This summer, UMBC takes Blackboard to the cloud. Summer courses will be hosted in a separate environment while we prepare for the migration of our main site. Here are seven important things to remember during the migration.
(1) Export & Import Content
Since summer courses are on a separate site, you will need to export your content from our main Blackboard site and import to your summer course shell in the cloud. Please review the FAQs for more information or open an RT ticket for support.
(2) Third Party Integrations
The summer environment supports all current integrations with some differences because it is separate from our main site.
Clicker students will need to synchronize their devices and Turning Technologies accounts through the summer Blackboard site. If/when students use clickers again, they will need to repeat this process to re-associate the devices and accounts on the main Blackboard site after the migration.
If your class participates in the Course Materials Initiative, you can add the book link directly into your summer course shell or contact the bookstore for support.
If you use a publisher integration such as McGraw-Hill Connect, Cengage Mindtap, etc., please contact your publisher’s technical integration specialists for support.
(3) Improved Bb Collaborate Dashboard
A new Bb Collaborate dashboard in your course allows you to schedule sessions, assign roles, and view reports. Please review the FAQs for important information about these improvements and configuration updates such as setting browser cookies.
(4) SafeAssign
Your summer courses cannot reference UMBC’s existing SafeAssign archive since the Blackboard sites exist on separate servers; fortunately, the tool will continue to check submissions against the ProQuest ABI Inform database and the internet.
As a workaround, you may log into UMBC’s Blackboard site before or after the downtime to use SafeAssign’s Direct Submit tool to upload an archive (*.zip) of submissions to SafeAssign for (a) processing for plagiarism and/or (b) archiving to the institutional database.
(5) Use Box for Media & Large Files
Please use UMBC Box or Google Drive to host all multimedia and any large files.
Large files (e.g., 500+ MB) cannot be uploaded to the new Blackboard cloud environment and multimedia will cause performance issues. Therefore, you should NOT upload any multimedia files (audio, video, narrated PowerPoints, etc.) to Blackboard.
TIP: Download all of your course files from your course’s Content Collection, then remove large files and multimedia from your course before exporting. In the process, you might also discover unnecessary duplicates from repeated imports or course copies, which impacts your course quota. Removing these files will improve your course’s performance.
(6) Course Retirement
During the summer of 2016, Blackboard archived our complete site, which saved individually backed-up copies of every course and organization through SP2016. As previously announced, courses from AY12-13 and AY13-14 will be retired during the cloud migration. Organizations larger than 2.5 GB will also be retired.
You can export (course content) and/or archive (course content & student data) your courses. You should also download a copy of your grade book. We recommend saving these files to your UMBC Box account to ensure long-term access in the event you change computer systems.
(7) Essential Downtime
UMBC’s primary Blackboard site has a lot of content and data to preserve, and moving all of this takes time. As such, we will be offline for up to 7 days during the summer transition. We have identified June 30 - July 8, 2017 as the downtime period. Since the summer Blackboard site is separate from our primary Bb site, summer courses will not experience any disruption. However, please make sure you have your summer content exported before the downtime.
For more information about the cloud migration, please review DoIT’s Bb migration FAQ for complete details about:
As always, if you have any questions, please consider the following options:
Follow the Instructional Technology & DoIT myUMBC groups
Request a consult with instructional technology staff
Thank you for your patience while we bring you a better Blackboard experience!
]]>Faculty who plan to use clickers for instruction during the Fall 2017 semester will need to have device order(s) submitted to the Bookstore no later than Monday, April 24.
This deadline allows the Bookstore to shop national wholesalers early
for used books and items, prepare for buyback, avoid sending back to
publishers leftover stock that will be reused next semester, and notify
faculty of any availability problems. "University policy dictates that summer and fall 2017 textbook adoptions should by submitted by April 24 to permit compliance with the USM Board of Regents policy".
There are three options for submitting your request(s):
1. Online System
2. Email
3. Paper Form
Please refer to the Bookstore's site for more information and instructions applicable to each these options. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the UMBC bookstore at textbook@umbc.edu or 410-455-2699.
To learn more about the clickers:
visit our Clicker FAQ page
open an RT Ticket for any technical issues
In recent years, the Office of Institutional Research and Decision Support (IRADS) has installed or built a nifty set of “bird’s eye view” reports about teaching & learning in the campus’ Report Exchange (REX) data warehouse that any instructor might find useful. These include but are not limited to various campus-wide Blackboard usage reports such as the following:
Blackboard
Bb Learn Course Use By College (shows Bb use by students across campus)
Bb Instructor At A Glance (shows overall use for each instructor’s courses)
Student At A Glance (shows individual student activity across all Bb courses)
Grade Comparison and Distribution
Similarly, the following "summary level" REX reports could be interesting to instructors who want to benchmark their own courses with peers from any discipline or department across campus:
Course to Course - Grade Comparison (inspired by Dr. Hrabowski's definition of student success: "not only passing a course but also the next one that requires it.").*
Outcomes After Course Completion (includes retention and graduation)
Grade Distribution by Organization (by college and campus-wide).
Courses by DFW Rate and Average Grade (by course view only)
Most Popular REX Reports (see what reports others are using)
The aggregate data these summary REX reports provide could provide useful context for understanding any course, but by default, none of them will have “drill to detail” student ID information.
Background
UMBC faculty may recall that DoIT used to publish a list of most active Blackboard courses for every term. However, we discontinued this after Spring 2013, when we completed our transition to Blackboard’s Analytics for Learn (A4L) product that UMBC’s own experience helped influence. A4L reports for students and faculty are now embedded in every Blackboard course (see Control Panel → Evaluation → Analytics), but there is still nothing that provides a “bird’s eye view” of Bb usage across campus -- except the Bb Learn Use by College Report mentioned above.
Why might this be important? Increasingly, UMBC and other institutions are looking at institutional Learning Management Systems (LMS) like Blackboard as a real-time indicator or even predictor of student engagement, not just a static content repository of syllabi and powerpoint presentations. If so, then understanding effective design of LMS courses -- as measured, in part, by students’ use of them -- could be helpful as well.
Accessing REX
Until recently, access to REX itself was granted “upon request,” so one might first want to know what lies beyond the login screen before doing so. However, the summary reports above offer a sneak peek at what REX can do, and are now available to any instructor with access to the PeopleSoft advising system by default.**
To request more granular, drill-to-detail REX access, visit rex.umbc.edu/rex-access. For more information about learning analytics at UMBC, see this "Course Analytics" FAQ or visit doit.umbc.edu/analytics.Building on prior learning analytics research at UMBC, DoIT's John Fritz has co-authored "Learning Analytics Research for LMS Course Design: Two Studies" in the current issue of Educause Review Online.
The two studies focus on complementary findings from a sample of 1,530 courses in Fritz' 2016 dissertation, and a sample of 70k Blackboard courses hosted by Blackboard itself. A key takeaway is the importance of the Blackboard grade center, which DoIT has recently been studying as well.
For more information about learning analytics at UMBC, see http://doit.umbc.edu/analytics.
Sophia Haire has joined the Instructional Technology team as the new Turning Technologies Clicker Intern for the Spring 2017 semester. Sophia is a senior Center for Women in Technology (CWIT) scholar majoring in computer science and mathematics, and minoring in sociology. Sophia will be supporting UMBC faculty and students with the use of clickers. Her main tasks will be to respond to RT tickets, develop a self-paced clicker training course on Blackboard, and conduct clicker workshops.
Sophia has served in several capacities during her time here at UMBC, including being a grader for MATH 215 and a learning assistant for PHYS 122. Post-graduation, she will be starting an internship with AmeriCorps in Minneapolis teaching basic digital literacy skills to vulnerable populations seeking employment. Following her internship, Sophia plans to pursue a graduate degree in applied sociology to help nonprofit organizations tailor their services to their populations more effectively.
If you would like to contact Sophia for assistance with clickers, please submit an RT ticket.
Welcome to the team Sophia!
Update from 2/1/18 Blackboard Analytics Symposium: Using Bb Predict and UMBC's FYI alert program together is more accurate than using either service alone.
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Recent high profile articles in both the Baltimore Sun and the New York Times have highlighted the important and growing role of analytics in higher education. UMBC in particular is working to develop accurate means to predict and subsequently support student academic success. Of particular interest is faculty and student Blackboard (Bb) Grade Center use.
Based on a pilot project looking at UMBC Bb data for the past two years, it is possible to predict with 83% accuracy whether or not a student will earn a C or better in any given course before the term begins using prior academic and demographic characteristics. By the start of week 4, however, student grades in a Bb course become the most important predictor throughout the remainder of the term. The model was developed using an 80% random sample of all UMBC Bb courses, tested against the remaining 20%, and included several demographic and academic factors. It was 83% accurate thru week 3, 87% accurate by week 4, and 93% accurate by week 12 (final 20% of a 15-week term).
These findings echo prior research on first year students in UMBC Bb courses. Specifically, when viewing student activity and if faculty enabled the Grade Center, students were up to two and a half times more likely to earn a C or better in Bb courses that used the Grade Center compared to courses that did not. The highest student activity and Grade Center interaction effect occurred among Freshmen (1). These findings also complement research by the Educause Center for Applied Research (ECAR) that students value faculty use of the grade center more than any other LMS function (2). Finally, a recent Bb study found that students’ frequent checking their grades online was highly predictive of their course success (3).
By increasing the use of of the Grade Center, faculty can enhance students’ potential for self-efficacy while furthering the effectiveness of systematic efforts to enhance student engagement.
(1) Fritz, J. L. (2016). Using analytics to encourage student responsibility for learning and identify course designs that help (Ph.D.). University of Maryland, Baltimore County, United States -- Maryland. Retrieved from http://umbc.box.com/johnfritzdissertation, pp. 168-169.
(2) Caruso, J., & Salaway, G. (2007). The ECAR study of undergraduate students and information technology, 2007 (Key Findings) (pp. 1–15). Educause Center for Applied Research. Retrieved from https://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ers0706/ekf0706.pdf.
(3) Young, J. (2016, September 7). What Clicks From 70,000 Courses Reveal About Student Learning. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from http://www.chronicle.com/article/What-Clicks-From-70000/237704/
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