To: Faculty users of Blackboard
Subject: 2009 Fall Semester - Blackboard New Information and Reminders
If you have any questions concerning any of the items in this email or questions at
any time about Blackboard (Bb), please submit an on-line help desk ticket at
http://www.ts.vcu.edu/helpdesk/ or email blackboard@vcu.edu or call 828-2227. If
the Help Desk staff can not answer your questions they will forward your questions to
a member of the Technology Services Learning Systems staff. A portion of the
Learning Systems staff is dedicated to monitoring Blackboard help tickets.
Items covered in this email:
Reminders (might be new information if you are first time user):
Making 2009 Fall courses available to students
Combining course rosters for Multiple sections or Cross-listed courses
Download Gradebook from Prior Semester course(s) for your Personal Copy or
Upload Grades
Blackboard Maintenance Schedule
Wimba Voice tools and Wimba Classroom Maintenance Schedule
Training Opportunities and Help Links
Bb JumpStart Service
Bb Policies posted on-online
2009 Summer courses will be set to unavailable status the week of September 8

Bb courses for 2006 Summer, 2006 Fall & 2007 Spring will be archived during
2009 Summer

SafeAssign is now available

iPhone/iTouch Bb Learning Application is available

Workflow is now available within the Content System

Versioning is now available within the Content System

SoftChalk LessonBuilder has a new version 5

Weekly Bb Tips has moved to Faculty Bb Blog
Making your 2009 Fall course(s) available to students
Remember to make your Fall 2009 course(s) "Available" in the Blackboard
system when you are ready for your students to see the course. All courses are set
to "Unavailable" when you first create them. Courses that are "Unavailable" are
not visible to the students in the course. To set your course to be available to
students, please do the following:
1. From the Control Panel of the Course, choose Settings.
2. From Settings, choose Course Availability.
3. Set the course to be Available and click Submit.
Combining course rosters for Multiple sections or Cross-listed courses
If you are teaching multiple sections of a course or a course is cross-listed and
you would like to have the enrollments for all of the sections combined into a
single Blackboard course, please submit an on-line help desk ticket at
http://www.ts.vcu.edu/helpdesk/ or email blackboard@vcu.edu. In the email,
please tell us the name of the course that you have created in Blackboard and the
specific course sections that you would like to have directed into that course. For
example: "Please combine sections 001, 002, 003 and 004 of PSYC-101 into the
Blackboard course PSYC-101-001-2009Fall." Or “Please Combine WMNS-101001-2009Fall into the Blackboard course PSYC-101-001-2009Fall”
It usually takes a business day for the roster to update after you have made your
request for combined sections or cross-listing, and after you have created the
course in Blackboard.
Download Gradebook from Prior Semester course(s) for your Personal Copy or
Upload Grades
To save your own personal copy of the Bb gradebook (we highly recommend you
keep a copy), perform the following steps:
1. From the Control Panel of the Course, click on Gradebook
2. Click on Download Grades
3. Select Delimiter Type (Comma or Tab, if you use Microsoft Excel either
will be OK).
4. Click on Submit
5. Click on Download
6. Click on Save (save to your desktop computer)
This file can be opened in Excel.
You can download your gradebook at any time during the semester, open it in
Excel, make changes to an existing column or add a column. Then you can
upload it back into Blackboard.
To upload grades:
1. From the Control Panel of the Course, Click on Gradebook
2. Click on Upload Grades
3. Follow the instructions on the screen
Click the link below to get to the Technology Service’s new Knowledge Base that
contains FAQ’s of applications that TS supports. This link will take you directly to
known issues within the Bb gradebook, concentrating on a known issue, “Downloaded
Gradebook does not Contain most Recent Grades”.
http://www.ts.vcu.edu/kb/blackboard/2438.html
Blackboard Maintenance Schedule
This is a reminder that the Bb system will be unavailable the second and fourth Friday of
each month from 4pm to midnight, and 8pm to midnight (respectively), while we perform
system maintenance. Go to this link to see actual dates:
VCU Events - Blackboard Maintenance Calendar. Please remind your students of
these dates.
Wimba Voice and Classroom Tools Maintenance Schedule
Wimba Voice tools and Classroom are hosted by Wimba, therefore the maintenance
schedule for these applications is determined by the license agreement. As outlined in
Wimba’s ASP license agreement, Wimba adheres to the following maintenance schedule:
Sundays from 1 a.m. ET to 6 a.m. ET.
Training Opportunities and Help Links
Center for Teaching Excellence
Learn about sound pedagogical methods and other resources
http://www.vcu.edu/cte/
Blackboard Training – enter Keyword = Blackboard
http://www.pubinfo.vcu.edu/training/
Blackboard FAQ
http://go.vcu.edu/bbfaq
Technology Help Desk page
http://go.vcu.edu/helpdesk
Blackboard’s Support for Faculty, Instructors and Designers
(NOTE: this is not a VCU site. We run the Blackboard Academic Suite version
7.3)
http://behind.blackboard.com/s/faculty/
Bb JumpStart Service
The Blackboard JumpStart Program is for any faculty/instructors that have never
used Blackboard. The Learning Systems staff in Technology Services will create
the ‘basic’ Blackboard course site and will give the instructor instructions on how
to keep it up to date. The initial Bb course site will include a syllabus and, if
requested, the faculty member’s office hours and contact information.
For more information about the service go to:
http://faq.vcu.edu/ts/index.php?action=artikel&cat=13&id=175&artlang=en
Bb Policies posted on-line
The Blackboard policies are posted to the FAQs. Check them out at
http://faq.vcu.edu/ts/index.php?action=show&cat=5.
2009 Summer courses will be set to Unavailable status the week of September 8
We will set all Bb Summer 2009 courses to an "Unavailable" status the week of
September 8, 2009. This is done so that the Summer 2009 courses will no longer
be available to students. The courses will continue to be accessible to instructors.
Please note this process sets the course to unavailable and you as the instructor on
the course can make it available again if needed (Control Panel – Settings). If you
wish to ensure that your Summer 2009 course remains available to students, you
may send an email to pasmith2@vcu.edu prior to September 8 with the course id
(e.g. PSYC-101-001-2009SSummer). This will ensure that the availability of
your course is not modified.
Bb courses for 2006 Summer, 2006 Fall & 2007 Spring were archived during the
2009 Summer
The Bb archive policy is to have two years of courses on the production system
(2007 Summer to 2009 Spring) and three years archived. The archive process
takes place during the summer. If at any time you need an archived course
restored, send a request to the Technology Services Help Desk at
http://go.vcu.edu/helpdesk or blackboard@vcu.edu or 828-2227 and please
include the course id and semester you taught the course.
SafeAssign Tip sheets can be found in the Bb Content System under Institutional
Content > Bb Tip Sheets)
SafeAssign is a plagiarism prevention tool that helps educators prevent plagiarism
by detecting unoriginal content in student papers. In addition to acting as a
plagiarism deterrent, it also has features designed to aid in educating students
about plagiarism and importance of proper attribution of any borrowed content.
SafeAssign is delivered and integrated via a Blackboard Building Block.
To get started, the instructor must first create what is called a SafeAssignment in
Blackboard. Students upload their files into the SafeAssignment. An item in the
gradebook is also created for each SafeAssignment created. The submitted papers
are stored and checked against the VCU database and a Global database (other Bb
sites contribute to Global database). They are also checked against the Internet
and ProQuest ABI/Inform database (1,100 publication titles and about 2.6 million
articles from ‘90s to present – updated weekly).
For more information on SafeAssign and how to use it, go to the Blackboard
Content System tab, Institution Content, and Bb Tip Sheets. Also, visit the
Writing Center for more information about using SafeAssign as a Learning Tool
by going to: http://www.vcu.edu/uc/writingcenter/safeassign/index.html
iPhone/iTouch Bb Learn Application is now available
The Blackboard Learn Application allows users to sync their iPhones/iTouches
with their Blackboard courses. In return they will receive notifications of changes
and updates to their Blackboard courses and organizations. These include updates
on Assignments, Course Content, Study Group Updates, Community Discussions,
even Grades. In addition, users can email classmates on their course rosters, check
scholar accounts and view the course map.
Workflow is now available within the Content System
The Workflow feature is a sophisticated tool for assigning and tracking tasks
related to a content item. Although all workflows function in essentially the same
way, the different types of workflow are designed to handle a wide range of tasks.
The different workflows are:






Approve: Use this workflow to ask other users to review a file or folder and
validate it.
Complete: Use this workflow to ask other users to complete work on a file or
folder.
Grade: Use this workflow to ask other users to review a file or folder and submit
a grade.
Remind: Use this workflow to prompt users to take action regarding a file or
folder.
Review: Use this workflow to solicit opinions or analysis on a file or folder from
other users.
Share: Workflows are built and sent to other users from the Create Workflow
page.
For more information about Workflow, login to Blackboard, go to the Bb Content System
tab, click on Institutional Content, select “Bb Tip Sheets”, select Faculty & Staff, and
then select Workflow.
Versioning
The Version feature allows users to create different versions of the same file, for
example, if multiple people work on the same file and save different copies.
When a file is opened on the Manage Versions page, the file is automatically
locked and the user may make changes and save a new copy of the file. The
Manage Versions page lists each saved version of the file in a table where each
version appears as a row. The table shows the following information about each
version, from right to left:
• A checkbox for selecting the version.
• The version number. This appears as a link.
• The date and time the version was created.
• The person who created the version.
• The size of the file.
• An indicator whether the file is locked or unlocked.
SoftChalk has a new version 5
To download the latest version of SoftChalk LessonBuilder 5, either go to My Faculty
Downloads (main Bb page) or go to the Downloads & Help tab and click My Faculty
Downloads. Follow the directions of the download. If you need additional assistance
please look at the Knowledge Base to find their updated manuals and training at:
http://www.ts.vcu.edu/kb/2439.html
To learn how to publish your lessons to Bb check this site:
http://www.ts.vcu.edu/kb/2440.html
Faculty Blog
Bb Weekly Tips: moved from a Bb module to the Bb faculty blog and turned on the
option to allow comments. http.//blog.vcu.edu/blackboardfaculty/
Regards,
Blackboard Team