UMBC Blackboard (Bb) course shells for both SP2014 and WT2014 were created on December 2, 2013.  The course shells for SP2014 are located on the Bb production server at http://blackboard.umbc.edu.  

As previously announced at the start of this semester, due to the Bb upgrade January 8-10, all WT2014 courses will be run on a separate server at http://bb-winter.umbc.edu.  All courses and organizations on the Bb production server will be unavailable during the upgrade from January 8-10.  If you require any past Bb content for your WT2014 courses please make sure to export it prior to January 8, 2014.

Enrollments for both SP2014 and WT2014 courses will continue to be updated daily. Bb shells are available for all courses (designated as lecture, lab, field or discussion) listed in the UMBC Schedule of Classes (SOC), provided that there is an instructor of record listed. The addition of new course sections and instructors will result in new Bb shells being automatically generated each morning. Student enrollment in Bb will continue to mirror the official registration in SA, and will update hourly.

If you are an instructor, and your name is not associated with the course you are teaching in the SOC, please see your departmental scheduling coordinator to get that issue resolved. Once you are listed in the SOC, your Bb course shell will be created and enrolled automatically.

Additionally, in situations where one instructor is teaching multiple sections of the same course, by default all sections will be combined into one Bb course shell. If you want to have separate shells for different sections, or if you need a shell for for a research or independent study course, please submit a new course request or submit an RT ticket with your request.

For designers passionate about the latest developments across the full spectrum of visual design, there’s a brand new site that features some of the most exciting, innovative and inspiring design projects taking place today. Every day our sister-site, DesignFaves.com, trawls the web seeking out the projects with the most buzz surrounding them and delivers a compact, visual summary right to your inbox.

Focused on all fields of design, you’ll find graphic design, art, architecture, furniture design, fashion, branding, photography, and everything else that’s visual and engaging.

You can sign up for the newsletter and get your daily dose of design inspiration each morning, or browse through the site when you’re feeling tapped for new ideas. Whoever you are, and whatever you love, you’ll find fresh projects on DesignFaves.com.

Every week we’ll be bringing you a summary of the best the site has to offer, and to whet your appetite, here are our favorite projects this week:

Strangely beautiful portraits of betta fish by Visarute Angkatavanich 

 Intricate makeup flattens human faces into iconic 2D art

 The illustrated wonderland of Heisuke Kitazawa

 New fashion by Kenzo: Pop art meets surrealism

 Spine is a fun social app for telling five-sentence stories

 Stay a night in the Mirrorcube room at Treehotel

 Iconic album covers recreated with Lego blocks

 Superheroes walking kids to school by Andry Rajoelina

Alphabet illustrations inspired by The Hunger Games 

 Bright public art enhances the Brooklyn terrain

 Robotic draft beer dispenser for high traffic bars by Asahi

 Manipulated photos of dark narratives By Caras Lonut

 Revolutionary 2022 FIFA World Cup stadium design unveiled

 A poster of the worlds most famous felines. No Grumpy Cat?

 Bees detect early signs of cancer in a person’s breath

 Studio Swine’s unique standing lamp made from recycled materials

 Funny mugs appear to sink into your table

Which of these posts is your favorite? What would you like to see DesignFaves.com cover? Let us know in the comments.

HTML5 Photo Template Bundle – only $49!

The Web Applications (WebApps) Working Group and the Web Application Security (WebAppSec) Working Group have published today a Proposed Recommendation of Cross-Origin Resource Sharing. This document defines a mechanism to enable client-side cross-origin requests. Specifications that enable an API to make cross-origin requests to resources can use the algorithms defined by this specification. If such an API is used on http://example.org resources, a resource on http://hello-world.example can opt in using the mechanism described by this specification (e.g., specifying Access-Control-Allow-Origin: http://example.org as response header), which would allow that resource to be fetched cross-origin from http://example.org. Comments are welcome through 14 January 2014. Learn more about the Security Activity and the Rich Web Clients Activity.

Tuts+ Premium courses teach you a single skill from top to bottom, inside out.

Currently, more than 15,000 members are sharpening their skills in web design, web development, Photoshop, vector design, video effects and much more. Our dedicated team adds new content weekly, so there’s always something fresh to sink your teeth into. Today, we’re highlighting a few of the latest and greatest course additions to Tuts+ Premium.

New Development Courses

Getting Good with Grunt

In both front-end and back-end projects, there are so many things to do besides the actual coding: there’s all the maintenance that a project requires: compilation, unit testing, linting, etc. You could do this manually, but you want to focus on the code, right? That’s why you’ll want to check out Grunt: it’s an automation tool that will do all that “boring” work for you!

SOLID Design Patterns

If you want to improve your development skills, then take this course. Through testing and examples, you’ll learn how to create beautiful, flexible, maintainable code that lasts longer.

PostgreSQL Essentials

This course will get you up to speed on using PostgreSQL databases. We will cover the command line tools, the PGAdmin GUI tool, the unique hstore extension, and much more. By the conclusion of this course, hopefully, you’ll feel confident to kick-start your own Postgres-based projects!

Acceptance Testing in Ruby with Cucumber

Developing software is unthinkable without tests, and Ruby makes it easy since it was built to be tested. Enter Cucumber. It is the de facto standard for acceptance testing in Ruby.

Tools of the Modern Web Developer

Are you just getting into web development, or would you like to hone your skills? In Tools of the Modern Developer, we discuss everything you need to polish and perfect your abilities.

Join Tuts+ Premium for Courses, eBooks, and More

Tuts+ Premium has a huge collection of courses, eBooks, source files and guides on hundreds of creative and technical topics. And we’re adding new content every week. Sign up now and develop your skills today!

Miller Summer Program in Animal Sciences

The objective of the Miller Summer Research Internship program is to introduce students to animal sciences research, emphasizing food and fiber producing animals. Animal Sciences faculty research a variety of areas, including: ruminant and nonruminant nutrition; reproductive physiology; genetics and molecular biology; environmental physiology; and production and management. Each student will be working directly within a laboratory under the supervision of an internationally recognized researcher. The participant will gain an understanding of recent advances in basic science and applied animal sciences research.  For more information click here. For an application click here.

Eligibility:

Applicants must meet the basic eligibility requirements. Students are expected to have a minimum of a 3.0 GPA and have completed 2 years of college. Selection is partially based on the applicant’s potential and motivation for future graduate study (PhD level) in animal sciences.

Pay:

The internship provides a stipend of $3,600, one hour of academic credit, travel to and from Columbia, on-campus housing and meals.

For more information, contact Linda Blockus, PhD, 150 Bond Life Sciences Center, 573-882-5979, BlockusL@missouri.edu; or William Lamberson, PhD, 159 Animal Sciences Research Center, 573-882-8234, LambersonW@missouri.edu.