myUSF, USF’s customized implementation of the Blackboard Academic Suite, is to be upgraded to the newer version of Blackboard 7.1 software to provide new features in this release, as well as, additional important enhancements that have been made to the system.
All myUSF activities have resumed as of Wednesday, December 27th upon the successful completion of the upgrade to Blackboard 7.1.
- New Features
- Multiple and Customized Languages
- Offline Access to Blackboard through Backpack
- Advance Assessment Tools
- Customized Learning Paths for Students
- Intuitive Discussion Boards
- Performance Dashboard
- Graded Forums and Threads
- Visual Text Box Editor (WYSIWYG)
View automated quick tutorials on the newer features and functionality!
Spring Semester Course Sites Availability
All S07 course sites are currently available in myUSF. Instructor assignments —as specified in OASIS/Banner— for the upcoming semester begin on Wednesday, November 1st. Any content added to the S07 course sites prior to the beginning of the upgrade window will be migrated with the upgrade.
Student enrollment for the spring term begins after final exams, on Saturday, December 16th.
October 30th, 2006 at 1:01 pm
Why does myUSF & Blackboard have a multi-language feature. This is one of the problems with immigration today in that many non-Americans can’t speak and/or write in English. USF is an entity of the State of Florida and must follow the rules and laws of the US & Florida Governments. After all, we have only one official language, that being English. Shouldn’t we set the example and follow the law?
October 31st, 2006 at 12:21 am
Good point! If immigrants want to come here, learn here, live here… then they must integrate themselves. Whether it be at USF or anywhere else in the USA. Learn the English language!
October 31st, 2006 at 2:19 am
Perhaps I’m mistaken, but I thought USF is a large research university where multiple languages are taught.
October 31st, 2006 at 10:38 am
First, this is the United States where English is the common language of all its residents. USF is an entity of the State of Florida where English is not just the common language, but according to the Florida Constitution, it is the only Official Language in Florida [Article II, Section 9]. Research Universities can teach foreign languages to those who desire to learn them, but those departments are teaching someone who is already fluent in English. Who then gets to decide what foreign languages are available? USF is financed from the Federal Government, the State of Florida, & my tuition. I want my tax dollars going towards programs that everyone can take, not ones that are for a certain language > that would be discrimination against English-speaking students.
October 31st, 2006 at 3:56 pm
What’s your point? That the University should not offer Japanese, French, Spanish, German, Arabic, Hebrew, and other languages, all of which courses will undoubtedly benefit from having language capabilities in Blackboard?
Do you even know what the “Multiple and Customized Languages” feature of Blackboard is for?
Not everyone speaks Advanced Calculus fluently; should your tax dollars stop flowing to the math department?
November 4th, 2006 at 5:50 pm
Last time I looked, Math courses like Dance & Theatre are taught in English. If foreign students are going to attend school and live in the US they should be able to speak & understand the language. I have no problem offering foreign language courses for students who want to learn another language. But my tax & tuition/fees dollars should not go putting Blackboard in Chinese. Should your tax dollars go to multi-language stop signs?
Multiple & customized languages allows the student to alter some of the text of Blackboard in languages other than English. Question: I understand Spanish, but why German, French, Italian, and Dutch? According to the latest figures available, there are only 82 students at USF from German-speaking nations, 69 for French, 22 for Italian, and 16 for Dutch. What languages are missing: Chinese [133 students], Bosnia [53], Bulgaria [46], Haiti-Creole [201], Indian-Hindi [378], Korean [67], Nigeria [48], Russian [64], and Arabic [143]. Why are those languages available?
We offer the traditional European languages, when we should be offering Third World languages.
Instead, we should offer English only.
January 8th, 2007 at 8:47 am
Why are discussion board threads alphabetizing by first name?
January 8th, 2007 at 2:36 pm
The very useful “COLLECT” function for the discussion boards no longer logs messages. If you use it the messages continue to show as “unread.” You must click on every single message to make them show as “read.”
The ACOMP Wiki still addresses 6.1 so it is not much help,
I am going to start Yahoo groups for my classes as the Discussion Board functionality is dismal right now. This is sad as upgrqades are suppsoed to make things work better.
January 8th, 2007 at 5:00 pm
The sorting by first name is a problem. We’re notifying Blackboard and hoping that there will be a fix, but we can’t confidently say that it will be a priority for them now. It seems that while in the past, discussion boards presented user names as lastname, firstname (and thus sorting worked as expected) since they have switched to the firstname lastname presentation, that same functionality provides far less than optimal results.
We’re working on new documentation for these features now but a lot of what is in the wiki is the experience of solving problems and we expect that it will take us a bit of time to become as familiar with Bb 7.x as we were with Bb 6.x. A trainer is rewriting all of that documenation for discussion boards now. We’ll post news here as we discover helpful workarounds or when Blackboard provides us a good fix.
January 8th, 2007 at 5:16 pm
I hope to avoid a flame war concerning the languages issue by providing relevant data to prevent worry.
USF does not pay nor do we develop this functionality for the multiple languages in Blackboard as it is a feature of the system. USF purchases the system from a vendor who markets in multiple countries and thus desires this functionality in order to expand their market.
The University benefits by being able to use the language extensibility by offering this functionality in immersion type virtual environments for language acquisition. Research has demonstrated that language learning is more efficacious if one experiences an immersive type experience wherein one is not constantly translating from one’s native tongue to the language of study.
This serves many purposes. For instance, if I were a student on another continent who hoped to migrate to the United States, I would have the opportunity to experience my interface in English in order to better acquire practical language skills before visitng or immigrating. In the reverse direction, those of us who study other languages have an opportunity to learn French, Chinese, Hebrew, etc. in a similar environment wherein we could experience the need to function in a foreign language and/or script before travelling to that location wherein a mistake could have far more drastic circumstances.
Thus, this is not an issue of tax dollars, but one of capitalistic profit pursuit by a private corporation extending functionality in ways that provide numerous opportunities to use a single function for multiple uses.
January 8th, 2007 at 5:45 pm
I know! We can get the Registrar to issue class rolls in alpha order by first name. Then BB and our rosters will match.
So, nothing to say about the demsie of the “COLLECT” function in terms of it showing read/not read?
February 7th, 2007 at 10:18 pm
I do not understand your bias against offering the services of Blackboard in languages other than english. In a country that was built on the concept of immigration and tolerance the only dialect that should be forbidden is biggotry.
September 26th, 2007 at 2:33 pm
Libraries and universities, in my humble opinion, are one of the last bastions of “Liberal” expression. Liberal thought informed the writers of our constitution. Those individuals who laid out some eloquent points about the human condition drawing upon the thought of Locke, Rousseau, etc. These thinkers lived under the conditions of dominance that lead to the revolutions that gave us constitutional rights that are being usurped. They understood the failings of divine rights and intended safeguards for individuals to live without oppression for its enrichment and joy. Jefferson wrote that there should be a revolution once every generation that it was like manure for the soil. We have not had such. “I amy not agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Voltaire Yes, even uninformed thought must be tolerated, not accepted or acted upon, but tyranny begins with intolerance.