myUSF Blackboard News

Now through the end of the semester, Academic Computing is hosting walk-in clinics where you can ask any questions you have related to Blackboard at USF.   There will be two sessions each week, starting on November 2:

Clinics will be held in LIB 618, on the 6th floor of the Tampa campus library. No appointments are necessary, just show up and bring your best questions.

For more information, contact Drew Hannah:

Faculty may also contact the Center for 21st Century Teaching Excellence at 974-2576, http://www.c21te.usf.edu for assistance with Blackboard through workshops or individual consultations.

If a test is setup with a time limit, students taking the test will see a timer float in the upper right corner of the test window. In recent versions of the IE web browser, a bug was introduced by Microsoft which causes the page to scroll very slowly.

A workaround for this involves changing a security setting for your trusted sites in IE.

1. Click on Tools then Internet Options.
2. In the Security Tab, click on the Checkmark for Trusted Sites, then the Custom Settings button.
3. In the “Scripting” section, near the bottom, is one called “Allow status bar updates via scripts”. Change this from disable to enable.

Alternatively, within the Trusted Sites section, if you set the Security slider to Medium Security or lower, this will include enabling of “Allow status bar updates via scripts”.

Each person using IE to take a test will need to perform this operation. This bug does not affect people using Firefox or Safari to take Blackboard tests.

As this is a Microsoft bug, there is no word yet from Blackboard when or if a fix will be coming from them.

Full audits were conducted of the Release 6.1 and 7.1 of the Blackboard Academic Suite. The results of the audit outlined compliance for the Academic Suite based on both Section 508 and WAI standards.

The servers hosting SafeAssign at Blackboard Inc. are currently experiencing unscheduled downtime. During this time, the SafeAssign tool will not load and you may experience a delay in the processing time for reports. Our first report of this problem was around 7:00 p.m. EDT.

Please note: this effects only those assignments which utilize the SafeAssign plagiarism service. Regular assignments are working properly.

I’ll update this when I have an ETA on service restoration.

Update:As of 9:10 p.m. EDT access to the SafeAssign service has been restored.

This one is for the students. The first tab of Blackboard is often just a slow page load that slows down getting to your courses. If you could do anything to that first tab, what would make it useful to you? What services would you want to see integrated? How should they work for you? What would it take to make Blackboard @ USF useful enough to be your homepage?

Leave you thoughts in the comments.

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 Fall 2007 Final Exam Matrix is available to Instructors on the Courses tab within myUSF.

Instructors
Automated Instructor assignments into Blackboard begin 6 weeks before the start of Fall semester.
That would be Monday July 16th.

Instructors looking to get early access to Fall courses prior to July 16th should send a request to myusf@acomp.usf.edu

Students
Automated Student enrollmetns begin the day after finals. For Fall, this would be the day after the last day of Summer B, which is August 11th.

Students looking to get early access to Fall courses prior to August 11th should just be patient.