E@T Newsletter Summer 2011
Welcome to the latest e-learning newsletter. In this issue and as I’m sure you’ve heard by now, we’re making some improvements to the Blackboard website this summer. The new changes will be available from Wednesday 22 nd June at 9am. These improvements are separate from the creation of next year’s modules these will start to appear in July.
Don’t worry – from the users’ perspective, there will be very few changes to the interface you have got used to over the last couple of years. Most of the improvements will be in the area of additional, optional extras featured in this newsletter. Our guidance is to be updated too and for the first time both staff and students can look out for embedded help within modules.
Behind the scenes, there will be a lot of work to enhance the performance and stability of the website in particular preparation for the expected increase in usage over the coming years.
All this work together means that there will be some unavoidable Blackboard downtime over the summer whilst we make the improvements. To recap Blackboard will be unavailable at these times:
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Friday 17 th June at 5pm until Wednesday 22 nd June at 9am
This is the main downtime, after which you’ll see the new features
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Saturday 2nd July from 8am until 5pm
Later in July, there will also be some downtime affecting all IT systems, including Blackboard. This is to allow upgrades to the University’s file storage and electrical systems:
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Saturday 16 th July 8am to Sunday 17 th July 8pm
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Friday 22 nd July 8pm to Saturday 23 rd July 10am
There is now a new notifications feature designed to flag up important events to staff and students.
These include (all optionally), assignment availability, deadlines and new content. You will see notifications in these places; the notifications dashboard on the home tab, notifications content area within modules and a daily email notification summary.

Notifications Dashboard - Provides a summary of all notifications for all modules.
Personal settings for notifications can be set globally through the notifications dashboard found on the Home tab.
All 2011/12 modules created with the school template will contain a notifications content area or homepage. The notifications area is available to both staff and students, with different content displayed depending upon role and personalised settings, notifications listed here only apply to the current module. From within modules staff will be able to see how students are interacting with the module for example, seeing who has submitted an assignment and who hasn't. Students will be able to see any new materials that have been added, view due dates for assignments, announcements and discussion board postings. Point to note, with the addition of notifications on due dates for assignments, it will become more important than ever to add and check due dates on assignments!
If you wish you can set the notifications area as the module landing page, rather than the default announcements. In doing so students will be able to quickly view all recent activities to the module upon opening.
Email Notifications
By default all staff and students will receive a daily digest email containing (a selection of important) notifications. The content and frequency of these emails can be edited to personal taste, with

options from ‘no emails’ to ‘email immediately’. The ability to send emails when posting announcements is turned back on in this situation. Staff now have the ability to send an immediate email on posting a new announcement to all students on the module regardless of the students notifications settings.
You will also see Mashups options when adding content, mashups allow you to combine content from different sources in this case; YouTube Videos, Flickr Photos and SlideShare presentations. This feature makes it much easier to search and insert videos directly from YouTube into your module.
All files added to a module are now stored centrally within the Files area, this means you now only have to add a file once to a module as a link to the file is created. Course files are access through the control panel; you can upload files here or add them as previously within content areas.
However, all packaged (zip) and Wimba Create files must now be added through the Files area.

Blackboard will soon have improved blog, wiki and podcast tools that include customisable colour themes and widgets (added functionality of your choice). The new version will incorporate the ability to batch create blogs/wikis/podcasts for each student or groups of students, optionally based on a template created by the lecturer. In addition to all this it is much easier to keep track of student engagement through regular updates.
Creating a podcast is now much easier with the option of recording a podcast directly within
Blackboard. Plus students can now create their own podcasts too!
There is now a much needed ‘Needs Grading’ view for the Grade Centre, to easily check and mark all non graded submissions.
For those of you using both assignments and tests there are now options to view these separately in addition to the full grade centre.
All the E@T guidance materials are currently being updated. The new E@T tutorial videos will be embedded inside content areas to ensure guidance is available when you may need it the most.

The full range of guidance will still be available on the help tab.
We are holding two sessions open to all to demonstrate the new features to all staff these take place in the days following the update:
Blackboard Update Sessions:
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Wednesday 22 nd June 2-3pm in CL 2.49 (Clarendon )
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Thursday 23 rd June 2-3pm in AG 11 (Athena Building, ground floor)
Please book a place on UNITY for these demonstrations. Your school may also have arranged training sessions.
Monday 13 th June 2-30.30pm
M701B
Presentation is one of the four strands of the Universities E-learning Framework and is important in creating an engaging online module presence. One of the aspects of online modules that students comments on most as a problem is sites that are badly organised. Providing a clear and attractive layout with a banner and graphics doesn’t have to be difficult, but will impress students when module evaluation time comes around. This workshop looks at how to create a look and feel for your modules including how to create a banner and source appropriate images.

Wednesday 6 July 10-11.30am
M701B
Meeting the University’s Threshold Quality Standard fir modules taught online is surprisingly quick and simple and it brings together a host of benefits for students that they’ll remember when they’re filling out the NSSI. Come along to the workshop for a rundown of the TQS and how to best go about meeting it.
Please book a place on UNITY for all workshops.
Tuesday June 14 th 12.30pm
Ken Newton (SAM) will describe a Design project undergone by students at Teesside in collaboration with the Bauhaus University in Germany using Blackboard as the primary communication tool.
Ken will discuss aspects of the online collaboration including
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Working with international partners and students off campus.
Team project development using the Wiki tool.
Use of Blogs in building a community of learners
Peer marking of completed project design work.
Lunch is provided from12.30pm in M701 the session starts at 1.05pm and will finish at 1.50pm.
Please book a place on UNITY.