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Instructional Technology News – March 3, 2022

March 3rd, 2022
in -Instructional Technology News

Hello instructors,

Melissa from The Center for Instructional Technology here with the latest instructional technology news.

Midterm grades due March 4 at midnight

Midterm grades are due Friday, 3/4 at 11:59 p.m. Instructors are required to submit midterm grades for all 100- and 200-level courses, as well as grades for non-attendance. Midterm grading should be used to submit grades assigned for non-attendance.

Helpful grading information:

Reporting a non-attendance grade? Find the date the student last accessed your Blackboard course using the Performance Dashboard or by viewing the Last Access column in the Grade Center grid.

Introducing the Instructional Technology knowledge base

You can now find instructional technology help articles and answers to frequently asked questions in CIT’s Instructional Technology knowledge base. Search by keyword, browse by topic, or navigate via menu to find resources for both instructors and students. Importing midterm or final grades into myBama? Provisioning a Blackboard course for Panopto? Creating a Turnitin assignment? Looking for Lockdown Browser Information for Students? Find the information you need in the knowledge base.

The Technologies pages on the CIT website have been redesigned to feature prominent links to relevant knowledge base content. Contact us for assistance locating former website content in the knowledge base.

Blackboard Learn: Automatic cleanup of user-created archive and export packages

An upcoming change to Blackboard Learn will impact export and archive packages created within a Blackboard Learn course. Course packages created after the March 3, 2022 Blackboard Learn upgrade will expire and auto-delete 30 days after the creation date. Existing user-generated course packages will be set to expire in 90 days from the March 3, 2022 upgrade. Additional information is available on the CIT website: Blackboard Learn: Automatic cleanup of user-created archive and export packages

News from OIT

Blackboard Learn: Automatic cleanup of user-created archive and export packages

March 3rd, 2022
in Announcements

An upcoming change to Blackboard Learn will impact export and archive packages created within a Blackboard Learn course.

Course packages created after the March 3, 2022 upgrade will expire and auto-delete 30 days after the creation date.

Existing user-generated course packages will be set to expire in 90 days from the March 3, 2022 upgrade.

In keeping with the LMS Course Retention Policy, Blackboard Learn courses are subject to removal from the system two (2) years following the end of the semester in which they are taught. Blackboard’s export course feature is one method by which instructors can back up content; it creates a ZIP file of your course content that can be used to create a new course. CIT recommends storing these files in Box or OneDrive.

Information about and step-by-step instructions for exporting courses can be found on Blackboard’s Help site: Export a course

Information about the change to user-generated course packages can be found in the release notes for the March 2022 upgrade: Automatic cleanup of user-created archive and export packages – 3900.34.0

Blackboard Collaborate Scheduled Maintenance – March 10

February 25th, 2022
in Announcements

From Blackboard:

Feb 24, 14:08 EST

Scheduled – Blackboard will be deploying our Collaborate v22.04 release to the US region (https://us.bbcollab.com), hosted in AWS (US – Virginia): us-east-1.

Start Time:

Thursday, March 10, 2022 2:00 AM EST (Eastern Standard Time) UTC/GMT -5 hours

End Time:

Thursday, March 10, 2022 6:00 AM EST (Eastern Standard Time) UTC/GMT -5 hours

Collaborate customers will experience intermittent availability during the maintenance window. For more information, please refer to: Collaborate Version 22.04 Release

Date Published: Feb 24, 2022

Real-time information about Blackboard status, as well as updates about scheduled maintenance and past incidents, is available on the Blackboard status page.

Instructional Technology News – February 18, 2022

February 18th, 2022
in -Instructional Technology News

Hello instructors,

Melissa from The Center for Instructional Technology here with some instructional technology news and tips.

Learning ePortfolios in the Classroom: A Panel

Date: Tuesday, March 1, 2022, 2:00-3:30 pm
Location: Lackey Room, Bryant Conference Center

This professional development session, brought to you by The College of Continuing Studies and The Center for Instructional Technology, will feature instructors and experts from several UA colleges. Panelists will discuss their use of eportfolios and visual storytelling assignments as vehicles for course- and program-level reflection, integration, and learning.

Panelists:
Meredith Bagley, Department of Communication Studies
Leah Gutenson, College of Continuing Studies
Jessica Kidd, Department of English
Natalie Loper, Department of English
Shayla Smith, School of Social Work

Facilitated by Melissa Green, CIT Education and Outreach

Register now for Learning ePortfolios in the Classroom

New Courses in Blackboard Learn Course List

The contents of your Blackboard Learn Courses page will change as Summer and Fall 2022 courses are created. Courses are grouped based on their associated terms: Spring 2022 is 202210, Summer 2022 is 202230, and Fall 2022 is 202240. Select the down arrow next to Current Courses to move between past, current, and upcoming courses. If you access a course frequently, select its star icon to add it to your favorites so it always appears at the top of the course list. More on finding courses: Find Your Courses

Midterm grades due March 4 at midnight

Midterm grades are due Friday, 3/4 at 11:59 p.m. Instructors are required to submit midterm grades for all 100- and 200-level courses. Midterm grading should be used to submit grades assigned for non-attendance.

Helpful grading information:

Reporting a non-attendance grade? Find the date the student last accessed your Blackboard course using the Performance Dashboard or by viewing the Last Access column in the Grade Center grid.

CIT Door Hangers

We recently distributed Do Not Disturb – I’m Teaching with Technology door hangers (JPG) to departmental offices with a request to share them with faculty and other instructors. The door hangers highlight CIT-supported tools to help you teach and learn. If you did not receive a door hanger and would like one, please send an email with your name and campus mailbox number to Melissa Green.

LastPass and Blackboard Test Options

CIT has learned the LastPass browser extension may incorrectly autofill fields and generate passwords when editing Test Options in Blackboard Learn. If you experience this issue, you can disable autofill for Blackboard in your LastPass settings: Known Issue: LastPass and Blackboard Test Options

News from OIT

Crimson Google Account Service Ends May 2022

OIT hosts events and workshops to help you feel comfortable and confident with technology. Upcoming topics include Adobe Creative Cloud, High Performance Computing, InDesign, Lightroom Mobile, and more.

Known Issue: Lastpass and Blackboard Test Options

February 16th, 2022
in Known Issues

The LastPass browser extension may incorrectly autofill fields and generate passwords when editing Test Options in Blackboard Learn. LastPass suggests editing settings for Blackboard in your LastPass vault if you encounter this issue:

Go to lastpass.com and log in.
Go to Passwords
Hover over Blackboard tile and click wrench icon to edit settings
Click Advanced Settings to expand
Check box for Disable Autofill

RESOLVED – Known Issue: Blackboard Ally Degraded Performance

February 2nd, 2022
in Known Issues

Update 02/18/2022 10 a.m.: Blackboard has resolved this issue.

CIT has learned that Blackboard is monitoring an issue with Blackboard Ally for LMS that was preventing the processing of new content added to Learn courses. The issue has been addressed, but delays may continue until February 4.

From Blackboard:

Ally – US-EAST-1 – Degraded Performance

Monitoring – Processing of new content has been restored with some delays. We anticipate these queued items to be processed by February 4th, 2022.
Feb 2, 10:55 EST

Identified – Processing of new content has been restored with some delays. Our teams continue to work on restoring services to normal operations.
Feb 1, 17:05 EST

Investigating – We are currently investigating an issue with Ally in the Americas (excluding Canada) that is preventing the processing of new content added to Learn courses. All other Ally capabilities remain functional. Please follow status.blackboard.com for updates.
Feb 1, 14:22 EST

Blackboard Incident Report: Ally – US-EAST-1 – Degraded Performance

Real-time information about Blackboard status, as well as updates about scheduled maintenance and past incidents, is available on the Blackboard status page.

Blackboard Developer Portal Critical Maintenance

February 2nd, 2022
in Announcements

CIT has been informed that Blackboard will perform critical maintenance tonight, Wed., Feb. 2, 11:00 p.m. – 12:00 a.m. Central. This maintenance could affect the availability and/or performance of some Blackboard Learn Integrations and third-party tools.

From Blackboard:

Due to an unprecedented increase in usage, Blackboard will be performing database scaling to improve performance for the Developer Portal (https://developer.blackboard.com).

Start Time: Thursday, February 03, 2022 12:00 AM EST (Eastern Standard Time) UTC/GMT -5 hours
End Time: Thursday, February 03, 2022 1:00 AM EST (Eastern Standard Time) UTC/GMT -5 hours

Customers will experience no availability to the Developer Portal during the maintenance window. All LTI 1.3 and RESTful integrations will be unavailable during this window.

This database scaling is expected to take an hour or less.

Real-time information about Blackboard status, as well as updates about scheduled maintenance and past incidents, is available on the Blackboard status page.

RESOLVED – Known Issue: Student Viewing Turnitin Submission Error

January 31st, 2022
in Known Issues

Update 02/11/2022 10 a.m.: CIT has resolved this issue. Users may need to clear cache and cookies to apply the change. If the issue persists, contact cit@ua.edu.

Students may receive an error message (filesys.err.dir.attempt) when attempting to view Turnitin submissions from My Grades. Until this issue is resolved, papers can be viewed from the assignment link.

Workaround:

Navigate to the Turnitin assignment in your Blackboard course.
Click on the View/Complete link.
In the Turnitin interface, click the View button next to your submission.

This allows students to view their submission and any instructor feedback.

Blackboard Collaborate Scheduled Maintenance – February 10

January 27th, 2022
in Announcements

From Blackboard:

Collaborate (US) Impacting Maintenance Feb 10, 02:00-06:00 EST

Blackboard will be deploying our Collaborate v22.02 release to the US region (https://us.bbcollab.com), hosted in AWS (US – Virginia): us-east-1.

Start Time:
Thursday, February 10, 2022 2:00 AM EST (Eastern Standard Time) UTC/GMT -5 hours

End Time:
Thursday, February 10, 2022 6:00 AM EST (Eastern Standard Time) UTC/GMT -5 hours

Collaborate customers will experience intermittent availability during the maintenance window. For more information, please refer to: Collaborate Version 22.02 Release

Posted on Jan 27, 11:47 EST

Real-time information about Blackboard status, as well as updates about scheduled maintenance and past incidents, is available on the Blackboard status page.

Instructional Technology News – January 21, 2022

January 21st, 2022
in -Instructional Technology News

Hello instructors,

Melissa from The Center for Instructional Technology here! I hope your semester is off to a successful and healthy start. I have a few updates to share.

New Support Portal

CIT is thrilled to share our new online support portal is now live! Members of the UA community are encouraged to use the portal to submit an instructional technology help request, report an instructional technology outage, request a third-party product’s integration with Blackboard Learn, or get instant answers to frequently asked questions. The portal is the best way to request help from CIT, as we are currently experiencing high call volumes and are unable to assist walk-in visitors at this time.

Panopto Support

Panopto offers 24/7 support for UA instructors and students. Contact Panopto directly at support@panopto.com or 855-765-2341. Answers to frequently asked questions are available on the Panopto Support website.

Instructional Technology Updates

Several CIT-supported products recently received updates. Here are a few highlights:

Blackboard Ally – Ally now supports Instructor Feedback for WYSIWYG content, enabling instructors and other course content creators to get real-time feedback in the course content editor.
Hypothesis Blackboard Groups integration – UA instructors may now create small reading groups using Blackboard’s built-in Groups functionality. This provides more flexibility to build and manage your own student reading groups.
Panopto January 2022 Product & Service Update – January’s update brought many additions and enhancements to Panopto at UA. Headline features include video reference copies, more discussion notification options, audio descriptions, student video submissions in Blackboard, and more.

Author: Dr. Rachel Thompson

Author: Dr. Rachel Thompson

Midterm grades due March 4 at midnight

Introducing the Instructional Technology knowledge base

Blackboard Learn: Automatic cleanup of user-created archive and export packages

News from OIT

We’re here to help

Learning ePortfolios in the Classroom: A Panel

New Courses in Blackboard Learn Course List

Midterm grades due March 4 at midnight

CIT Door Hangers

LastPass and Blackboard Test Options

News from OIT

We’re here to help

New Support Portal

Panopto Support

Instructional Technology Updates

News from OIT

We’re here to help