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Instructional Technology News – February 18, 2022

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

  • 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.

We’re here to help

Your colleagues in The Center for Instructional Technology provide training, support, workshops, webinars, and consultations for UA’s instructional technologies and technology accessibility. Submit a help request or join us at an upcoming webinar.

Want more updates from CIT? Subscribe to our news updates and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.

Known Issue: Lastpass and Blackboard Test Options

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

RESOLVED – Known Issue: Blackboard Ally Degraded Performance

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

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

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:
  1. Navigate to the Turnitin assignment in your Blackboard course.
  2. Click on the View/Complete link.
  3. 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

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

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:

News from OIT

We’re here to help

Your colleagues in The Center for Instructional Technology provide training, support, workshops, webinars, and consultations for UA’s instructional technologies and technology accessibility. Submit a help request or join us at an upcoming webinar.

Want more updates from CIT? Subscribe to our news updates and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.

RESOLVED – Known Issue: Blackboard Learn Panopto login error

Update 01/16/2022 11 a.m.: CIT has applied a settings change to resolve this issue. Users may need to clear cache and cookies to apply the change. If the issue persists, contact cit@ua.edu.

CIT has learned that, in some Spring 2022 courses, users receive a login prompt when accessing the Panopto Videos tool (Course Videos in the Course Menu):

Dialog prompting UA users to sign into Panopto with their Blackboard credentials

For these users, attempts to login may be unsuccessful, leading to error messages or login “loops.”

We are working with Panopto Support to resolve the issue. In the meantime, Panopto users may create, access, and share videos through the UA Panopto site.

Panopto support is available over the holiday weekend:

Panopto 24/7 support
support@panopto.com
855-765-2341

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

RESOLVED – Known Issue: Demo Student view not available in some Blackboard Learn courses

Update 01/27/2022 12:15 p.m.: Demo Student users have been enabled across UA’s Blackboard Learn production environment (ualearn.blackboard.com).

CIT has learned that, in some Spring 2022 courses, the demo user or Student View is not functioning correctly. Instructors who receive an error or encounter other issues when attempting to access Student View or the Demo Student should email cit@ua.edu and include their myBama username and course number and section where the issue has occurred. CIT can re-enable the demo user.

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

Known Issue: Panopto for Windows and Remote Recorder downloads flagged by antivirus software

Downloads of Panopto for Windows and the Remote Recorder may temporarily be flagged by antivirus software.

On January 8, 2022, Panopto renewed its code signing certificate for Panopto for Windows and the Remote Recorder. Due to this update, users may receive warnings from Windows Defender or other antivirus applications that downloaded installers are unrecognized. These warnings will disappear within a few weeks of the release as the installers become generally recognized. Please refer to this support article for additional details: Learn About Panopto’s Code Signing Certificate

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