Last April, DoIT announced that faculty and staff with elevated Peoplesoft access would be required to use Duo two-factor authentication. We've since worked to enroll nearly 2,500 faculty and staff members into Duo. In the last week alone, Duo protected over 20,000 individual logins to campus resources like myUMBC and Peoplesoft.

Continuing our efforts to keep the campus safe online, DoIT will be requiring all remaining faculty to enroll in Duo by November 19th.

Duo 2-factor authentication (2FA) greatly increases the security of your account by adding an extra layer of protection to the login procedure. With Duo 2FA, your account will require you to have a second-factor device physically unique to you, such as a smartphone, your office phone, or even a tablet in your possession to log in. When you log in, your second-factor device will prompt you to approve your online login. Without approval from your second-factor device, any fraudulent attempts to log into your account are denied, thus preventing anyone who shouldn't have access to your account from getting to your data.

To learn more about using Duo two-factor authentication, visit our Duo FAQ collection at https://my.umbc.edu/go/duo

If you have questions or concerns submit an RT ticket at my.umbc.edu/help or contact the Technology Support Center at (410) 455-3838.

One in four students take some of their courses online, and two-thirds do so at a public institution in the same state where they live (Allen, Seaman, Pouline, & Straut, 2016; Allen & Seaman, 2017). In early November, UMBC celebrates National Distance Learning Week (NDLW) with a series of lunchtime conversations. Topics include:

Hybrid or Online? Learn about the Alternate Delivery Program

• Monday, November 4 - Register Online 

Attend this information session to learn more about the Alternate Delivery Program. Ask specific questions related to the ADP Course Designer Track Call to Participate for Spring/Summer 2020. Previous ADP alumni will be on hand to share their experiences!

Universal Design for Learning, Accessible Content & Bb Ally

• Tuesday, November 5 - Register Online

The principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) promote the approach that everyone -- with and without disabilities -- can benefit from accessible course materials. Learn about the key foundational concepts of UDL and what tools are available at UMBC to make your course materials more accessible to students.

Does Your Bb Course Spark Joy? Go Ultra!

• Wednesday, November 6 - Register Online 

Marie Kondo's tidying up method applies to more than just our homes -- we can apply it to our course designs as well. Join our faculty, instructional technology staff, and instructional designers to learn about sparking joy in your Blackboard courses with Ultra.

Lights, Camera, Action! Lecture Capture with Panopto

• Thursday, November 7 - Register Online 

Panopto is a lecture capture and video delivery system that lets faculty easily create online videos for their classes. Learn how to start using Panopto to record lectures and tutorials, embed active learning, create student video assignments, and support a flipped classroom.

Open Educational Resources Support Student Access, Equity

• Friday, November 8 - Register Online 

A recent faculty survey of OER usage at UMBC revealed that many want to know how to find, evaluate, and use openly licensed course materials to increase student access and reduce textbook costs. We wrap up National Distance Learning Week with a focus on Open Educational Resources: Learn about OER use cases, resources, professional development, and talk with faculty who have adopted OERs. Stay after the lunchtime panel to see a demo of the Maryland Open Source Textbook (MOST) Initiative to discover how faculty can find easy-to-adopt, high-quality OER. 

Please RSVP: A light lunch will be provided for in-person sessions.

Can't make these National Distance Learning Week sessions? Try these virtual events!

The History of National Distance Learning Week and the U.S. Distance Learning Association

• Monday, November 4, 2019 from 11 AM - 12 PM EST
• Register Online

Microlearning in the World of Distance Learning

• Monday, November 4, 2019 from 3 - 4 PM EST
• Register Online 

The DoIT Technology Support Center is looking to hire additional consultants to work during the Fall semester and beyond. Please see our job description below and visit our job posting on UMBCWorks to apply. (Search for TSC Student Consultant.) The application will be open until October 25th.

We're specifically looking for students available to work during the following hours:

•  Monday 10AM-4PM
• Tuesday 8AM-2:30PM
• Wednesday 8-10AM; 12-4PM
• Thursday 10AM-8PM
• Friday 9:30AM-2PM

TSC Student Consultant Job Description

Technology Support Center (TSC) student consultants are the first points of technical contact for the UMBC community and those who do well often go on to work in other areas of the Division of Information Technology (DoIT). Minimally, consultants are expected to provide initial triage and support for a wide range of information technologies including accounts, hardware, instructional technologies, networking, software, telecommunications, and basic web development.

Responsibilities include, but are not limited to the following:

• Provide technical assistance to users by phone, online and in person;
• Answer TSC phones in a professional and courteous manner;
• Create, update and resolve tickets in the Request Tracker (RT) ticketing system;
• Create, update, suggest and recommend relevant FAQ articles to users (www.umbc.edu/faq);
• Provide direct assistance to users on technical issues they cannot easily resolve on their own;
• Complete in-person or online training about quality support as defined in umbc.edu/go/ticketrubric;
• Respond to all work-related communications in a timely manner;
• Escalate urgent problems to the Full-Time staff, as appropriate.

Required Skills and Experience

• Demonstrated ability to effectively communicate by phone or in person.
• Demonstrated writing ability.
• Demonstrated ability to achieve successful outcomes in handling difficult situations and customers.
• Demonstrated analytical and troubleshooting skills.
• Ability & willingness to learn coupled with a clear understanding of one’s technical abilities, so as to triage and escalate an issue that leads to an effective solution for the user.

At approximately 5:30pm, DoIT staff became aware of a potential outage with our instance Blackboard Learn. System admins immediately investigated the reports and opened a ticket with Blackboard support.

At 5:40pm, DoIT staff confirmed that multiple Blackboard SaaS clients are experiencing the same outage. Blackboard network engineers are working on the issue. 

We apologize for any inconvenience this outage may cause faculty and students, and look forward to our instance coming back online as soon as possible. 

This post will be updated with additional information as we receive it.

UPDATES

6:50 PM - Our instance is online and users can log in, but you may receive a 502 error. We've reported this to Blackboard.

6:55 PM - Our site appears to be rendering properly for users after logging in, but may be slow to load. Please be patient while the cloud hosting repopulates network connections.

7:10 PM - The Institution page is not appearing, which is consistent with other universities using cloud hosting. UMBC users will land on the Activity Stream when first logging into Blackboard until this issue is resolved.

8:00 PM - The Institution page is restored. All Blackboard systems appear to be functioning normally. Thank you for your patience.

As previously announced, Blackboard courses from AY14-15 and AY15-16 will be retired from our active production site by the end of January 2020. 

The Blackboard system’s overall performance and efficiency will improve by removing older files and database transactions from the content server and database. This course retirement includes the following terms:

• Any courses older than five years

• Fall 2014

• Winter 2015

• Spring 2015

• Summer 2015

• Fall 2015

• Winter 2016

• Spring 2016

• Summer 2016

As of FA2019, we began a new academic year of data retention (AY19-20). Additionally, AY16-17, AY17-18, and AY18-19 will remain on the server. However, any remaining organizations that are 2.5 GB in size or larger will also be retired or content migrated to Google Drive. New communities may be requested.

Is my content gone forever?

No. As previously completed during previous terms, Blackboard archived our complete site during the SU2019. Archived Bb courses capture all course data, files, student submissions, discussions, grades, etc. through SP2019. These archives will reside on a secure drive with the Division of Information Technology.

Can I save a copy of my own courses?

Yes -- and we certainly encourage it. Instructors canexport (course content) and/or archive (course content & student data) their courses. You should alsodownload a copy of your grade book. We recommend saving these files to your Google Drive to ensure long-term access in the event you change computer systems.

How long will you keep the retired courses?

We will keep the retired courses for 2 years after Blackboard archives the courses. Faculty who may need content beyond 2 years should plan to save copies of their exported courses to Google Drive.

As always, if you have any questions, please consider the following options:

• Check our extensive FAQ collection
• Open a ticket via RT
• Follow the Instructional Technology & DoIT myUMBC groups
• Request a consult with a member of the instructional technology team

Calculating the grade on an Ultra tests becomes more flexible in the October update when the partial points feature is introduced. When creating a question in an assessment, instructors can enter values with up to two numbers after the decimal in the Points field. 

In the October update to Ultra, a quiz question can be worth 2.5 points or 0.5 points. If an assessment does not have individual questions, the overall point value can include up to two points after the decimal -- for example, an assignment can be worth 75.5 points.

When assignments require students to submit files, it's time-consuming for instructors to download each individual submission to grade it, especially in large courses. After the October update, instructors can download files from the Ultra gradebook or from the submissions list page with the Download all option. Instructors can then choose whether to download all or select specific submissions. Instructors receive an email and a course message when the ZIP file is ready to download to their computers.

Collaborate receives an updated this month as well, increasing the emoji options for non-verbal engagement and supporting video share through a Chrome browser tab. Additional Ultra updates this month include regrading question pools and the ability to remove attendance columns in the gradebook from a copied course. 

The next Blackboard Learn update will be posted to our test site around October 15th and pushed to production around November 7th. Faculty who are interested in test driving new features before they are released to production should open an RT ticket to request early access. 

As always, if you have any questions, please consider the following options:

• Check our extensive FAQ collection 
• What’s new in Ultra? | Known Issues 
• Open a ticket via RT
• Follow the Instructional Technology & DoIT myUMBC groups
• Sign up for a webinar & other training 
• Request a consult with instructional technology staff
• Review your course content with Ally