News


Gradescope User Summit 2021

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:…


Unavailable assignments/tests do not show in My Grades on Blackboard Mobile App

When accessing My Grades as a student in the Blackboard app, assignments, tests, discussion boards, etc will not show if they are made unavailable.The points awarded for the Test still count toward the student’s total grade. When accessing My Grades from a web browser, the student can view their grade, attempt, and written feedback from the instructor…


Instructional Tech News – March 30

Faculty Roundtable – A Year in Review  Join the CIT for a faculty roundtable to share your experiences teaching in the 2020-2021 academic year. Let’s learn from one another. What worked? What didn’t? Share strategies that you successfully implemented in the classroom – whatever that looked like for you. Join us to share it all;…


Collaborate Ultra Maintenance: 4/8 1-5 AM CDT

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…


Important Respondus Monitor Announcement

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…


Resolved: Delays with prescheduled messages in Blackboard due to time change

3/16 @ 11:21 AM CDT – Currently there is an issue with prescheduled messages being sent an hour later than expected due to the time change. Messages appear to be sending at the correct time in the user interface but actual delivery is delayed by one hour. The Development team is working towards a resolution.…


Resolved: Emergency Turnitin Maintenance

Turnitin is currently undergoing Emergency Maintenance. The Turnitin integration in Blackboard may be intermittent or inaccessible during this period. See more about the status of this issue: https://turnitin.statuspage.io/incidents/36xnw1xg8smx Update 1:28 PM CST 3/12: Emergency Maintenance is complete. For all customers using Turnitin Feedback Studio, we have restored the ability to submit papers and view similarity…


Resolved: Users Unable to Submit or View Similarity Reports in Turnitin

Turnitin users are currently experiencing an unexpected service disruption when viewing similarity/originality reports. During this time, users  may find they are unable to make a submission or view their Similarity Report.  For updates on this Turnitin issue: https://turnitin.statuspage.io/incidents/1kg2yx4bffn6 Resolved by Turnitin March 1 – Reported outage duration, March 1 9:00 am – 1:00 pm CST


Instructional Tech News – March 1, 2021

Midterm Grades due March 5 at Midnight Midterm grades are due 3/5 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 Info Importing Final and Midterm Grades from Blackboard into MyBama Assigning Non-Attendance Grade Reason…


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