As part of an effort to improve service on Blackboard, the Division of Information Technology (DoIT) is changing how the Blackboard system operates at UMBC. Starting in Winter 2015, UMBC will move from running Blackboard on campus to using Blackboard’s own cloud-based instance, often referred to as hosted system, for course delivery. This is being done as part of a new agreement with a consortium of other research universities known as NET+ that is associated with Internet2. A benefit of this new approach is that Blackboard will handle software upgrades directly, which will minimize the impact to students and faculty.
Currently, about 65 percent of all Bb clients are hosted by Blackboard. In Maryland, this includes Towson University, Morgan State University, Montgomery College, Bowie State University, the Community College of Baltimore County, and the Maryland State Department of Education.
“We’ve considered managed hosting before, but the innovation, commitment to standards and value of this agreement are very compelling,” says Jack Suess, Vice President for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer. “Ultimately, I believe it will help us advance UMBC’s focus on student success and better use technology to support pedagogical innovation by connecting UMBC to a wider community of research universities innovating with the same tools.”
In addition to managed hosting, the new agreement -- also announced today by Blackboard -- provides 24/7 end-user support, content storage, mobile and collaborative solutions, analytics and other resources. Once migrated, Blackboard will still be available in myUMBC, as well as the blackboard.umbc.edu and www.umbc.edu/blackboard web addresses. However, for Winter 2015 and Spring 2015, new course shells will be created on our hosted Bb server managed by Blackboard.
Starting in Summer 2015, the configuration and setup of courses will change. Specifically, all courses will have a permanent “master shell” for managing content that faculty will link to semester shells automatically populated with officially enrolled students. As a result, there will be no need for faculty to export old courses into new course shells, thus duplicating our overall file storage every semester, as is the case now.
Further details and plans will be announced on the DoIT News site throughout this academic year. In the meantime, DoIT’s instructional technology staff have created a focused set of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about the Bb migration to managed hosting. For more information or help about Bb at UMBC generally, click the Help tab inside Bb or visit www.umbc.edu/blackboard/help.
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Take a picture of you and your big/little completing as many of these tasks as you can! Each task is worth a certain amount of points and the pairing with the most points at the end of the semester will be given the honor of being the BEST Big/Little SWEet pair at UMBC (and a sweet prize)!!!
For any questions contact Stacy Sumedi at ssumedi2@umbc.edu
Rules
· Tasks:
Blackboard (Bb) Collaborate is a web conferencing tool that is accessible in all UMBC Bb courses under the tools menu.Bb Collaborate allows instructors and students to meet virtually, anytime and anywhere. Instructors can supplement in-class dialogue by offering virtual office hours or review sessions to answer questions students have regarding course content. Bb Collaborate has many interactive features, including chat, video conferencing, whiteboard, and screen sharing. Students can access a collaborate session from their computers or mobile devices.
To learn more about Bb Collaborate:
visit our Bb Collaborate FAQ page
open an RT ticket for any technical issues
view the schedule of training workshops on the DoIT group page
contact the Instructional Technology Team with any questions or concerns
Over the week-end September 27-28, over 170 college and high school students converged upon UMBC for the second hackUMBC hackathon. This free event, spanning 24 continuous hours, brought students together to create, make, or otherwise “hack” together new technology projects, either individually or as a team. As with many hackathons, there was no limit to the type of technology students could work on — hackUMBC 2014 projects ranged from developing mobile apps and assistive/wearable technologies to applied virtual reality representations of cyberspace, a ‘smart’ autonomous tank, and reverse-engineering (and then porting to Linux) the Myo command protocol. The sky was the limit in terms of ideas and skill levels — indeed, many attendees were first-time “hackers” looking to learn programming or engineering concepts in an inclusive and fun environment.
Following opening ceremonies and brief remarks by the sponsors and UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski, participants took over the second floor ITE classrooms Saturday-into-Sunday before moving into the UC Ballroom to showcase their products before a panel of judges. Prizes were awarded for the most innovative, polished, complex, and useful ideas/technologies.
hackUMBC 2014 was well-supported by corporate sponsors, including Raytheon, Microsoft, Northrop Grumman, MITRE, and ClearEdge Solutions, among others. Campus partners included the Alex Brown Center for Enterpreneurship and the Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. Additional support, participant encouragement, and round-the-clock motivational energy was provided by Mike Swift, chairman of Major League Hacking.
hackUMBC was organized and run by Michael Bishoff (Junior, CMPE), Randi Williams (Junior, CMPE), and Minhaz Mahmud (Senior, CMSC). CSEE’s Dr. Rick Forno serves as faculty advisor.
Special thanks to the UMBC volunteer judges Dr. Charles Nicholas, Shawn Lupoli, Geoff Weiss, and the many student volunteers who assisted in making the event a success.
The 2014 season was a transitional year for UMBC Racing, with many experienced members graduating and moving on to full time careers. This was balanced, however, with an influx of ambitious young members to replace the veterans, and the team grew larger overall. As a result, the 2014 team was the youngest since 2007. Despite this reduction in experience, the team banded together and worked hard to succeed. Managing to balance schoolwork and the task of running a successful Baja program, another competitive team was brought together.
Every new vehicle sees major improvements from the previous generation. As an example, one major redesign was the upright assembly. The new assembly is 25% lighter, while allowing the new system to gain 12 degrees of steering angle. As a result of the increased steering angle, the vehicle’s turning radius was reduced by 5 feet – a substantial improvement for maneuverability. After extensive tire testing, a new tire package was used this year, increasing the rear tire size to 26 inches for superior performance over rough terrain. Another large step in the 2014 season was in data acquisition. For the first time in UMBC Racing history, live telemetry was utilized during the endurance race. This gave the team beneficial insight into vehicle performance and status.
The schedule in 2014 saw 274 individual teams from around the world across three competitions. The first race was in late April, 2,000 miles away from campus in El Paso, Texas. A month later in May, the team traveled 1,200 miles to compete in Pittsburgh, Kansas. Two weeks later, in early June, the third and final competition was held 800 miles away from campus in Peoria, Illinois.
UMBC Racing travelled 8,000 miles in total, attending all three North American competitions and to compete for the Mike Schmidt Memorial Iron Team Award. The Iron Team Award is given to the team with the most cumulative points who attend all three competitions. The team has competed for the Mike Schmidt since 2010, recording a best finish of 2nd place in our first year.
Even with such a young team, UMBC Racing came away with excellent results at all three races. 2nd, 1st, and 2nd place cost trophies from Texas, Kansas, and Illinois will soon find their way to our impressive trophy collection. UMBC maintained an incredible record of never finishing outside the top 3 in overall vehicle cost. Other notable finishes were in the acceleration event, with the team coming in 3rd place in Texas, and 9th in Kansas.
One of the best performances of the season came at the Illinois competition where UMBC Racing won the business presentation despite not having any business majors on the team. This is especially impressive considering the team was slated against schools with top ten business programs such as the University of Michigan, which is currently ranked 2nd in the United States.
When all the points came together, UMBC finished a respectable 9th in the Mike Schmidt Iron Team Award. In the end, despite the challenges of a difficult learning year, the young UMBC Racing team can stand proudly by their results from this year. Looking forward, there is much to improve, but the future is bright and the team is eager to win.
Expect to see UMBC Racing at the front yet again in the 2015 season!
