Neil CocklinMonday August 4th 2014
Week beginning Monday August 4th 2014, roll over will be taking place, with the expectation that all 2014-2015 courses will be available to staff by Monday August 11th 2014.
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 2014-15 academic year are created (for accredited taught modules September to September) and older courses hidden. All other sites on Blackboard e.g. Staff only committee, programme level, distance learning, foundation etc. are not affected.
- All new course titles have the prefix ’2014-15′.
- 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.
- 2012-13 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.
- 2011-12 modules will be archived off the Blackboard system before October 2014 and will no longer be available directly through Blackboard. These can be restored by ISA if required, on request.
Courses should 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
With the introduction of the new reading lists system (REBUS) there will be a direct link in the course menu to the reading list for each module. Each of the these lists links to the journals, articles or library catalogue as appropriate.
University Module Directory (UMD)
The University Module Directory is now available via MAP. This directory is the centralised store of information regarding all taught modules at Aston. It contains all of the essential information such as module specifications and associated staff. As such a link to the module specification will appear in the course menu and instructors will be automatically added to courses.
Reusing Content
Newly created course will be created empty (except for the additions noted above). It is easy to copy selected content over from 2013-14 yourself, taking less than 2 minutes to set up per course – see how to do this following the Course Copy steps.
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.
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 blackboard@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 blackboard@aston.ac.uk