Tag: Adobe Creative Cloud

January 4– Instructor News from the Center for Instructional Technology

Faculty Prep Days 

IT’S TIME! Time to get your Spring courses polished and ready to go. CIT is here and ready to offer technical assistance, pedagogical assistance, a quiet space, moral support, and coffee and yummies! Come see us!  

CIT will be joined by representatives from OIT Security, Research Computing, and Audio Visual Solutions classroom support to answer your questions. Space will be available to help you focus and prepare your course for the semester. 

Friday, Jan 6, 9-11AM and 2-4PM 

Monday, Jan 9, 9-11AM and 2-4PM 

Gordon Palmer Hall, Room A232 

CIT Faculty Prep Days Need assistance setting up your course(s) for Spring Semester? We can help! Drop By the CIT for instructional technology guidance. Our doors will be open and refreshments will be served. Friday, Jan 6, 9-11AM and 2-4PM. Monday, Jan 9, 9-11AM and 2-4PM. Gordon Palmer Hall, Room A232. cit.ua.edu

Start of Semester How-Tos   

Instructional Tech Changes and Announcements 

Qualtrics now requires Duo 

Duo is now required to access Qualtrics accounts. Users will receive a Duo prompt after logging in with myBama credentials at Qualtrics.ua.edu. For more information about Duo, visit OIT’s Duo two-factor authentication page. 

No More People.Ua.Edu Sites for Graduate Students 

Effective January 1, 2023, new People.ua.edu sites will no longer be created for graduate students. All existing site owners who are graduate students will be contacted in early 2023 about their next steps. UA offers two alternative solutions: Adobe Portfolio (part of Adobe Creative Cloud) and Microsoft Sway (part of Microsoft 365 Education). Both products are available to all UA staff, faculty, and students. 

  • Adobe Portfolio is part of Adobe Cloud which provides several apps and services. Get started with your site by visiting Adobe Creative Cloud. Log in using your UA credentials. Look on the left side panel and you will see Portfolio. Alternately, you can go directly to Adobe Portfolio and login using your UA credentials. There are tutorials available through Adobe and OIT. 
  • Microsoft Sway is part of Microsoft 365 Education which includes many applications for work essentials, collaboration, organization, and even apps for fun. Visit OIT’s Microsoft 365 Education page to access MS Sway. Tutorials and training can be found at Microsoft 365 Training. 

Ultra Course View Pilot Continues 

Instructors interested in teaching with Ultra Course View in an upcoming academic term should submit a request via the CIT portal: Blackboard Learn Ultra LIVE Course Pilot Request 

Turnitin Class Expiration – Known Issue 

When a Turnitin Feedback Studio (TFS) assignment is created in a Blackboard Learn course, Turnitin automatically assigns a default class expiration date as 6 months in the future, or the latest TFS assignment due date in the course, whichever is farther away. When the Turnitin class expires, students can no longer submit papers or access TFS activities.  To extend the Turnitin class expiration date, make a new Turnitin assignment with due dates that match the last date when students should be able to view the TFS assignments and tools for the course. For more information visit Turnitin Assignment Settings. 

Supe Store Access Granted changes + social annotation tools 

Access Granted’s primary vendor is changing from RedShelf to VitalSource for Spring 2023. Links to VitalSource in Blackboard Learn courses may now be labeled Access Granted. With permission from Academic Affairs, a SupeStore support user may access Fall and Spring courses in Blackboard as a Course Builder. This means the user will have access to edit existing RedShelf and VitalSource links to reflect the correct information. This user will not have access to student submissions or grades. 

This change enables the creation of Hypothesis assignments in Blackboard using documents from VitalSource’s extensive collection of texts and ebooks. In CIT’s Knowledge Base article, Hypothesis & Access Granted e-books, you can learn to:   

  • Access VitalSource 
  • Find the VitalSource bookshelf URL of the text you will be assigning 
  • Create Hypothesis assignments in your Blackboard course 

Cleaning Out Older Blackboard Courses 

Academic courses in Blackboard Learn are subject to removal two (2) years following the end of the semester in which they are taught per UA’s LMS Course Retention Policy. Courses taught prior to Fall 2020 are now eligible for removal. Instructors should save any needed course content or student grades. Students should save any necessary coursework as well. Non-academic courses, referred to as non-integrated courses, are subject to removal following two (2) years of inactivity. Steps to save content are linked below. 

More information on the policy and instructions for backing up Blackboard content are available in the LMS Course Retention Policy FAQ. 

Upcoming Learning Opportunities 

Jan 5, 11:00-12:00 – Get Started with Gradescope  

Learn how you can use Gradescope to deliver and grade all your assignments, whether online or in person. The Gradescope team will walk you through how to cut down on time spent grading and get a clear picture of how your students are doing in your courses. Register at  https://info.gradescope.com/noa-workshops 

Jan 6, 12:00-12:30 pm – Annotation starter assignments with Hypothesis 

This workshop is ideal for instructors who are interested in using social annotation in their courses but aren’t exactly sure how to provide guidance to students. Registration is required.  

Jan 10, 10:00-11:30 – People.ua.edu 

Create a professional faculty website using People.ua.edu. Pre-registration is required at http://people.ua.edu. 

Jan 10, 1:00-2:00 – Flip 

Explore the features inside Flip and learn how to level up the ways your scholars communicate and share their learning. Registration is NOT required. Join us on Zoom. 

Jan 11, 11:00-12:00 – Hypothesis: Make the Most of the Margins  

Learn how to make reading active, visible and social, create community in the classroom by fostering peer-to-peer knowledge sharing, give students agency over their own learning. Registration is required. 

As always, we are available Monday-Friday, 8:00-4:45 to assist you. We wish you all the best in 2023 and look forward to working with you soon. 

Instructional Technology News – September 14

Attend Adobe Day, tweak your Blackboard Learn notifications, get started with Gradescope and Hypothesis, and more.

Adobe Day

Make plans to attend Adobe Day on Friday, September 17, in Gorgas Library. Guest presenters and panelists from across campus will dive into new Adobe offerings that utilize some of the most exciting trends in emerging technology: interactive design, on-the-go video storytelling, and more. Adobe Creative Cloud is available to all UA students, faculty, and staff.

Blackboard Learn

Notifications when and where you need them

In case you missed it, Blackboard Learn recently moved to the cloud! With the move came a new look and feature set, Blackboard Ultra Base Navigation. One of our favorite things about the new way to interact with Blackboard content is the Activity Stream, which captures activity across all your courses. The Activity Stream page is also where you can specify the types of activities for which you’d like to receive notifications (institution announcements, new messages, new gradable items, etc.) and how the notifications are delivered (Activity Stream page, email, SMS, push).

myBama logout troubleshooting

If you are getting logged out of Blackboard Learn when you access it via myBama, try closing the myBama tab after accessing Learn or logging into Blackboard Learn directly.

Heard about Hypothesis?

Whether you’re teaching with digital texts, news, blogs, journal articles, legislation, or other digital documents, you and your students can use Hypothesis to annotate course readings collaboratively.


Students in an edX course using Hypothesis to annotate a Wikipedia page

Here are some resources to help you get started with Hypothesis:

Getting started with Gradescope

Gradescope helps you administer and grade all of your assessments, whether on paper, online, or both. Using Gradescope, instructors can apply detailed feedback with just one click; make rubric changes that apply to previously graded work; see question and rubric-level statistics to understand better what students know; and easily export grades and data. In addition, Gradescope works well for various answer types: paragraphs, proofs, diagrams, fill-in-the-blanks, multiple-choice and more.


Gradescope grading interface for a sample question and submission, showing the student submission on the left, the rubric on the right, and navigation actions at the bottom

Visit our website for additional information about Gradescope and steps for adding it to your Blackboard course.

Voicethread is out, Flipgrid is in

UA has transitioned to Flipgrid as our video discussion and collaboration tool. Flipgrid offers a modern, fun, and accessible video discussion option for UA instructors and students, ideal for engaging students asynchronously. If you previously used VoiceThread for recorded lectures, you can export that content, upload it into Panopto, then share it as a link in Flipgrid:  How to Export VoiceThread Content

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. You can reach us at cit@ua.edu or 205-348-3532. Join us at an upcoming webinar or schedule a consultation with us.

Want more updates from us? Subscribe to our news updates and follow us on FacebookTwitter, and YouTube.