Blackboard Spring 2017 semester wrap-up

Blackboard instructors,

 

Hope your semester went well. To wrap up Spring 2017, please note the following:

 

1. Make sure you: a) archive your course, b) check the accuracy of your grades, c) archive your emails, d) download your Grade Center, and e) make your course unavailable to students when they no longer need access. If your Total column in the Grade Center is set to Calculate as a Running Total and display as a Percentage, please make sure your grades are accurate by either turning Calculate as a Running Total off or entering zeros for missing assignments. If you have hidden columns in which you entered points possible but did not score students, check that you have not included those points in the Grade Center calculations and have not made the columns invisible to students. If your points possible don’t look correct, make sure all visible columns are included in the calculations.

 

Also, there has been recent emphasis by accreditors and federal regulators to prove instructor-student contact in DE and hybrid courses, so archiving your emails has become increasingly important. More information, and instructions on the tasks above, can be found in the document “Closing your course”.

2. Once you determine that students no longer need access to your class, make it unavailable to them. To make the class unavailable, go to Control Panel - Customization - Properties, and for Make Course Available, click No, then click Submit.
   
   
3. Click here to view information on copying courses. Important: If you are using publisher materials and need to copy them into your new course, make sure you scroll down the Copy Course page, and under the heading Course Cartridge Materials, check the box. This is a very easy box to miss because it is located further down on the page from the rest of the checkboxes. Please make sure you check this box each time you copy a course. If you don't, your exams will be copied, but the pools that house the questions, do not.
   
   
4. Support: I will be gone May 26. Beginning the week of June 5 and finishing the week of July 31, the college will be closed on Fridays. I will be on vacation the week of July 3 and will also be gone July 24. We will have a new part-time support person in the Teaching and Learning Center beginning July 17.

 

Scott

 

Canvas Spring 2017 semester wrap-up

Canvas instructors,

 

Hope your semester went well. To wrap up Spring 2017, please note the following:

 

1.       If you are going to move your Spring 2017 course into a subsequent semester’s course, do NOT use the Copy this Course function. Copying creates a new course that is NOT integrated into our Banner system, meaning your students will NOT be able to access it. Instead, you will use the Export Course Content function to export, and download, the course to your computer, then you will use Import Content into this Course.

a.       Follow these instructions to export your course. Keep your exported course on your computer or backup drive for safekeeping.

b.       Follow these instructions to import content.

2.       Course access at the end of a semester works differently in Canvas than in Blackboard. Here are the most important points:

a.       You will have full access to your course until June 8 at 11:59 p.m. After that, you will only have read-only access. However, you will be able to export your course.

b.       Students will have full access to your course until May 26 at 11:59 p.m. (unless you have changed the Term end date and time). After the Term end date and time passes, students will have read-only access.

c.       If you want students to have full access after the Term end date and time, go into Settings, increase the Term end date and time, then check the box that says: Users can only participate in the course between these dates.  

d.       If you don’t want students to have any access to the course after the Term end date and time, scroll down in Settings, and check the box that says: Restrict students from viewing course after end date.

3. Make sure you check the accuracy of your grades and download your Gradebook. For students who do not complete assignments by the deadline dates, manually give them zeroes in the gradebook. If you leave their grade cells blank, those missing assignments won't count against them. Canvas has a feature in the gradebook settings called Treat Ungraded as 0. If you enable it, you will get the students' true scores, but the students won't get it when they check their grades. In other words, the zeroes are only reflected in the totals in your view, not theirs.

 

Download your Gradebook by clicking Export – CSV File. Keep your exported Gradebook on your computer or backup drive for safekeeping.

4.     If you haven’t requested your Summer or Fall course(s) yet, log into Class-Web, click Menu for Faculty, and click the Canvas link at the bottom.

5. Support: I will be gone May 26. Beginning the week of June 5 and finishing the week of July 31, the college will be closed on Fridays. If you need assistance, call the Canvas support line at 1-844-600-4956. I will be on vacation the week of July 3 and will also be gone July 24. We will have a new part-time support person in the Teaching and Learning Center beginning July 17.

 

Scott

 

Summer Canvas training opportunities

The TLC is hosting six Introduction to Canvas workshops this Summer for those of you wanting to learn LPC’s new course management system. Vicky Austin and Teri Donat, two of the college’s Canvas faculty mentor-trainers, will conduct the workshops. They will also be available for individual appointments.

 

To register for a workshop and/or request an appointment, go to the Professional Development Workshops page. All Canvas trainings are eligible for flex credit.

 

Scott

 

 

Summer students inputted tonight

Canvas and Blackboard instructors,

If you are teaching a course during the Summer using either Canvas or Blackboard, I’m letting let you know that students will be inputted into their Summer classes tonight. There are two reasons why this is being done so early: 1) Summer classes begin early, on May 30, and I don’t have the ability to activate students for classes that begin later, and 2) I will be alerting DE students that they can self-enroll in the new Quest for Online Success readiness course in Canvas and/or attend an on-campus Online Learning orientation.

If you are not teaching a Summer course with Canvas or Blackboard, please disregard this email.

Scott

SafeAssign slowness

Blackboard instructors,

 

I received this from Bb about slowness processing SafeAssign papers:

 

Bulletin/Advisory Information:

The Blackboard SafeAssign service continues to experience delays in returning Originality Reports and results to end users. We understand the impact that these delays have had on users and apologize for the poor performance of the system during this time.

The root cause of the delays continues to be that the SafeAssign service is receiving significantly more document submissions from Blackboard Learn customers than it can process. This is typically seen during end-of-year activities when many Assignments and student submissions are due.

We are working diligently to reduce and potentially eliminate the possibility of document processing delays in the future with the following actions:

• Moving components of the SafeAssign service to Amazon's AWS infrastructure – this will unlock benefits of SaaS and IaaS such as elasticity and scalability that are not available in the current infrastructure.
• Creating adaptive hardware/infrastructure scaling policies that align to weekly and monthly usage patterns – this will allow SafeAssign to meet customer submission volume and demand more efficiently

Once implemented, these changes should result in a significant increase in the service's ability to adapt to customer demand. We are targeting completion of this work for mid-2017.

Thank you for your patience as we work to improve the product to meet your needs.

 

Reminder: Summer and Fall 2017 course requests

If you have not already requested your Summer 2017 and Fall 2017 courses for either Blackboard or Canvas, please do so by logging into Class-Web, clicking Menu for Faculty, Staff & Advisors, then clicking either the Blackboard or Canvas links toward the bottom of the page. Choose the term and Las Positas for the campus, and click Submit Query. From here, you can request individual courses, or you can choose courses or sections to merge.

 

If you have already requested your courses, thank you!

 

Scott