Category Announcements

On Saturday, June 26 the Panopto Cloud will be updated with new features and improvements. The update will require up to 4 hours of downtime beginning at 8pm.

Blackboard will perform emergency data center maintenance on Wednesday, June 9. Two hours of downtime can be expected between the hours of 1:00am and 5:00am. Please contact cit@ua.edu if you have questions or need instructional technology assistance.

Blackboard Learn is moving to the cloud August 5 – 13. In August, UA’s instance of Blackboard Learn will move from being hosted in Blackboard’s data centers to being hosted in the cloud, a hosting strategy otherwise known as software as a service (SaaS). Moving to SaaS allows for flexibility, scalability, resilience and innovation. Flexibility…

Effective June 26 Internet Explorer 11 will no longer be supported by Panopto. This means that Panopto will no longer fix any issues that users experience while using Panopto on IE11. Users on IE11 will see a message requiring that they upgrade to Microsoft Edge, or another modern browser, in order to continue to use…

Zoom regularly updates its software with security enhancements and new features! In the latest release, Zoom offers enhanced screen annotation for Zoom meetings, whiteboard auto-shapes on Zoom’s mobile application, and more emoji options for meeting reactions. Another fun new feature: Immersive View. Be “together” with your class or colleagues, from a distance. Individuals can enable…

Save the Date, Aug. 5 – 13 Blackboard Learn is moving to the cloud! Blackboard Learn will be unavailable during the cloud migration. More information about the migration is available in our first announcement. Our teams are currently testing the platform, and we’re excited to release more information to you as it becomes available. Stay…

University of Alabama has a Gradescope license available for all faculty to use and is integrated with Blackboard Learn. If you aren’t yet using Gradescope to collect and grade assessments, we invite you to try it out in your courses. Gradescope recently hosted its Gradescope User Summit. Instructors presented on a variety of topics including:…

Blackboard will be deploying Collaborate Ultra v21.06 release to US (AWS Virginia). Collaborate Ultra customers will experience intermittent availability during the maintenance window, Thursday, April 8, 2021 1:00 AM CDT-Thursday, April 8, 2021 5:00 AM CDT. See release notes for new Collaborate Ultra features and upgrades, such as: See more students with Gallery view Whiteboard…

Dear colleagues, Due to concerns with Respondus Monitor’s facial detection functions, Respondus has disabled those functions for all UA users. While instructors will continue to see the face detection options in settings, they are turned off by default and cannot be enabled. Students will still be prompted to ensure proper camera positioning before starting the…

Blackboard Learn will be unavailable between 1 AM and 5 AM CST on Friday, March 5 for emergency data center maintenance. Please contact cit@ua.edu if you have questions or need instructional technology assistance.