AUGUST 2021
Explanations, updates, practical tips, & instructions, all for MU faculty! From the experts: Marshall University's Online Learning Design Center
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TIPS FOR MY GRADES TOOL IN BB
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FACULTY FORMS & RESOURCES
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SUPPORT LINE DISCONTINUED
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KNOWN EMAIL ISSUE: UPDATE
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INTRO: BLACKBOARD ULTRA
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COURSE MEETINGS IN TEAMS
TIMELINE: BLACKBOARD ULTRA UPGRADE
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COURSE ARCHIVING 17 & FILE SIZE
TOP 5 THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT ULTRA UPGRADE PHASE 1
CONTENTS 02
MEET YOUR TEAM
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A NOTE FROM CHRIS
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TOP TIPS FOR PREPARING ONLINE CLASSES
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MS TEAMS FOR COURSES
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Dr. Monica Brooks, Associate VP for Online Learning, Dean of Academic Libraries monica.brooks@marshall.edu Dena Laton, Student Success Coordinator for Distance Education dena.laton@marshall.edu
Chris Sochor Diana Adams Gillian Sochor Chase Lucas Jimil Vineyard CONTACT US: 304-696-7117 onlinelearning@marshall.edu
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MANAGER OF ONLINE LEARNING
As the Marshall University community prepares to resume face-toface classes, the health and safety of everyone – students, faculty, staff and visitors — remains our highest priority. Please review Marshall University’s Return-to-Campus Plan at marshall.edu/coronavirus. Let’s continue to build on the momentum created during the last year and stay on top of updating course materials and resources in Blackboard course sections so that students can always access at least the course Syllabus on Blackboard. Now that you have seen what options are available for presenting course materials and student assessments on Blackboard, we can grow on what you have learned and you can continue to provide yourselves with more classroom time for activities. Over the next year, we are preparing for a move to the newest version of Blackboard: the Ultra Experience. We have spent several years preparing for this upgrade, and have taken a slower approach to updating our learning management system than we have in the past. By approaching this methodically, we can assist with this transition in such a way that will allow faculty to have more opportunities to view Ultra courses, take part in training (live and selfguided), and prepare mentally for the conversion to Ultra view. Speaking with faculty and directors around the country at other institutions, we have learned that the majority of the faculty enjoy Ultra view more, and students have been overwhelmingly in favor of the new system. These institutions range from having had Ultra for five years, to newly-updated campuses. (Continues on page 4) 3
(Continued from page 3) With a more modern view of approaching course structures, Blackboard Ultra is a more userfriendly, responsive, and Accessible system. With the end of our Collaborate contract, we are focusing on Teams meetings as the go-to choice for virtual classrooms. By Fall of 2022, we will have full integration of Microsoft Teams and Blackboard. Faculty and students will be able to access their course Teams from directly inside the course.
Starting this fall, 2021, faculty can create a Meetings channel on their course Team. All virtual course meeting recordings that are scheduled on the Meetings channel will be accessible to all Team members. Users can access the meeting recordings by clicking on the File tab on the Meeting channel, then by clicking on Recordings in the folder. Users who decide to not create a Meeting channel, or are recording other meetings, will have all recordings go directly to their OneDrive account starting August 16th. Meeting recordings will no longer go directly to Stream. There are exciting updates on the horizon, and I would like to encourage everyone to approach this necessary upgrade with a positive experience in mind. Upgrading the learning management system can seem like a daunting task, but Online Learning will be hands-on helping with course conversions and familiarity with the new system. We view this upgrade as a positive one, and encourage our faculty and students to do the same. AUGUST 2ND, 2021
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1. UPDATE YOUR COURSES AND PREPARE FOR THE FALL TERM IN DEVELOPMENT SECTIONS. Development courses serve as your course template, where you can update materials and due dates prior to the start of the term. Once the course is ready, copy the Development course into your live section. Copy your course using these simple steps: Start in the course where the materials are located. Click Packages & Utilities under Course Management, then click Course Copy. Choose the course you want to copy materials TO. Click Select All. De-select Announcements, and select the 2nd option under Discussion Board. Submit. You will receive an email when the copy is complete. If you submit a course copy close to the start of the term, your course will go into the copy queue. It is important that you do not copy your course more than once. Once the materials have copied into your Fall course, adjust the course menu back to the appropriate order. You can do so by dragging and dropping the course menu link up or down the menu, or by clicking on the Keyboard Accessible Re-ordering button, located at the top of the course menu. 5
2. CHANGE DUE DATES AND AVAILABILITY WITH DATE MANAGEMENT. If you have not updated due dates prior to copying your course, or you are working on updates in a Development course, try the Date Management tool. Click Course Tools under Course Management, then click Date Management. Check the last box on the page to list all activities for review. Once the report is complete, you will see all graded activities listed on the page. Here, you can update the due date or date availability by clicking on the Edit (pencil icon) button to the right of the activity. Once you have made a change to a date, wait for the screen to refresh before you move on to the next activity. 3. UPDATE THE START HERE SECTION. A Spring 2021 survey of ecampus students reiterated the importance of having an up-to-date Start Here section with instructions that are specific to the course. If your course does not have a Start Here section, or you want to inquire as to whether your course is using the most current version, contact the Design Center.
The Start Here section contains components that meet Standard 1 of Quality Matters’ Standards for Course Design rubric. Students responded to the presence and usefulness of Start Here components in their distance education courses, and overwhelmingly agreed that the course elements in the Start Here section are crucial to getting started on the right foot in the course. These include such elements as instructions on where to go to get started in the course, the opportunity for students to introduce themselves to each other and to you, preferred method of communication for students, and the overall purpose and structure of the course. 6
AFTER A YEAR OF VIRTUAL LEARNING, MARSHALL STUDENTS WOULD PREFER A LIMITED SET OF TOOLS TO LEARN IN ORDER TO PARTICIPATE IN VIRTUAL CLASSES.
Use of the Blackboard Collaborate tool ended with Summer 2021 courses. After a year of virtual learning, Marshall students would prefer a limited set of tools to learn in order to participate in virtual classes. The elimination of Collaborate does not affect any other tool in Blackboard, and we will still have functionality of the array of other tools. Starting with the Fall 2022 semester, Teams and other Office 365 tools will be embedded directly into your Blackboard Ultra Courses. This will give instructors and students the ability to sync graded activities in Teams with the grade center, access course Teams from within the Blackboard course, and experience more options with OneNote and other student activities.
Until that time, you can activate your course Team on the Teams app. (Don’t have the Teams app downloaded on your device? Head to our Teams site for links to download the app on your desktop, laptop, or download it on a mobile device.) Teams courses sync with your course roster, and when you activate a course Team, an email is sent to students to notify them that they have been added to a course Team. Students can click the email link to join the course Team. For instructions on using Team tools, visit our Teams site: www.marshall.edu/it/teams. To view a listing of Teams training, visit our Events site: www.marshall.edu/designcenter/events. 7
Starting August 16th, 2021, all Teams meeting recordings will go into users’ OneDrive account. The exception to this rule is if you create your class meetings on a channel within your class Team. If you utilize a Meeting channel on your class Team, then the meeting recordings will go into the Files -> Recordings folder in the course Team channel. Faculty and students can then access those recordings by going to the Meeting Channel in the course team, and clicking on Files on the top tab of the channel. Meeting recordings that are located in the Files of the Meeting Channel will expire after 120 days.
You may choose to download the meeting recording and upload it to a place of your choice, such as your OneDrive account. Course meeting recordings that are scheduled on Teams, and do not reside in a Meetings channel on the course Team, will go directly to your OneDrive account starting August 16th. You may then choose to share the recording in your Blackboard course by going to your OneDrive account, retrieving the URL to the file, and copying that URL into a content area using the Web Link tool under Build Content in your Blackboard courses.
Instructions for all your Teams needs can be found on the Teams website: www.marshall.edu/it/teams 8
Since Fall 2020, we have been keeping previously live course sections on Blackboard for 18 months. Due to the drastically rising cost of storage space, and to keep our storage under our stated allotment, we must archive old courses. If you utilize Blackboard for any aspect of your course, you should have a Development course for that section. You can have multiple Development courses, to serve as the main course template, for courses that you teach face-toface, online, or virtually. You may also have a Development course for summer terms, since those courses run on a different schedule (maybe only 4 weeks), which may change the layout of the way the course is taught. We retain archived course files for 24 months. After this time, archived course files will be deleted. All course materials should be copied from a Development course instead of a previously live course. If you need assistance with updating your Development course, contact the Design Center: www.marshall.edu/designcenter/about/design-centercontact/
To request a Development course (one that will not be developed as a new distance education course, and is not going through the approval process) use this form, found on the Faculty Resources page of our Design Center website: https://marshall.libwizard.com/f/ CourseDev To see the Course Archiving schedule, visit our site: https://www.marshall.edu/design -center/course-archiving/. At the start of each term, each Blackboard course section starts with 1 GB of storage space. Please follow the course copy instructions to ensure that only the necessary files copy with your course. If you receive a notice that you are unable to add files to the course, please email us at onlinelearning@marshall.edu and let us know the course CRN you are working in. We can increase storage quotas on a course-by-course basis. 9
The My Grades area of the course is where students can view all upcoming, submitted, and graded assignments and feedback. The tool cannot be viewed by instructors in the regular Edit On mode, but can be viewed if you enter Student Preview Mode (icon that looks like an eye on the top right of the course). If you have graded course activities that have date availability parameters attached to them, this can affect the students’ ability to view those assignments in the My Grades area. If you have a date availability set for “show until” on a graded activity and the student misses those activities, then the graded activity will not appear to them in the My Grades center. It is important that students be able to view graded activities that they are missing, and once the “show until” date kicks in, students who missed those activities will not see a link to the activity in My Grades.
When you are working on live courses and you want to add date parameters, you can add the “make available” date on the folder level, so that all materials in the folder show at the same time. You can also set date parameters on items within the folder, but components, such as Items, should just be available as soon as the folder is available for students to view. Students can view the results of an assessment by clicking on the raw score of the assessment in My Grades. Students can view feedback on assignments by clicking on the name of the assignment. If you use a rubric for grading, and have set the rubric to be visible to students, they can view the rubric prior to completing the assignment by clicking View Rubric under the assignment name in My Grades. Students can also view rubric scores and feedback by clicking the same View Rubric link once the assignment has been graded. 10
The Faculty Resources page from the Design Center website lists common request forms, such as adding users to your course, leaving courses open for Incompletes, the Distance Education Course Application, and requests for Development courses. The Resources section includes information on Blackboard Ally (for Accessibility), basic course design standards, Blackboard Outcomes, Computer & Browser requirements for Blackboard, links for contacting a designer, and the distance education course development process. Common Forms include: Access to Course for Instructor, TA, or Department Chair: You will need to know the course CRN, your original MUNet (not vanity email), and the MUNet of the person you wish to give access to. Cross-listing Request: Use this form to combine multiple sections of the same course into one Bb section. You will need to create or copy your course content into the newly created section. You will receive an email when this has been completed, but we cannot create cross-listed sections until the live sections are available (generally two weeks prior to the start of term).
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Course Copy Request: This form requests that a designer copy your course content and clean up your course menu for your course. Distance Education Course Development Application: Use this form when creating any new Distance Education course that will be solely used for a Distance Education course. These courses must go through a review process prior to being offered (we are aware of the issues with course planning and COVID-19 and have adjusted guidelines, for now. We will resume regular guidelines for new course development once the university can safely resume a majority of face-to-face courses). We require faculty to work with an instructional designer to develop the course unless you are an advanced user. Deadlines for completed courses ready for review are August 15 for courses to be offered in Spring or Summer, and January 15 for courses to be offered in the Fall. Visit the Online Course Development site for more information. Request a Development Section for a Course: If you would like to work on supplemental components for a face-to-face course, work ahead, or have an additional course Development section for a different term (spring v. summer), use this form. This form is not for a course that is applying to be approved for Distance Education. Access to Course for Student Incomplete: If you have a student who has officially received an Incomplete for a semester term, use this form to give that student access to a previous course.
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We have discontinued use of the call-in help line with Blackboard due to a small number of users utilizing this service , and the call center’s inability to resolve most user errors without assistance from Online Learning or IT. The Blackboard Support Center link was a default link on the course menu. You should remove the link to the Blackboard Support Center on all of your course menus, including the link in your Development course. To remove the link, hover over the link on the course menu, click the drop-down arrow beside the link, and click Delete. You will confirm that you wish to delete this menu item. If students have technical issues with their devices or logins, they can contact the IT Service Desk at itservicedesk@marshall.edu If students have trouble with Blackboard or accessing course materials, they can send in a Support Ticket to Online Learning using the same link Faculty use: www.marshall.edu/designcenter/support-ticket/.
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We are working with Blackboard to resolve a known issue with the Email tool in Blackboard. The email tool in Blackboard, and any system emailing from Blackboard to a Marshall email addresses (including the Announcement tool feature that sends a copy to email) is not currently working. We do not have an estimated fix time for this issue, but an update will be provided on the My Institution page in Blackboard when the issue is resolved. Until that time, students will not be receiving emails to their Marshall accounts from within the Blackboard system. Common system emails can come from the notification system (which can notify you that a student has submitted an activity), the Blackboard Grade Center, the Announcements tool, and the Email tool that can be added to the course menu. As a work-around for this issue, we recommend using the Course Messages tool, which keeps all course messages from each course contained to the individual course itself. You can see course messages from the My Messages module, or by clicking Course Messages on the course menu.
And now, the upgrade we've been waiting for:
Blackboard Ultra delivers a simpler, more powerful teaching and learning experience. With a modern, more intuitive, fully responsive interface, Bb Ultra engages students, eases the burden on educators, and clears the path to success. Marshall University will upgrade to Bb Ultra in two phases: Phase 1, Ultra base navigation, will take effect starting Spring 2022 semester. All users will have the new activity stream and course menu navigation. You will have the option to pilot Ultra experience with your courses, or run on the same view we have now (but with an updated course menu and stream). Phase 2, Ultra course view, will begin with all courses starting with Summer 2022. All courses will be converted and running on Ultra navigation and course view. Direct link to video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dm0MGnG64_E
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Mid Fall 2021 semester: Faculty will be introduced to the Ultra
Base navigation, will which help us set the tone for the full transition to Ultra course view. Faculty will be invited to participate in live training and will be provided resources for learning about how to use the updated navigation in courses. End of Fall 2021 semester: Marshall’s Blackboard will be updated
to Ultra Base navigation upon completion of the Fall term. Faculty will have access to their Spring courses prior to winter break.
All information regarding the upgrade will be available on the Design Center Blackboard Ultra Upgrade website: www.marshall.edu/designcenter/ultra
The Ultra Welcome screen you'll see when logging in for the first time.
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Spring 2022: All courses will function using the Ultra Base
navigation and faculty can take advantage of virtual office hours with our Blackboard Senior Client Experience Manager. Instructors can choose to join the “pilot” program for Ultra course view at that time by converting courses to Ultra view. Once courses are converted to Ultra in a live course, they cannot be converted back to classic view while the course is active. Mid Spring 2022: Faculty will be introduced to Ultra course view,
along with resources and training. Conversion of remaining courses from Learn to Ultra will begin. End of Spring 2022 semester: Marshall’s Blackboard will be
updated to Ultra course view upon completion of the Spring term. Summer courses: Starting with Intersession 2022, all courses will
be running on Ultra and we will continue to assist faculty with converting their courses from Learn to Ultra. Faculty will have the opportunity to participate in workshops, using their own course materials to prepare for Fall 2022.
Activity Stream
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Course View
Ultra Base Navigation 1. The Blackboard homepage is changing (My
Institution). In the current version of Blackboard, you can navigate by using Tabs (the links at the top of the My Institution page). In the new navigation, the information provided on the tabs will be listed on a menu on the left side of the screen. This look is very similar to the Blackboard Mobile apps’ design. View the Blackboard Help site for Ultra Base Navigation. 2. Left-hand navigation:
Institution Page: Contains important news as well as helpful information about university offices. Profile: Allows you to manage your online persona and modify your notification settings. Activity Stream: See what’s new and coming up across all your courses and organizations. Courses: Quickly navigate your courses using search, filter, and favorites. Organizations: Quickly navigate your organizations using search, filter, and favorites. Calendar: View all due dates and events in your courses and organizations. Messages: Stay connected by viewing and sending messages to/from all your courses in one place. Grades: For instructors: See what needs to be graded across all your courses, and start grading with just one click. For students: Check your grades for all your courses with just one click. Tools: Access the tools that live outside of your courses, such as Portfolios.
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3. Location for accessing courses: Using the Courses link on the lefthand navigation ribbon, instructors and students will be able to access all courses they have access to. This will replace the My Courses module on the My Institution page. Each course is viewed as a “course card” and will contain the course name and instructor. Instructors can also add information to the “course card,” such as a course description and schedule.
5. Institution Page: the Institution
4. Activity Stream: the activity stream is the first page students and instructors will see. Users can see what’s due, what needs their attention in courses, and is sorted into Important, Upcoming, Today, and Recent categories. Clicking on an item in the activity stream will take you straight to item on the list. All institution-wide announcements from within Blackboard will also be available to view on the activity stream.
dates from the academic calendar,
page will take the place of tabs and modules (modules are the boxes of information found on the current My Institution page, and on the tab pages located on the top of our current Blackboard screen). From the institution page, we can broadcast important messages and links to resources for faculty and students. Designers can create customized modules that highlight important events, as well as creating targeted notifications for faculty and students.
Blackboard Learn Help for Instructors Ultra Course View Quick Start Guide: https://help.blackboard.com/ Learn/Instructor/Ultra 18
