In order to install patches and maintenance software on the UR Blackboard servers, yet minimize impact on usage, the system will be unavailable during an upgrade, 5 p.m.-6 a.m., Friday, May 17. The user interface will not change and all course content will still be available after the work is completed. Please schedule your UR Blackboard usage accordingly and contact us at blackboard@richmond.edu with any questions or concerns. Continue to check this Blackboard News site for additional information concerning this outage at http://blog.richmond.edu/blackboard.
UPDATE: Blackboard was successfully patched and is functioning normally. If you experience any problems, please email blackboard DOT richmond DOT edu.
As the semester ends and thoughts turn to summer research projects, now is a great time to close out your Blackboard course because on July 3, instructors’ students will be disappearing from Spring 2013 semester’s Blackboard courses. These courses have IDs that begin with 201220_. So if you are an instructor using Blackboard and haven’t gotten around to archiving your courses and you want to keep a record of your students’ grades and discussion board interactions, now is the time to archive your course, download your Grade Center as an Excel file, and/or collect your discussion board discussions.Other than student interactions and grades, all materials will remain in your course until you request its removal or three years has passed (whichever comes first). To download your grades, in Grade Center go to Workoffline > Download and save the full Grade Center. On the next screen, be sure to hit Download instead of OK. Continue reading ‘Students disappear from Spring ’13 Blackboard courses July 3′
If you are not familiar with Atomic Learning, it is the online video training services provider for the University of Richmond. There are hundreds of applications in their inventory, often spanning multiple versions of the application and for both Windows and Mac users. Applications include but are not limited to Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Acrobat, InDesign, etc.), Blackboard, iPod Touch, and Windows and Mac OS. Tutorials are broken up into short (1-4 minute long) video tutorials that you can watch using Flash or QuickTime formats. Users can pause, rewind, or navigate easily between video clips. You can access the system outside of Blackboard by going to http://is.richmond.edu/training/tutorials.html. Continue reading ‘Atomic Learning Building Block Now Available’
The system maintenance was completed and the system is again available. Please remember the user option of using the wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) text editor is now a required feature because if this is turned off, people are not able to access necessary services within the application. If you have questions or experience any issues regarding this particular change, please contact blackboard@richmond.edu.
We regret that the outage was longer than expected, and we appreciate your patience.
On February 19, instructors’ students will be disappearing from last semester’s Blackboard courses. These courses have IDs that begin with 201210_. So if you are an instructor using Blackboard and haven’t gotten around to archiving your courses and you want to keep a record of your students’ grades and discussion board interactions, now is the time to archive your course, download your Grade Center as an Excel file, and/or collect your discussion board discussions.Other than student interactions and grades, all materials will remain in your course until you request its removal or three years has passed (whichever comes first). To download your grades, in Grade Center go to Workoffline > Download and save the full Grade Center. On the next screen, be sure to hit Download instead of OK. Continue reading ‘Students disappear from Fall ’12 Blackboard courses Feb 19!’
This issue was resolved at 1:08 PM and has been tested. Any additional problems should be sent to blackboard@richmond.edu or by calling 287-6860.
We are aware of an issue dealing with files in the content management system. We are working to resolve this issue and will update this post when the problem is corrected.
Need to add a teaching assistant, administrative assistant, or writing consultant to your course?
Follow these easy steps: Continue reading ‘Adding Users to a Course’
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Blackboard is dependent on Java for file uploading, chat and virtual classroom. There is a known issue with Java 7 that Information Services is aware of and working towards a solution. You can read more about that at the IS website. Our recommendation is for everyone using Blackboard to stay on their current version of Java, DO NOT upgrade at this time, and DO NOT disable Java if you use any of the above-mentioned features. When Information Services has a solution, we will update this blog site with that information.
For now, Windows users who are already running Java, version 7, the Help Desk is in the process of identifying those machines, and will be contacting those users directly, and providing them with instructions for correcting this current vulnerability.
For Mac users, our current recommendation is not to attempt to apply any updates or patches to Java.
If you have any questions regarding this issue, please contact the UR Help Desk at 287-6400 or helpdesk@richmond.edu.
It is time to give assessments and Blackboard can help! The following information assists you in creating a test and deploying it in Blackboard. Continue reading ‘Using Assessments’
There will be a scheduled outage of Blackboard Friday, November2 from 10 PM until 1 AM for OS patching. There will be no loss of data nor changes to the application but the system will be down during the specified time. You will not be able to take assessments, upload files or access the system during the outage period so please plan for this outage by downloading any documents you might need or taking assessment prior to or after the outage.
UPDATE: The system patch is completed and the system is functioning normally.