• Announcements; check for new messages and updates
• Grades; view assignments, midterms, finals
• Tasks; track homework assignments and projects
• Assessments; take non-Respondus LockDown (RLD) browser assessments
• Media; view videos, images or listen to audio
• Discussions; engage in threaded discussions
• Blogs; write posts and interact with classmates
• Journals; read and reflect on their thoughts
• Roster; organize their study group

As instructors you can access and manage your content, post announcements, update due dates, or cancel class, should you need to. You can also transfer media to your course from your mobile device.

Please Note

• Bb Mobile does not support RLD browser. These assessments will continue to be accessed through your students’ computers or laptops.
• Mobile features and access may vary among devices.

Helpful Information

Blackboard Mobile overview
Blackboard Mobile demo
Blackboard Mobile features
Blackboard Mobile download instructions (select your device)

News Announcements

Learn more about Blackboard Mobile Learn:

UALR News – UALR First to Offer Smart Phone Course Access
Today’s THV – UALR Offers App to Access Coursework

For more information, please contact us 501.569.8954 or visit STaR for more information and future updates.

If you are new to Bb Learn, we encourage you to attend our “Getting Started” training, as this is the last semester to teach in Bb CE8.  If you need a fresh look at building your course, we would be delighted to see you in our upcoming sessions. Of course, we are here to answer that quick question or to follow up with an appointment.

For more information or assistance with Bb Learn or CE8, please contact us at STaR or call us at 501.569.8954

Accessing the Right Course:
Access your 9.1 courses from the Courses Tab located on the top left navigation bar.
This will allow you to see your courses broken down according to the semester.
Your live Spring 2012 shells begin with the Course ID 201210.

Preparing the Course for the New Semester:
1)  If you would like to combine sections, use the Section Merge Tool.  See the  How to Combine Course Sections Quick Start Guide for directions or if you want to undo a merge review the How to Disassociate Course Sections Quick Start Guide. 

2) If you plan to copy course content from a previously taught  9.1 course into the current 9.1 shell follow the directions in the How to Copy Courses Quick Start Guide. 

3) If you would like to import content from a CE 8 Shell into a 9.1 shell then follow the directions in the How to Import a CE 8 Course.

4) Each semester the instructor must make the course available to students before they can access it.  The How to Make Course Available or Unavailable Quick Start Guide.

If you need assistance with your Blackboard courses over the holiday break, please send an email to star@ualr.edu, and we will do our best to respond to your question.

	In this Bulletin: On the road to redesign: migrating to Learn 9.1 for spring, summer and beyond | Start off on the right track: training tracks for Learn 9.1 explained Requesting your Learn 9.1 Courses | In Depth: Blackboard Content System | Announcing: Blackboard Community
Special Bulletin: The road to redesign

UALR’s transition to Blackboard Learn 9.1 is almost complete, and with the final semester to teach on Blackboard CE 8 just around the corner, many of our faculty are preparing to make the switch.

Starting in summer semester of 2012, we will be retiring Blackboard CE 8, a learning management system originally designed by WebCT, and moving online courses to a native Blackboard product.

Though the fundamentals of teaching online remain the same, the new system presents a new interface, new tools, and therefore, new approaches to delivering your online course content.

In this special bulletin, we’ll fill you in on all the resources available to assist you as we complete our migration to Blackboard Learn 9.1.

While the road to Learn 9.1 may seem winding to some, we hope this will be an opportunity for everybody to rethink the possibilities of their online courses.

On the road to redesign: migrating to Learn 9.1 for spring, summer and beyond

In preparation for the upcoming semester, we are asking anyone who is interested in teaching in 9.1 to participate in training and fill out our Spring pilot form. Learn more about how you can get ready to migrate.

Start off on the right track: training tracks for Learn 9.1 explained

We’ve developed training tracks to help faculty of any level migrate to Learn 9.1 Find out more about the training opportunities available through our office!

Requesting your Learn 9.1 Courses

Starting next summer, you will no longer have to request your Blackboard course shells. Instead, empty shells will be automatically created at least 60 days prior to the beginning of each semester. Find out how to make your Learn 9.1 courses available to your students.

In Depth: Blackboard Content System

Blackboard Learn 9.1’s Content Collection provides new functionality for all users who use Blackboard to manage their course documents. Read more about what content collection can do in your courses    

Announcing: Blackboard Community

Integrated into our new Blackboard 9.1 system, Blackboard Community allows tremendous flexibility for our faculty, students and staff to engage in extended online collaboration outside of the traditional online course environment. Find out more about the system on our website!   ]]> http://ualr.edu/star/2011/11/15/special-bulletin-the-road-to-redesign/feed/ 0 http://ualr.edu/star/2011/11/15/announcing-blackboard-community-engagement/ http://ualr.edu/star/2011/11/15/announcing-blackboard-community-engagement/#comments Tue, 15 Nov 2011 14:43:59 +0000 adm_wordpress http://ualr.edu/star/?p=1131 Continue reading →]]> Chances are, if you’ve used Blackboard CE 8 at UALR to communicate and share resources with a committee or organization, then you’ve dealt with the many inconveniences that come with adapting a course shell for your particular use.

That’s why we will be introducing Blackboard Community Engagement to UALR over the next year. Integrated into our new Blackboard 9.1 system, Community Engagement (“Community” for short) allows tremendous flexibility for our faculty, students and staff to engage in extended online collaboration outside of the traditional semester-based, online course environment.

Community brings groups from across courses, departments, and committees together into one organization.

There are many ways to set up a group within Community, depending on the needs of your organization. To help you get a better idea of what is possible, here are some examples:

Custom modules for broadcast communication

Push basic information to groups of people by creating a module for your organization. Modules display content specific to your organization on the “My Blackboard” tab of your users page. Modules let you easily share content to targeted groups.

For example, STaR and Blackboard Student Support currently use modules to broadcast need-to-know information under the Bb Support tab. The modules are set up to display information specific to users roles, so information broadcast to Blackboard faculty is not displayed to students.

Manage virtual organizations for collaboration and discussions

For more complex needs, Community can be used with a organization shell to provide a collaborative space for users to communicate and share content.

Organization shells have all of the same tools used in a 9.1 Blackboard course.

The Faculty Support course is a good example of this type of community, where faculty have access to helpful downloads, manuals, and video tutorials conveniently located on the MyBlackboard page with the rest of their online courses.

Community enrollment made simple

Community also provides expanded enrollment options that help Organization leaders manage who has access to their communities.

Manual enrollment allows organization leaders to select and remove individuals or groups of users who need access to their content. Organization leaders also have an option to allow users to self-enroll to the content made available.

These enrollment options grant more control over the content provided to organizations as well as more control over who can access the spaces.

If you’re interested in creating a community space on Blackboard Learn 9.1, check with us
next semester, when we’ll begin a Community pilot.

Starting next summer, you will no longer have to request your Blackboard course shells. Instead, empty shells will be automatically created at least 60 days prior to the beginning of each semester.

If you are teaching on Learn 9.1 this spring, follow these steps to get your courses ready for the semester. Do not request a CE8 course shell for a course that you’re planning to teach in Learn 9.1.

Copy your course content

Once your upcoming courses appear in your course listing, you can quickly copy content from any course that you have access to by following these steps.

From within the original course, select “Packages and Utilities” from the Course Management menu and click “Course copy.” On the resulting page:

1. Select “Copy Course Materials into an Existing Course.”
2. Browse for the destination course and select which content areas to copy from the list.
3. Select “Copy links and copies of the content”
4. Leave the “Include Enrollments” checkbox unchecked.

When copying content, always check the destination course for items that need to be edited, like Adaptive Release criteria.

Course Combinations

We have also been working hard to make the course combination process self-serve as much as possible. For 9.1, you no longer have to complete the course combination form and wait for that process to complete. Instead, you will use the “section merge tool” to complete your own combinations, which will occur in a matter of a few seconds.

Here’s how:

1. Select the Bb Courses tab
2. Next go to the Section Merge Tool Module
3. Click the “Create and Manage Merged Courses” link
4. Click the Setup New Merged Courses button
5. Review your sections and select the lowest online session as the Target course
6. Select additional sections to combine with the Target course and submit

Always remember to select the Target course with the lowest online section. This will make your content easy to locate. The green bar confirms your success. This is easier than it sounds. Watch the video at this link to see for yourself!

Make your course available

Once your content has been copied and your sections have been correctly combined, you must make then make the course available to students.

1. Instructors can make their courses available from the courses tab or by editing the course properties from the course control panel.
2. Select the Bb Course Tab
3. Go to the Blackboard 9.1 Courses Module
4. Select the Quick Tool Pad icon on the left to open the options below the link
5. Click the Make Course Available icon toggle to make your course available.

You can make your courses available at any time after they appear in your course listing. Once you have made the course available,students will not see or access a course until the first day of the semester. You can watch a video of this process here!

If you have any questions about these new processes, feel free to email star@ualr.edu

But Blackboard Learn 9.1’s Content Collection expands upon this concept, providing new functionality in Blackboard to manage course documents.

Share documents with your class

Content Collection lets you share a single version of a document with multiple sections. This helps you manage content for multiple sections of a course from a single file.

For example, you can create a syllabus for a course and share it with each uncombined section that you’re teaching. When you update the file for the next semester, the changes are automatically displayed for each section that has access to the file.

Manage course documents

In Content Collection, you have multiple folders where you can manage your course documents. Each course comes with its own folder and each instructor also receives their own folder with personal space to store documents to be shared outside of the course structure.

You may also receive access to public folders, like the those made available by the Ottenheimer Library or those used by a specific college. Finally, a bookmarks feature is available to help organize important documents in one location.

Share documents with anyone

Content Collection also makes it easy for you to share files with colleagues and students who don’t have access to your course shell.

Share with specific users by simply adding their NetID to the permissions list. You can also make documents and folders available to the institution or even to the public.

Control Permissions

With Content Collection, you can control what specific users can do with the content you share.

By sharing a document, you provide basic read-only access to your course files and folders by default. But you can also customize permissions to allow those users to edit and manage the content you share.

So, if you were collaborating on a document with several people, you could add them to your original content and adjust their permissions so that they can also contribute to the document.

Or, if you want to share a document with just one or two people for a period of time, Content Collection allows you to give them a “pass” to your content based on the time you determine.

And when we get a new car, it can take a while to figure out where everything is located on the dashboard. Certainly, it is much safer to know this information before you get on the Interstate to drive home.

This is why training on Blackboard Learn 9.1 is so important to our current migration, and to assist with the transition, the STaR office is providing a variety of resources and training opportunities.

Currently we offer five different training tracks, broken down according to session formats such as face-to-face two hour sessions, three day comprehensive boot camps, and online self-paced courses.

Track 1 – Blackboard Basics: Depending upon whether starting from scratch or working with a migrated course, these two hour workshops focus on everything you need to know to get started teaching in Blackboard Learn 9.1. (link to the road to redesign)

Track 2 – Fundamentals: Go in depth with our two hour fundamentals workshops, covering all the basic components necessary to deliver an online course. These workshops can help if you’ve attended Blackboard Basics, or if you are familiar with Blackboard Learn 9.1 and want to learn more about a specific tool.

Track 3 – Communication and Collaboration: This track focuses on the tools used to incorporate communication and collaboration as well as best practices for doing so. After completing a Track 1 workshop, participants are ready for either Track 2 or 3.

Track 4 – Blackboard Boot Camp: Boot camp involves three days of intensive training on the fundamentals of course delivery in Learn 9.1. The first two days are dedicated to the fundamentals while the third day provides an open-lab format to work on a migrated or built-from-scratch course. There are no prerequisites for Track 4.

Track 5: Online Facilitate Asynchronous Training: offers an online-only opportunity. There are currently four courses in this series including: Getting Started, Building Courses, Designing Engaging Content, and Building Online Communities. We recommend beginning with the Getting Started course before moving on to the others.

For complete workshop descriptions and to register please visit our website.

We must identify all faculty who want to teach in 9.1 by December 1st in order to ensure students have access to the proper course.

If you would like to teach in 9.1 for the Spring but have not yet attended training, opportunities will be available through the week of the Monday Dec. 12th and then starting again the week of Jan. 9th.

After filling out the form and attending training, you will be able to teach in 9.1 for the Spring.

If you plan to teach in Learn 9.1 then please DO NOT request a CE 8 shell.

Migrating your course content

To begin the process of transitioning your course content for an upcoming semester, you can attend an introductory training session to receive a development shell and gain access to migrated courses.

STaR has migrated courses from the Fall of 2009 – Spring of 2011, but due to unpredictable behavior resulting from repetitive migrations, we strongly encourage course redesigns on courses originating in WebCT 4. If the course origin cannot be determined, we recommend a course redesign.

Due to the many changes in course tools, we encourage redesign of courses. Redesigning will allow you to make the most of new features and functionality.

To assist with the redesign process, ask us about our Faculty Resources such as course building templates and course design rubrics.