes
The Content Player Blackboard Building Block enables instructors to upload and [...]