A new feedback tool in Blackboard allows faculty to embed short audio or video messages to students about their submissions through the grade center.

Students can then watch or listen to feedback while reading additional written text or reviewing completed rubrics. When paired with text feedback, audio or video recordings may help provide students with useful, actionable, and more personal feedback regarding their assignments.

Feedback messages may be recorded for up to five minutes for most graded items in a course, but are not yet supported in rubrics themselves. The feedback tool is available for both original and Ultra courses. For more information about how to use the new tool, please review the FAQ.

NOTE: The feedback tool does not yet support captioning. As with any multimedia tool, instructors should provide alternate formats to meet accessibility requirements. For more information, please contact the Office of Student Disability Services in person in the Math/Psychology Building, Room 212 (accessible via elevator), by phone at 410-455-2459, or by email at disAbility@umbc.edu.

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

• Check our extensive FAQ collection

• New Features | Known Issues | Updates & Fixes

• Open a ticket via RT

• Follow the Instructional Technology & DoIT myUMBC groups

• Request a consult with instructional technology staff

The DoIT Technology Support Center is looking to hire additional consultants to work during the Fall. Please see our job description below and visit our job posting on UMBCWorks to apply. (Search for TSC Student Consultant.)

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.

Andrew Gribben (pictured at right), Specialist in Undergraduate Admissions and Orientation, recently helped assist his colleagues in switching to Duo two-factor authentication as part of DoIT’s upcoming two-factor authentication requirement for faculty and staff with Peoplesoft access above “self-service” functions such as timesheets, etravel requests, etc.

Andrew demoed Duo during a staff meeting including having someone sign up in real time. He helped ease the transition to Duo by making himself available to walk staff through the sign-up process, as well as, answer any of their questions. When asked about what helped his group the most, Andrew says he targeted those who were skeptical or concerned before the rollout to the entire group. "This helped ensure a smoother process overall."

To help make sure your office’s rollout goes smoothly, Andrew and DoIT recommend the including the following to help your department’s rollout go smoothly:

• Demo Duo live to show not only how it works but how to sign up.

• Leverage the Duo FAQ collection to help users

• Send out email reminders encouraging users to sign up.

• Be available to offer 1 on 1 support to staff if necessary.

Once again, DoIT strongly encourages all faculty and staff to enable Duo 2FA now, but all employees with PeopleSoft access will be required to do so (staff by 12/31/18, faculty by 9/1/19). After these dates, DoIT will automatically enroll required employees into Duo. DoIT will also provide a “count-down” weekly reminder 90 days before the relevant deadline.

Click here to learn how to activate Duo today.

Additional information about Duo two-factor authentication is available in the FAQs.

If you have further questions, please contact the Technology Support Center by either submitting a support request at my.umbc.edu/help or calling (410) 455-3838.