Neil CocklinSaturday, June 22nd 2013
Blackboard 9.1 was updated from Service Pack 8 to Service Pack 11. For a list of new features please see Blackboard updates for September 2013.
Monday June 24th 2013
Week beginning Monday June 24th 2013, roll over will be taking place, with the expectation that all 2013-2014 courses will be available to staff by Monday July 1st 2013.
If you have any issues, please contact the VLE team blackboard@aston.ac.uk
All staff and students will continue to access Blackboard via the usual URL: vle.aston.ac.uk.
Please note: Where Blackboard refers to “courses” this means “modules” in Aston parlance.
What is Roll Over?
Roll over is the process by which new courses for the 2013-14 academic year are created (for accredited taught modules September to September) and older courses hidden.
- All new course titles have the prefix ‘2013-14’.
- Courses from last year will have a full stop prefixed to the title in order to force them to the bottom of your Course list.
- 2011-12 courses will automatically be removed from your view to keep the course list manageable (They can be made available, on request).
- At the start of next term, If you wish to hide last years courses from your Course list in Blackboard (to remove visual clutter) take a look at Editing the Course List.
- New courses will be set to unavailable as default, meaning that instructors have access to edit the course but students will be unable to see it.
Important Courses must be made available by the start of term, please see Setting Course Availability for Students if you do not know how to do this.
Reading Lists
Each 2013-14 course will already contain a Readings 2013-14 area ready to be populated by the Library staff. Please see details below:
- LIS will work with School administrators to collect the lists. You will be receiving more details from either your Information Specialist or school administrators.
- LIS will order the books, and put a link into the readings section of each Blackboard course that will deliver information from the library database of the books on the list and real time copy availability.
- LIS will also add copies of scanned book chapters if they have been asked to do so. Communications about this will go to module owners directly from LIS.
- This section may also contain a printable reading list.
Reusing Content
It is strongly recommended that the newly created course is created empty (except for the new Readings 13-14 section) as it is easy to copy selected content over from 2012-13 yourself, taking less than 2 minutes to set up per course – see how to do this following the Course Copy steps. A short tutorial will be included within the courses to help demonstrate. Copying by ISA is only necessary if you are worried that your courses are too complex.
Note The actual time taken for the copying to take place will depend on the amount of content being copied and how busy the server is at the time of the copy. You will be emailed when the course copy has been completed.
For staff who have complex or large courses, or for areas of the university which have particular requirements, ISA can assist with the copy of data. Please use this personalised web-form to indicate which courses require content to be copied over by ISA. It would help if this could be done before the 21st June to that we can try and ensure that the material is available for the 1st July.
Staff Training
All staff are encouraged to use the training resources provided by the Learning Technologies Team.
On line resources
Please take a look at the TLC guides and tutorials resource for Blackboard. Often this is the quickest way to get help as it is available 24 hours a day.
One to one
Training can be arranged in a one to one setting or simply advice given via email or over the telephone. Please get in touch with bbtechnical@aston.ac.uk
One to many
Training can also be arranged for a number of members of staff. You may feel it beneficial to your subject group if you are all trained at once which can provide for some very useful group discussion over how a tool might be implemented into module or even an entire strategy. Please get in touch with bbtechnical@aston.ac.uk