Blogboard @ SHSU

Out of Time?

noreply@blogger.com (Ricki Lee Hodges) — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 18:01:00 +0000

If you are taking a timed exam using Internet Explorer 8 the timer tends to cover up the Submit button on the test. This is a "known issue" with Blackboard and they hope to soon have a patch to correct the problem. In the meantime, setting your IE browser to "Compatibility Mode" will help you avoid the problem. To use Compatibility View:
From the IE 8 Tools Menu, select Compatibility View Settings.
Enter your Blackboard URL in the Add This Website field and click Add. Then, click Close.

Or for a simpler solution, use the Mozilla Firefox browser or another browser besides Internet Explorer 8.

Adding Extra Credit to the Blackboard Grade Center

noreply@blogger.com (Ricki Lee Hodges) — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 19:11:00 +0000

Part One:

First, create a new column in the Grade Center using the Add Grade Column button.

Set the "Points Possible" value to zero points. This will insure that anyone who does not get points for Extra Credit does not have it count against their grade.

This will be the column in which to enter points for extra credit to be added to the Total of all points earned.

Part Two:

Click on the Action Button (the double-downward pointing arrows) on the existing Total column. Choose "Modify Column" to edit the criteria.

Scroll down to 3: Select Columns, and find Include in Total. Choose "Selected Grade Columns, Calculated Columns and Categories."

Under "Columns to Select," highlight ALL of the columns listed (you may select all by holding down the Shift key and clicking the last column) including the Extra Credit column you created previously. DO NOT include any Calculated Columns (Weighted Total, Average, etc).

Click the triangle-in-a-circle arrow between "Columns to Select" and "Selected Columns" to move the highlighted columns over to selected columns. This will make certain that ALL columns are used in the Total calculation.

Under that section, choose "No" for "Calculate as a Running Total." Having "Yes" selected will ignore any columns with zero "Points Possible" including Extra Credit, so make sure that it is not enabled.

Click Submit. The Total column will now reflect the total of all columns, including the Extra Credit.

Attention Blackboard Faculty: Blackboard Users Group Meeting

noreply@blogger.com (Ricki Lee Hodges) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 20:16:00 +0000

Calling all interested Blackboard faculty and staff! We will be having our next Blackboard Users Group meeting on Thursday April 23rd from 2-3pm in CHSS Room C070.

The Blackboard Users Group meetings are great for learning and sharing from/with your colleagues on the front lines who are teaching with Blackboard at Sam Houston State University. The Blackboard Team will be on hand for a brief Q&A session, but this meeting is all about sharing best practices, stumbling blocks and new ideas with each other.

Our faculty presenter for the month of April is Debbie Hatton from the SHSU Department of Communication Studies. Debbie graduated from the University of Texas - Tyler with an Interdisciplinary MA degree in Speech Communication, Theatre and Social History and has since completed course work in Instructional Technology and Leadership. Debbie has been on the front lines of utilizing Blackboard in her classes since the software was available at SHSU.

Helpful Blackboard Guides

noreply@blogger.com (Ricki Lee Hodges) — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 21:44:00 +0000

Hey Faculty!

Check out these Technology Tutorials for some pointers on using Blackboard:

Blackboard Wiki Tool
Adding a TA to a Blackboard Course
Blackboard Grade Center
Add an Assignment (Student submits to Blackboard)
Create a Test in Blackboard

and more can be found on our Blackboard Technology Tutorials page.

As always, you can contact the Blackboard Team for more one-on-one expert help.

The Blackboard Team is available 8 a.m. - 5 p.m. Monday-Friday at (936) 294-4357 and in Academic Building 1 suite 311. We are also available at all times by e-mail at blackboard@shsu.edu (there may be a delay in response on evenings and weekends).

Blackboard will be down for maintenance 8-9 p.m. on 3/11/09

noreply@blogger.com (Ricki Lee Hodges) — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 16:03:00 +0000

The Blackboard system will be unavailable this evening from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. for system maintenance. You will not be able to access it during this time.

Thanks for your patience.

Attention Blackboard Faculty: Blackboard Users Group Meeting

noreply@blogger.com (Jacob Spradlin) — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 16:33:00 +0000

Calling all interested Blackboard faculty and staff! We will be having our first Blackboard Users Group meeting on Thursday February 12 from 2-3pm in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences Building (CHSS) Room C070.

The Blackboard Users Group meetings are great for learning and sharing from/with your colleagues on the front lines who are teaching with Blackboard at Sam Houston State University. The Blackboard Team will be on hand for a brief Q&A session, but this meeting is all about sharing best practices, stumbling blocks and new ideas with each other.

Each meeting (meetings take place every other month) we will do our best to arrange for a guest speaker (one of your colleagues) who can showcase what they are doing with Blackboard here at SHSU. This Month we are honored to announce that our first guest speaker for 2009 will be Dr. Victoria Titterington. Dr. Titterington will be demonstrating what she is doing with multimedia in her CJ 477 Blackboard course.

We are always looking for more guest speakers, so please feel free to share with the Blackboard Team if you are working on something that you think is great! We look forward to seeing you at the Blackboard Users Group meeting on Feb 12th at 2pm in CHSS Room C070.

Blackboard Downtime 1/23 - Server Maintenance

noreply@blogger.com (Jacob Spradlin) — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 14:46:00 +0000

We will be applying security patches to Blackboard's database servers this Friday 1/23 starting at 6pm. Blackboard will be unavailable because of the server maintenance until 9pm central time. The security patches keep Blackboard's database severs protected from malicious attacks. We appreciate your patience.

It's Gonna Take a Little Time

noreply@blogger.com (Ricki Lee Hodges) — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 19:54:00 +0000

If you are missing courses, changed courses and it's not showing in Blackboard, or recently activated your account and cannot log in - don't fret.

Our systems are experiencing a high volume of traffic with registration and beginning of the semester. As of now, loads are about one day behind so give it a little time.

If it has been longer than that, give the Helpdesk a call.

Not too early for some Bb Spring Cleaning!

noreply@blogger.com (Jacob Spradlin) — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 15:46:00 +0000

Here are some tips to start off the 2009 Spring semester:

Copy material from old courses into new ones.
Archive course material you don't want to lose.
Customize your course menu: make it relevant for your course.
Resolve to download your grade center weekly to save grade information.
Learn how to use a Turnitin Assignment to check for plagiarism within your Blackboard course.
Check the Blackboard Blog for the latest Sam Houston Blackboard information.

The Blackboard Team hopes you have a great Spring 2009 semester!

Holiday Break Downtime

noreply@blogger.com (Ricki Lee Hodges) — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 23:07:00 +0000

Blackboard will be down during the week of December 23 through December 29th.

During this time, we will be installing a new server to add to the cluster that handles the massive amount of traffic experienced by Blackboard.

If you need any assistance or have any questions, please contact the Blackboard Team at blackboard@shsu.edu. Our office is closed from December 23 until January 5, so if you need immediate help please call the Help Desk at (936) 294 - 1950.

Keep checking here for updates on Blackboard.

Adding Extra Credit to the Blackboard Grade Center

noreply@blogger.com (Ricki Lee Hodges) — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 19:43:00 +0000

Blackboard Downtime Scheduled

noreply@blogger.com (Ricki Lee Hodges) — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 21:01:00 +0000

Grade Center Redux - Finding more Real Estate

noreply@blogger.com (Jacob Spradlin) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 22:29:00 +0000

Blackboard 8's Grade Center is a powerful application that gives the person in charge of leading the Blackboard course many tools and options that increase the effectiveness of assessment in the course. That being said, there a few bugs that still need to be worked out.

The bug that seems to be the cause of most Bb faculty members' frustration, is the limit on how many students show up in the grade center without scrolling. Many Blackboard admins and faculty have brought this to Blackboard's attention, but in the meantime there are few things you can do to increase the amount of real estate in your grade center.

Cut Down on Toolbars
Go to Full-Screen View
Increase your Monitor's resolution

Cut Down on Toolbars

Over time, you may have noticed that you have acquired few extra friends on your Internet browser window. Places like Yahoo and Google love for you to have their toolbars on your browser so that you will use their product when searching the web. This may seem convenient for you in terms of at-your-fingertips searching, but it reduces the amount of viewing real estate you have available. (learn now to hide the toolbars)

Go to Full-Screen View

One of the least used tricks-of-the-trade in online browsing is the Full-Screen View. The full-screen view lets the user interact with the web page without seeing any of the browser buttons, pull-down menus, or toolbars. One tap on a function key (F11), and you can turn it on or off. (learn how to go to full-screen view)

Increasing your Monitor's Resolution

The last way you can increase the real estate in your grade center is by changing your monitor's resolution. This may be unfamiliar to some, but in reality it is a 3 step process. Changing your monitors resolution can shrink or grow your desktop (icons, fonts and buttons will change) depending on which way you push the slider. For instance your monitor might be set to 1024 X 768. By pushing your slider to the right you would then hit 1280 X 1024 or by pushing it to the left you would come to 800 X 600. (learn how to increase your monitor's resolution)

Hopefully, one or all of the workarounds will help you increase the amount of real estate in your Blackboard 8 grade center.

One Down, and Another One Down!

noreply@blogger.com (Ricki Lee Hodges) — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 21:22:00 +0000

The issue that prevents students/instructors from attaching Office 2007 documents in the Assignment Manager has (finally) been solved! If you are on campus and still receiving the error, log off and log back on and it should work.

Thanks for your patience.

One down one to Go!

noreply@blogger.com (The Blackboard Team) — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 18:48:00 +0000

Collaboration(virtual classroom)is back up and running. We are still working on the office 2007 file upload issue in assignments. Our ticket is being looked at by Blackboard support engineers as this blog entry is being typed.

Virtual Classroom/Chat Issues

noreply@blogger.com (Ricki Lee Hodges) — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 16:47:00 +0000

We are aware of Java Applet Load failing when trying to access either the Virtual Classroom or the Chat functions. We have put in a support ticket with Blackboard, and will be working hard to rectify the issue.

Blackboard Downtime 10/3 @ 8pm

noreply@blogger.com (Ricki Lee Hodges) — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 14:31:00 +0000

Blackboard will be taken down 10/3 @ 8pm in order to update the software. The update will clear up the security certificate issues student and faculty see when in assessments, discussion boards and other content areas. Downtime estimate: 1 hour.

Having trouble uploading to the Grade Center?

noreply@blogger.com (The Blackboard Team) — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 15:11:00 +0000

If you are getting an error when uploading a Grade Center file (from Excel) that says "incorrect file format," here's why:

Blackboard downloads the file in what is called Unicode format, but sticks a different file extension at the end (the period and three letters that represent the file format). So when you go to upload it again, even if you didn't change anything, it gives the error!

For the time being, here is an easy way to get around the bug.

When you download the file, choose "Tab Delimited" out of the three formats that are available to download.
The box comes up asking if you'd like to Open or Save. Instead of Saving (like you normally should) choose Open, you'll save it after.
The file will open in Excel. Go to the Office Button, and choose Save As, Other Formats.
From the pull-down menu under where you enter the file name, choose "Text (Tab Delimited)" and save the file.

Voila! Now it is in the correct format, and you can make changes then upload it back to Blackboard without a problem.

BB Faculty: Finding more Real Estate in Your Grade Center

noreply@blogger.com (Jacob Spradlin) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 17:10:00 +0000

Cut Down on Toolbars
Go to Full-Screen View
Increase your Monitor's resolution

Blackboard Day 2008

noreply@blogger.com (The Blackboard Team) — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 21:14:00 +0000

Greetings!

Don't forget that tomorrow is our annual Blackboard Day event, taking place in the CJ Courtroom from 9 am to 4:30 pm.

Guest speakers include Director of Academic Instructional Technology and Distance Learning, James Vanroekel who will be speaking briefly during lunch, and Director of Library Services Ann Holder will be speaking about copyright issues.

Lunch will be provided for those who registered for it, and coffee/ice cream will be provided for everyone. Door prizes will be given away and those registered within the first 100 will receive a gift.

If you have not registered, you can still attend. Make sure to let us know at the sign-in table so we can prepare materials for you.

The event will be streamed on the website at http://www.shsu.edu/blackboardday.html if you would like to watch.

We look forward to seeing you tomorrow!

NOTE: This event is for Faculty and Staff only.

Blackboard and Firefox 3 - The Assignment Workaround

noreply@blogger.com (The Blackboard Team) — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 18:13:00 +0000

In a previous blog post, we stated that Firefox 3 and Blackboard were incompatible due to an issue with uploading assignments via the assignment manager. Now there is a workaround!

You will need to install an add-on for Firefox in order to make it work. Go to the following Firefox add-on page: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/59.

The name of the add-on is User Agent Switcher 0.6.11.

Once you have the add-on installed, go ahead and take a look in your Tools menu. You will see a new entry, "User Agent Switcher." Select Tools->User Agent Switcher->Options->Options... Now choose User Agents then Add.

Make the description "Blackboard" and the user agent "mac."

Blackboard Downtime 7/25 @ 2am

noreply@blogger.com (The Blackboard Team) — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 00:08:00 +0000

Blackboard will be restarted at 2am this evening for system maintenance. Expected downtime is 20 minutes.

If you have any questions, please contact us at blackboard@shsu.edu.

How do I move materials from Old Blackboard to New Blackboard?

noreply@blogger.com (The Blackboard Team) — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 15:56:00 +0000

To move your needed course materials from the old Blackboard system to the current on is a 2-pronged process. You will export your course from the old Blackboard and then import your course into the new one.

Exporting Your Course from "Old Blackboard"

1. Log into the old Blackboard server (use the OLD Blackboard course link on our Blackboard splash page).
2. Navigate to the appropriate course.
3. In the Course Options section of the Control Panel, select the Export Course link.
4. Choose the sections of your course you would like to to bring into New Blackboard.
5. Click the Submit button.

Importing Your Course into New Blackboard

1. Log into the New Blackboard server (use the Fall Bb course link on our Blackboard splash page)
2. Navigate to the course where this material need to be imported.
3. In the Course Options section of the Control Panel, select the Import Package link.
4. Use the check boxes to select the data you wish to import.
5. Click the Submit button.

Give your course materials about 5 minutes to arrive. Keep in mind that depending on the time of day it make take more/less time for the items to show up.

ATTN: Blackboard Faculty

noreply@blogger.com (The Blackboard Team) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 13:37:00 +0000

On Monday July 14th, the OLD Blackboard server will be taken down for good.

What's the OLD Blackboard server, you may ask?
The server which currently houses courses from semesters previous to Fall '07:

Spring 2006
Minimester 2006
Summer I & II 2006
Fall 2006
Spring 2007
Minimester 2007
Summer I & II 2007

From the Blackboard Login page (linked from the main SHSU page), click on OLD Blackboard Course Login. Log in with your current username and password to access these courses.

It is imperative that you download any information you may need, copy/archive courses that you will need in the future, and save anything that you need from this server before 5 p.m. on July 14th. At that time the server will be taken down permanently and there will be no recovering data from it after that time.

If you have any questions about this matter or would like assistance in migrating data to the new server from the old, please contact the Blackboard Team at (936) 294-4495 or e-mail blackboard@shsu.edu.

Grade Center Patch applied

noreply@blogger.com (Jacob Spradlin) — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 23:00:00 +0000

We have applied the Grade Center patch without issue. In one of the courses that was experiencing the issue, the Grade Center is now visible. Thanks to the systems team for their hard work and for the Blackboard user community being patient as we endeavored to isolate and fix the issue.

The Blackboard Team