myUSF Blackboard News

Word 2007 documents are still incompatible with Blackboard SafeAssign. While it is on the top of Blackboard’s enhancement list in terms of priority, they are not able to assign an ETA for such support. The automatic note visible to student on all SafeAssign submission links is still correct in its listing of appropriate file types. SafeAssign only works with Word 2003 and earlier(.doc) RichText (.rtf) and Plain Text (.txt) files. Students will need to save documents written with Word 2007 as the older “Word 97-2003 Document” (.doc) format in order for them to be processed by SafeAssign.

We would like to remind users that the Office 2007 suite of applications is still extremely new, and during any such process there will be a significant period of time during which other users have not made the transfer, including many of your professors. If you have any doubt that the person receiving your file can open your highest version, we recommend saving it in a backwards-compatible format. For users of the Office XP and 2003 versions, there is Compatibility Pack available on the Microsoft website that allows those applications to interpret 2007 files, but we are unable to vouch for the effectiveness of this third-party patch.

Academic Computing has joined Blackboard’s Beta evaluation program, which gives early access to select instructors to evaluate and make recommendations on the next iteration of Blackboard’s Academic Suite. The major new functionality in Blackboard is the Grade Center, a new implementation of the Blackboard Gradebook.

We are looking for both first time users and long time Blackboard veterans to help with the testing and make recommendations.

Interested instructors should email Glen Parker at myusf@acomp.usf.edu.

As we are committed to make improvements as our resources allow, we have resolved some of the performance issues we were experiencing and response times have been reduced.

For the last 4 years we have seen increases in Blackboard use 20-30% each year. We have also seen an increase in the complexity of how faculty use Blackboard. More are using advanced features like the Discussion Board or the Gradebook than have ever before. Given the budget reductions, new policies have been adopted by some departments asking that all course materials be posted on Blackboard. As such, more students are also being expected to use the Discussion Boards and take tests online. Each student is using more features of Blackboard, and there are simply more students using Blackboard. The net effect is causing the “traffic jam”: you can put so many cars on the road and everyone drives 70MPH; put more cars on the road, and the added traffic starts slowing everyone down to 20MPH.

Our hardware purchases over the years have enabled us to keep up with average uses, but have never been sufficient to get ahead far enough to sustain such increases in demand. Even though we do have plans that would allow us to grow the Blackboard infrastructure to maintain acceptable performance levels for the institution, the funding needs to be procured.

We understand and share the frustration of our users, but there is no quick remedy. As we are committed to make improvements as our resources allow, we will continue to look for ways to increase performance and reduce response times.

The version of the Virtual Classroom / Lightweight Chat included in Blackboard 7.3 is not currently compatible with Java 6. We are planning to patch Blackboard within the next two weeks to correct this issue, but for now, if you have troubles loading the Virtual Classroom, please check if you are using Java 6.

A patch is coming from Blackboard which will allow the chat tool to work with Java 6. It will be installed during one of our regular maintenance windows, Friday Morning from midnight and 5am. We hope to have this tested and ready to install in the next two weeks. For now, the workaround is to downgrade to Java 5.

The Safe Assign migration has finally completed, and Course Copy is
now safe to use across all courses. If you have any questions about
Safe Assign, Course Copy, or any other aspects of myUSF/Blackboard,
please email myusf@acomp.usf.edu.

Thank you for your patience during this process

Academic Computing

This updated Content Player Blackboard Building Block™ provides improved support for SCORM 2004 v2 content including:

• Improved Content Player interactions with Gradebook
• Improved handling of Flow based packages
• Improved testing using packages provided by a number of content publishers and client partners
• Additional bug fixes

The Content Player Blackboard Building Block enables instructors to upload and play content that conforms to SCORM, IMS, or NLN standards to a course. This tool is available to instructors through the Control Panel.

From an Instructor perspective they can use this tool within the content areas as they add/modify content items within their course. Instructors and Students interact with IMS, SCORM, and NLN content just as they would with other types of Content Items.

Students accessing IMS, SCORM, or NLN Content Items simply select the Content Items from within the course. A new browser window opens and displays the content.

When Adding SCORM, IMS, or NLN data, the Instructor can enforce sequential navigation and add Content Items to the Gradebook. When a Student completes a package the results are automatically reported in the Gradebook.

Blah blah blah technical legalese follows…..
The Content Player Building Block supports content that conforms to the IMS Content and Packaging 1.1.3 standard with the web content attribute. Information about the standard can be found at:
http://www.imsglobal.org/af/afv1p0/imsafwhitepaperv1p0.html

The Content Player Building Block supports NLN content. NLN content conforms to the SCORM 1.2 & 2004 standard. The UK NLN Materials Team is responsible for commissioning and developing over 750 hours of high quality e-learning materials for the NLN that highlights the potential of using e-learning materials in learning and teaching, and offers advice on best practices in integrating the NLN materials into teaching and learning schemes. http://www.nln.ac.uk/


The upgrade to Blackboard 7.3 changed the way Respondus retrieves the list of courses you teach. Respondus has released an update to their tool which corrects this problem. Most Respondus setups will automatically check for updates, but if you want to make sure you have the latest, here’s how

• Start Respondus
• Under the Help Menu, select Check For Update
• Click the button “Get Update”
• Once complete, restart Respondus

That should take care of this little inconvenience.

If you have any questions about this or any other aspect of myUSF Blackboard, please let us know by emailing myusf@acomp.usf.edu or calling the Academic Computing Helpdesk at 974-1222.

Each semester we get a handful of questions about why Test Links in content areas aren’t included when the course is copied. I ran a series of tests to see what is and is not copied for certain combinations of Course Copy Options.

To make sure Test Links are copied, you must select Course Copy options for Content, Text/Surveys/Pools, and Gradebook Items.

1) Content (only)
Most all content items were copied.
Safe Assignment links were copied, but course will need synchronization.
No Test/Survey Links or Assignments were copied.
The Gradebook is empty.

4) Content & Test/Survey/Pools & Gradebook Items
All test, surveys, and pools are copied into Test Manager/Pool Manager.
All content items were copied.
Including links to Tests/Surveys, and Assignments.
The Gradebook is populated with columns.
Safe Assignment links were copied, but course will need synchronization.

The moral of the story is to use copy option 4 to copy a complete, working version of your course including links to tests.

If you have any questions about this or any other aspect of myUSF Blackboard, please let us know by emailing myusf@acomp.usf.edu or calling the Academic Computing Helpdesk at 974-1222.

The 7.3 upgrade went pretty well. One small problem we just discovered is that the ‘read’ status of all threads in all discussion boards has been reset to be unread. That is, any threads that were marked as read are now displaying as unread. If you go back and mark them read again, they will stay read.

A silver lining; The upgrade to 7.3 made it much easier to re-mark the threads as read. Here’s how

1. Go into your course discussion board
2. In the upper right, click Search
3. Check the “Before” box, and enter the date Aug 17(the date of the upgrade), Click Go.
4. Next to Select All, click Go, then along the top, click Mark Read.

There you go.