A NOTE FROM CHRIS

M MA AN NA AG GE ER R O OF F O ON NL LIIN NE E L LE EA AR RN NIIN NG G

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, of Blackboard: the we are preparing for a Ultra Experience. We move to the newest version 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.

(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, the go-to choice for we are virtual focusing on classrooms. Teams meetings By Fall of 2022, we as 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 encourage our faculty and students to positive one, do the same. and