Position Available: January 2, 2018

The Museum Trustee Association (MTA) is the only organization dedicated to providing ongoing board education programs, services and resources for museum trustees. MTA is hiring a part-time (Hourly, 15 hours/week) Web Communications Coordinator. This position leads all web-based projects of the Museum Trustee Association.

Duties and Responsibilities

You should have received a holiday message, from President Hrabowski and Provost Rous, which stated that the University will be closed on Friday, December 22, 2017.  As a result of the closure, the leave day will be processed as a University Holiday for leave eligible employees.

Please share the timekeeping guidelines below with the employees in your department. These guidelines do not apply to Contingent I, Student and Adjunct Faculty employees.

1. Employees will manually record the HOL code and the corresponding hours on the time sheet (electronic time sheets will not automatically populate the leave code or hours for this date).

2.  Employees who were originally scheduled off on December 22nd will record HOL on the time sheet and not use their accrued leave for the day.

• If an employee has already submitted his/her time sheet with accrued leave usage (ie. annual, personal, sick, or compensatory time), for December 22nd, the time sheet will need to be rejected by the time sheet approver so the employee may modify the leave usage to HOL and resubmit the time sheet for approval.
• Eligible holiday hours are based on an employee’s FTE (full-time equivalency) and not the employee’s work schedule for the day.  Holiday hours are pro-rated for part-time employees.  For example:  An employee whose FTE is 100% receives 8 hours of holiday; an 80% employee receives 6.40 hours of holiday; a 50% employee receives 4.0 hours of holiday; etc.

3.  Employees who will be required to work on December 22nd will record duty day (faculty and exempt) OR time in/time out (nonexempt) for the day.  The holiday will be processed and reflected in the holiday leave balance as a banked day to use at a later time. Please note that a Holiday Waiver Form will need to be submitted to allow the holiday to be carried over into the 2018 calendar year and not forfeited.

Reminder: Although employees may submit time sheets early, time sheet approvers do not have the ability to approve time sheets before the pay period has ended. Approvers may only reject a time sheet prior to the end of the pay period.

Again, please share this information with your departmental employees. Should you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at mcnamara@umbc.edu or ext. 5-3646.

The Museum Trustee Association (MTA) is the only organization dedicated to providing ongoing board education programs, services and resources for museum trustees. MTA is hiring a full-time (Exempt) Manager of Member Services and Administration. In addition to scheduling, office maintenance, and interfacing with Association members and the board, this position is responsible for the planning and execution of Association events including semi-annual forums, workshops, and weekend donor events in conjunction with the President.

Duties and Responsibilities

Blackboard will be updated on Friday, January 5, 2018 beginning at 5 PM EST as part of DoIT’s biannual Blackboard update. No downtime is expected: Blackboard should remain online and available, but some tools and services may be slower to respond during this twelve-hour cycle as those backend processes restart across supporting servers.

Prior to the update, Blackboard’s overall look will be refreshed during the holiday break with a new system theme featuring standardized colors, fonts, and spacing for greater consistency between the learning management system, Bb Collaborate, and Blackboard’s mobile apps.

The new theme also provides:

• Support for Mobile Devices - When users log in to Blackboard on a mobile device or tablet, screen elements such as the course menu and control panel compress or change position so they stay visible. As the screen gets smaller, modules and tool tiles stack so you will still have access to everything at your fingertips. 
• Support for Accessibility - The updated theme follows WCAG 2.0 principles and accessibility guidelines for structure, color contrast, and navigation. New ARIA landmarks define the page structure in courses, menus, and content areas to better assist users with screen readers in navigating page elements.

Standardized across the entire Blackboard system and all courses, this theme is also the first step toward the Ultra Experience, which UMBC will begin to explore with a small pilot in SP2018 in partnership with Blackboard.

Two new features will also be available in this release:

• Course Availability Status - An open or closed padlock, located next to the Student Preview icon in the upper right corner of your course, will represent its availability state to students. Instructors can modify the availability of the course with one click within the shell.  
• Chemistry Notations in Content Editor - The math editor will be updated to feature tools specific to chemistry including an embedded periodic table of elements.

Finally, the inline grading tools will be upgraded over the same weekend after the main Blackboard site is updated. The Blackboard update occurring on Friday, January 5, is a requirement before the inline grading tools can transition to the New Box View on Saturday, January 6. Inline grading tools may be unavailable for up to six (6) hours that morning. Faculty will be able to download student submissions during the conversion process, but the inline grading tools within Blackboard will be temporarily unavailable. Please review the FAQs about grading with inline tools during this transition.

In preparation for this downtime:

• Instructors: If you need access to your gradebook during the downtime, please review this FAQ for information on downloading a copy of the Blackboard Grade Center to Excel.

After the Blackboard update is finished, please clear your Internet browser cache and cookies before logging in using these step-by-step instructions.

The UMBC Blackboard team identified a time period that should have a reduced impact on our users. If our Blackboard site is down longer than expected due to unforeseen circumstances, updates will be posted to this news article. We appreciate your patience as we continue to improve our systems to bring you a better Blackboard experience.

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

• Check our extensive FAQ collection
• New Bb Features | Known Issues | Updates & Fixes
• Open a ticket via RT
• Follow the Instructional Technology & DoIT myUMBC groups
• Request a consult with instructional technology staff