The June update to Blackboard brings delegated grading to Ultra courses. Renamed “parallel marking” in Ultra, this feature is designed to minimize bias when paired with anonymous grading. Parallel marking is a valuable tool for high stakes assessments, allowing faculty to evaluate student submissions with two graders and reconcile the results for a final grade.

A new enhancement to the Courses page provides users with an option to view courses in list or grid mode. Stock images randomly display for each course card when grid mode is active. The banner image can be replaced by faculty who would prefer to personalize the course visual. While image does not yet appear in the Ultra course itself, it is an early step toward course personalization.

Other enhancements coming to Ultra on June 7 include:

• The Organizations page will provide better tools to access content including list and grid view, favorites, and filters. Leaders will be able to upload banner images to organization cards to personalize the community experience.

• During the SP2019 semester, the calendar tool was updated to allow sharing content with external services. In June, users can import external calendars, such as Google, to their Blackboard calendar.

As a separately hosted service, Collaborate will be updated about one week earlier. The June release will feature a session inactivity reminder. If attendees in a session are not active after a time, the session ends. This includes activity such as using audio, raising a hand, sharing content, and so on. Inactive attendees in the session see and hear a reminder that the session is open and will close in a minute before they are removed. Additionally, moderators will be able to share files with one or more breakout groups.

The next Blackboard Learn update will be posted to our test site around June 11th and pushed to production around July 11th. 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 | About Ultra

• Open a ticket via RT

• Follow the Instructional Technology & DoIT myUMBC groups

• Request a consult with instructional technology staff
• Review your course content with Ally

As part of the recent initiative to convert all staff to Duo (umbc.edu/go/duo), the Division of Information Technology (DoIT) will be automatically requiring Duo for new employees, starting Wednesday, June 5, 2019. This does not affect any current staff, who should already be enrolled, albeit manually by DoIT this past year. However, it does assure all future employees will be using an effective IT security practice.

Generally, this year’s rollout of Duo to all current staff went very smoothly, and our Technology Support Center (TSC) fielded fewer calls or tickets than expected. Similarly, while UMBC was the first to purchase Duo in the USM, both UMB and UMCP now require all faculty and staff to use Duo and experienced minimal issues. Accordingly, DoIT’s goal is for all current and future UMBC employees to be enrolled in Duo, which we’re close to having now.

Finally, DoIT wants to remind all faculty with PeopleSoft access (virtually all faculty) that they will be required to use Duo by Monday, September 30, 2019. Note: The original 9/1/19 deadline was revised to get past the hectic start of term and 10th day add/drop date.

Again, more information about Duo is available at umbc.edu/go/duo. If you have further questions, please contact the Technology Support Center by either submitting a support request atmy.umbc.edu/help or calling (410) 455-3838.

Using Open Educational Resources (OER) is not just about inexpensive textbook alternatives, it is about advancing student retention, grades, and graduation rates. Given UMBC’s Mission and Vision to “advance knowledge, economic prosperity, and social justice,” OER is a movement well situated to do just that.

With the OER movement declared by EDUCAUSE as a key strategic priority in 2019, and now one in ten faculty nationally reported as using OER, there is an increase in quality OER textbooks and course materials available to review and adopt.

In the recent Student Textbook and Course Materials Survey in Florida, researchers found that students used a variety of cost saving methods to avoid paying the full price of course material costs, such as renting copies for the semester and sharing with a classmate. When students were asked about the academic impact of textbook costs, 64.2% reported not purchasing the required course materials, 42.7% enrolled in fewer courses, 35.6% “earned a poor grade because they could not afford to buy the textbook,” and 22.9% dropped a course due to textbook cost (Florida Virtual Campus, 2019, pp. 13-14).

While lowering course material costs is certainly a goal of the OER movement, the greater purpose is to ensure student academic success. Researchers at the University of Georgia (Colvard, et. al. 2018) who examined student performance from 2010 to 2016 in eight undergraduate courses with both OER course sections and non-OER course sections found that student grades in the OER sections increased for all student populations considered (full-time, part-time, white, non-white, and Pell-grant recipients). At the same time, the rate of students who received grades of D, F, or W (Withdrawal), decreased for part-time, white, non-white, and Pell-grant recipients in the OER sections. It is significant to note that traditionally underserved student populations (non-white, part-time and Pell-grant recipients) showed the greatest increases in grades and decreases in DFW with the OER adoption. The findings indicate that “OER is an equity strategy for higher education: providing all students with access to course materials on the first day of class serves to level the academic playing field in course settings” (Colvard, et. al., 2018, p. 273).

• Want to learn more about OER? Feel free to check out the OER online guide: lib.guides.umbc.edu/OER

• Interested in OER training workshops or in joining an OER interest group on campus?  Please indicate on the OER interest google form: tinyurl.com/UMBC-OER

Erin Durham, MA, MM, MLIS

Reference & Instruction Faculty Librarian

410-455-3592 | edurham@umbc.edu

DoIT is pleased to announce that Andrea Mocko has been named manager of its Technology Support Center (TSC). Previously, she’d served as acting coordinator, specialist and even a student consultant during all four of her undergraduate years at UMBC. She is responsible for recruiting, hiring, training and supervising the 12-15 student consultants who make up the largely student-run staff serving at the TSC each semester. The TSC also serves as an informal on-site “storefront” to demo products as part of the Mac & Dell online stores, and also provides Scantron test scoring support.

In addition to daily responsibilities managing the TSC, Andrea has played a key role in revamping DoIT’s knowledge management approach to IT support. Specifically, she serves as the primary architect and curator of UMBC’s Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) knowledge base (umbc.edu/faq) that has dramatically reduced phone, email and Request Tracker (RT) tickets by helping users help themselves. Typically, UMBC’s FAQs generate about half a million page views each year (though not all from UMBC) after generating only 3k in 2011.

Among other benefits, this kind of self-support has allowed the TSC to keep staffing costs low. Despite the high turnover you'd expect to see in a primarily student run help desk (with 2 FT staff), the FAQs help TSC student consultants get up to speed quickly and work efficiently and effectively, In fact, our student labor & assistance budget has shrunk from about $100k (in 2011) to $83k each year since, while campus users have consistently rated DoIT’s overall IT support as 90 percent “good or excellent” ever since we started using RT 10 years ago, including up through UMBC’s 1 millionth ticket last semester.

Andrea’s expertise in user support has also been recognized by Educause, the professional development organization for higher ed IT. She was a member of the Educause IT Service Management Working group and also co-authored a white paper, “Demonstrating Value Through IT Service Management in Higher Education” (2016).

Dear UMBC Faculty,

This year, we learned UMBC’s Blackboard usage is much different and (I think) better than most colleges and universities, but one of the things I still like to do with DoIT's “birds eye view” is to help identify, support and promote effective practices. Towards this end, here are some basic, but powerful things I think all faculty might want to do in Blackboard -- beyond making the course shell available -- and why. Your mileage may vary if using the 9.1 “current” version of Blackboard vs. the new Ultra version, but hopefully the key ideas will translate:

1. Post a Syllabus

Even if faculty have no intention of using Bb beyond this task, it’s an easy way for enrolled students to know where to go. Typically, we see that 95% of all students, 87% of all instructors and 82% of all course sections use Blackboard each semester, so students are accustomed to looking here first. Save yourself some time (and handouts) and just put it here. Better yet, use the “Syllabus” content area we provide in all course shells by default.

2. Enable Guests

By default, DoIT doesn’t do this in the course shells we create, but if you just want curious (or waitlisted) students to know about (and keep pace with) your course, this is a good way to do so. True, it means anyone in the world can also see your guest-enabled content (if they login as “guest” at blackboard.umbc.edu), but since the “guest” role has no identity, they can’t receive email, see into a discussion board or interact with instructors or the class in any way. Basically, it’s a passive role that can only view content you want visible -- if you enable guests.

3. Post a welcome announcement and/or send an email

Even if all you do is announce “I’m not using Blackboard this term” or “I use this site instead [insert external link],” most students in most courses will know what you want right away. Also, DoIT could enable all Bb course sites (by default) which would eliminate our most often requested help ticket by far: “Why can’t I see my Blackboard course?” More importantly, if your external site goes down -- or you don’t want to invent an authentication scheme so only your students can view it -- Bb can be an easy backup, and most faculty know at least one colleague who is using it.

4. Assign a “Syllabus Quiz” before the 10th day add/drop deadline

Many faculty are doing this already as a quick way to facilitate and identify engaged students. In fact, we recently studied final grades in a high-enrollment, 100-level course over the past two years and found students who did not take the syllabus quiz were four times more likely to earn a D,F or W final grade (p<.001, n=1,455). Better yet, require students to at least take (if not pass) the syllabus quiz before turning in the first assignment for credit. To do so, you’ll want to learn how to use adaptive release -- or conditional availability in Bb Ultra --  based on a grade in a prior assignment. This is a powerful, but infrequently used tool by faculty. Typically, we’ve found students view more than 85% of the content in a course enabled with at least one adaptive release rule vs. only about 45% without it.

5. Create a “Questions About Class” discussion forum

And require all students use this before emailing the instructor about anything (except, of course, personal issues). You can moderate or even just monitor the discussion if you want, but this can be a place for students to help each other. If you award credit for participation, this can also be another way of seeing who’s engaged and who could be a good TA or SI/PASS candidate in the future. Who are your ambassadors and allies in the class?

6. Use Ally to Test if Your Course Content is Accessible

This year DoIT purchased Ally to help faculty identify any of their own content that is not accessible to students with disabilities; Blackboard is accessible as a learning management system (LMS), but Ally goes a step further to check your own uploaded and created content. Currently, Ally can only be used in Blackboard, but even if you don’t use Bb as an LMS, ask us how you could leverage it as an accessibility engine for your own content you put elsewhere.

7. Host at least one virtual class meeting or “office hour”

A course doesn’t need to be entirely online to use online tools, and increasingly online learning doesn’t have to be just reading text-based content. Blackboard Collaborate offers a simple, easy to use live, video-conferencing tool inside every Bb course with no downloads or plug-ins. Use it for a class meeting, maybe on a snow day, virtual office hours or even a guest lecture or student group or team project meeting. You can also record the session or use Panopto for more advanced lecture capture and screencasting options.

8. Use student analytics to inform Bb course design

If you accept that student use of Blackboard can be a plausible proxy for their engagement in a course generally, then you may want to check out several analytics reports inside every Bb course shell. Or take a look at the most active Bb courses, Report Exchange (REX) tools for teaching, and even a curated list of articles and presentations by and about UMBC’s learning analytics and student success research (doit.umbc.edu/analytics). Yes, student Blackboard use varies by courses, but analytics can help give everyone a “bird’s eye view” of where students are using it more -- and perhaps find out why or if it’s effective.

9. Encourage students to complete course evaluations

Like the syllabus, just make the course evaluaton as easy as possible for students to find on the Bb dashboard itself, myUMBC or check their email. Enough said.

10. Post an “unofficial” final grade sooner than later

Research by Educause has shown that students value checking grades more than any other  function in an LMS like Blackboard. The same is even more true for final grades, which are submitted in PeopleSoft Student Administration about three weeks after the last day of classes (see below for Fall 18). But this can be challenging for students who might want to take a winter or summer course, if they need to know they passed a pre-req. As long as the grade is “unofficial,” help them know where they stand sooner.

As always, if you have questions or need help, please consult the Blackboard Help FAQs or directly at www.umbc.edu/blackboard/help. You can also contact the Technology Support Center at 410.455.3838 or submit an RT (Request Tracker) ticket via the myUMBC Help Menu or directly at my.umbc.edu/help. You can also consult with anyone in DoIT’s Instructional Technology support team.

John Fritz

Assoc. Vice President, Instructional Technology

UMBC Division of Information Technology (DoIT)

410.455.6596 or fritz@umbc.edu