If you are a department or adviser looking for a new way to maintain communication with your constituents, we are pleased to offer Blackboard Organizations populated with the students for every College, Department, and Major in OASIS Banner. We’ve set up an automatic process that reads students College, Department, and Major codes from Banner and adds them as members of corresponding organizations in Blackboard. The lists are maintained so that as students change majors or graduate, they are added and removed from the organizations, ensuring your organization roster remains current.

These sites are full-fledged Blackboard sites. They are very useful for sending email to the students you advise, and can also be used to make available departmental documents such as program requirements, graduation applications, course authorization request forms, and any other departmental paperwork you maintain. A discussion board is available to foster communication amongst your charges. File uploads, announcements, surveys, everything you can do in a Blackboard course you can do here.

We have four levels of organizations available:

Majors: For every major code in OASIS we create an Organization, and populate it with students that have that major code. These would be most appropriate for advisers and chairs.

Departments: For every department listed in OASIS, we create another Blackboard organization. In many cases, there is a one to one relation between majors and departments, ie, a department only offers one major, but there are many cases there a department offers multiple majors. In those cases, a Departmental organization would be convenient for communicating with all the majors in that department at one time.

Colleges: For each college in OASIS, we create yet another Blackboard organization. These are collections of departments, and are appropriate for the Dean’s office of each college.

Lastly, we create three flavors of each of the above organizations
one with just undergrad students
one with just grad students
one that combines both grad and undergrad students

By default, these organization sites are invisible to students until a department takes ownership and makes it available.

If you or your college or department is interested in one or more of these organizations, please contact us.

help@usf.edu

In addition to the Online Documentation we’ve created, available at
http://wiki.acomp.usf.edu/index.php/Grade_Center

Blackboard has produced a number of Flash videos showcasing some of the more advanced things you can do with the new Grade Center. Check em out.

Grade Center: Determining Grades and Exemptions

Grade Center: Analyzing Grades (differentiated instruction orientation )

Grade Center: Customizing the Grade Center

There are more videos like this for the rest of Blackboard here
http://www.blackboard.com/quicktutorials

The upgrade to Blackboard 8 provides Instructors with a powerful new Grade Center to manage grading in a course. This Grade Center replaces the current gradebook. If you are currently using the Blackboard gradebook, the new Grade Center can look different at first, but it improves highly on its predecessor.

Online Documentation is available at
http://wiki.acomp.usf.edu/index.php/Grade_Center

In addition to creating online documentation about the Grade Center, special training sessions are available to Instructors and Departments. Instructors can call ahead for one on one training on the Grade Center. Departments can take advantage of group training sessions to be held in your meeting rooms.

For One on One sessions, please call 974-3286 to learn about available times.

For On Site training, Office Managers can 974-3286 and request On Site
Grade Center Training.

The following are the dates that these special sessions are available.

December 15-19
On Site Training
One on One Sessions

January 5-9 (First week of Classes)
Limited Onsite Training. Please call for availability.

January 12-16
On Site Training
One on One Sessions

Online Documentation is at
http://wiki.acomp.usf.edu/index.php/Grade_Center