IMGconnect

Blackboard now has the ability to reorder the grade order for students through the My Grades tool. In the past, the grades in My Grades (the link students click to see their grades) were fixed in the order created. So if you created your Final Grade column before your Quiz 1 column, Final Grade would always appear before Quiz 1 in My Grades.

Now you can order the grades under My Grades in any order. The order the columns appear in your Grade Book is the order used for My Grades.

Help is available online showing exactly how to reorder the Grade Book and My Grades.

As we near the end of the semester, we would like to mention a few Blackboard Best Practices to ensure a smooth transition from Spring/Summer to Fall.

Always download a copy of the Grade Book throughout the semester, but especially at the end. Since courses are removed from Blackboard after one year, having a local copy will be useful for grade challenges.

Copy your course content to a development course or to your Fall course. You have control over the creation and deletion of development courses, so they are the perfect area to store your course materials.

Fall courses are available in Blackboard for you to add content, but students will not have access to the course material until two weeks before class begins (August 1st).

If you would like to use Authenticated iTunes, now’s a good time to send in your request.

Blackboard will be down for maintenance between 7:00 and 7:30 am on Sunday, July 12, 2009.

We apologize for the very short notice, but because we need to do some extensive maintenance work on the Blackboard system, we are trying to clean up the system as much as possible before the scheduled downtime (July 3 - 5, 2009).

We will be removing the SUMMER 2008 courses from Blackboard beginning Wednesday, July 1, 2009, at 7:00 am.

If you need materials from those courses, please create a Development Area Course through Blackboard Toolkit (instructions can be found here: http://www.auburn.edu/img/blackboard/help/faculty/f_save_course/save_course.htm) or call IMG (844-5181) for help.

Please be sure to download a copy of your grade book from Summer 2008 courses as well (instructions can be found here: http://www.auburn.edu/img/blackboard/help/faculty/f_excel.htm).

We will be able to retrieve course data from Systems Back Up Files after July 6, 2009.

If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact the IMG at 844-5181.

IMG offers online help in Flash, PDF, and HTML formats, and now there is another format available: Podcasts. Throughout the upcoming semester, IMG will convert the help for Blackboard into podcasts and add them to AU iTunes. Anyone will be able to download and view the podcasts on their computer or portable media player. The podcasts are also optimized with bigger callouts for smaller displays.

To download an IMG podcast, go to http://itunes.auburn.edu/ and click “Open AU iTunes” to open Auburn’s iTunes store. Click “Instructional Multimedia Group” then on the next page click “Help Files.” Click “Get Movie” next to the podcast you wish to download.

Although it passes the browser checker, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer version 8 is not fully supported by Blackboard. The Tracking function in Blackboard will sometimes not load. Until the issue is resolved, we recommend keeping Internet Explorer 7 on your Windows computer or use Firefox.

Microsoft has officially released Internet Explorer 8 as a “Critical Update” via Windows Update. Internet Explorer 8 passes the Browser Checker and is officially supported by Blackboard. IMG has tested the browser in Blackboard and have found no issues.

If you encounter any problems using Internet Explore 8 with Blackboard, please let us know.

Note: IMG only tested IE8 with Blackboard and cannot say whether IE8 will or will not work with other Auburn-releated services (such as Banner).

Update: As mentioned in this post, IE8 does have slight compability issues with Blackboard. Until the issues are resolved, we recommed using IE7 or Firefox.

Blackboard will be down on Sunday, April 19, 2009 between midnight and 12:00 noon. We must install an emergency upgrade.

We apologize for the inconvenience, but the upgrade is critical.

If you have questions, please contact Dr. Kathy McClelland, Manager, IMG at 844-5181.

We apologize for any inconvenience you’re just experienced with Blackboard. We had to do an emergency restart of the system due to back-end technical issues. Blackboard was taken off line at 12:21 and is now up and running.

Down time was approximately 20 minutes.

First Notice:

On Monday, March 9, 2009, Blackboard Administration will begin the following:

1) Back up (to tape) all Spring 2008 courses in AU Access Blackboard.

2) Removal (delete from server) of all Spring 2008 courses in AU Access Blackboard (once the tape backup is complete). This action will also remove courses from the Class Listing page in Blackboard.

Faculty who have not copied content from a Spring 2008 course they wish to keep to a Development Area course should do so before Monday, March 9, 2008. Though the removal process may take several days, faculty should not assume Spring 2008 courses will be available in AU Access Blackboard after this date.

Instructions for creating a development area course and copying content to it are available on the Blackboard Help page:

http://www.auburn.edu/img/blackboard/help/index.html

IMG will send a reminder in 2 weeks. Please call IMG if you have questions: 844-5181.