Fall 2012: Blackboard updates

It's time again to upgrade Blackboard. IT Services has scheduled a week to do the upgrade: Dec. 22-29. Like last year, they will post daily status updates on the upgrade and let you know when it's completed. Here are more details on Blackboard usage at UAA:

1. Upgrade coming in December

UAA will upgrade to Blackboard Learn 9.1, Service Pack 9, Dec. 22-29. Blackboard will be unavailable during that time.

What's in it for faculty?

• Updated, streamlined look and feel
• Course themes
• Course-to-course navigation (i.e. grade all the discussion forums at once)
• Automatic re-grading if a test question is adjusted after the test

Here are a few tutorials to give you an idea of the changes coming to Blackboard:

• Blackboard 2012 Course Theme (1 min., 32 sec.)
• Course-to-course navigation (2 min., 50 sec.)
• Automatic re-grading of tests (2 min., 58 sec.)

Look for more workshops and online tutorials from the Faculty Technology Center <http://www.uaa.alaska.edu/facultytechnologycenter/workshops/index.cfm> in December and January.

2. Blackboard course template updates

Based on the survey in early October (61 faculty responded), here are the changes to the menu in the default course shell for spring:

• Added a link for email
• Renamed "Instructor Info" to "Faculty Info"
• Renamed "Instructor Help Page" to "Faculty Help"

The spring courses with the new template will be out by the end of October.

3. More than 50 percent of courses turned on in Blackboard this fall!

We made our goal. IT Services generated the following stats on Sept. 28.

• Total Blackboard courses: 5,053
• Total courses enabled: 2,550

That's 50.5 percent! Congratulations to all of us--our Blackboard utilization continues to grow. Just to compare, 45.9 percent of courses were made available to students in the spring.