While most features of Blackboard remain the same, Blackboard 8.0 offers a completely new gradebook (now called the Grade Center) and a new Self and Peer Assessment tool. A follow-up post will detail these changes.

Applications that will remain available during this time include: Single sign on, internet access, help.case.edu, and Google Apps (but with no new incoming or outgoing email.) The phone systems and voicemail will be available, but with reduced capacity and possible voicemail delays. More information about the outage can be found here.

Blackboard will be unavailable, along with the majority of the university's IT applications, from noon - 10pm on Sunday, February 15th while work is being done on the data center firewall. Applications affected by this firewall work include: Blackboard, email, the phone systems and voicemail, ERP, MediaVision Courseware, the Software Center, the university web site (http://www.case.edu), and library systems.

Applications that will remain available during this time include: Single sign on, internet access, help.case.edu, and Google Apps (but with no new email.) More information about the outage can be found here.

To Create a New Blackboard Course Site:
If you are creating a new course site, select "Add a New Blackboard Site" from the side menu. Following the steps, choose your semester and the course that you wish to create a site for.

You will be asked to make changes to the course site title, beyond the default Subject, Number and description (eg, MATH 121: Calculus for Science and Engineering I) We suggest that you modify the course site title with additional useful information, such as the semester, the specific course section, or instructor's name.

The last thing you will need is a Site ID, the unique identifier for each course site within Blackboard. The Wizard suggests a default, unique Course ID, but you can change it if you would prefer. However, since the ID cannot be changed after a site is created, we do not recommend putting the semester in the Course ID: if the site is reused in a future semester, having a previous semester in the ID could be confusing.

Once you have followed these steps and confirmed them, the Blackboard Wizard will create your new course site. You can then use the Wizard to add TAs, additional instructors, or additional sections of the course to the site. To do so, select "Add Users to a Site" and choose either to add Individuals (to add TAs or additional instructors) or Course Sections (to add additional course sections to the site).

To Reuse an Existing Blackboard Course Site:
If you want to reuse an existing Blackboard site, you will need to update the site's enrollment. To do so, you must first add your new students.

Select "Add Users to a Site" from the side menu and then choose the course site you wish to reuse. The next screen offers the choice of adding either individuals or course sections to the site. If you wish to add individuals as TAs, Instructors, or other roles, select Individuals. If you want to add cross-listings or other courses to the Blackboard site, select Course Sections. Click Next to continue.

Adding individuals:
For each individual you would like to add to the Blackboard course site, enter their Case ID (e.g. abc123) and the role you would like to assign to them; TA is the default setting, but Instructor, Course Builder, Grader, Student, and Guest are also options. You can add up to 10 individuals at once. Once you have entered the IDs and roles, click the Add Users button to add them.

Adding Course Sections:
In the Choose a Semester menu, you must select the semester in which the course is being taught. Next, select the course section that you would like to add to the Blackboard site and confirm by clicking the Add Course button. If you have multiple courses or sections of courses that you would like to add to your Blackboard course site, you can do so by selecting all of the appropriate sections using the checkboxes and clicking Next. (The Wizard will automatically add cross-listings when you first create your site.) Confirm your selection and all of the students enrolled in the course will be added to your Blackboard site.

Once you have added your new students, you will probably want to remove your students from previous semesters. You can do this most easily by clicking on "Verify Enrollment" from the side menu. Choose the Blackboard site you want to check and then click Next. The Wizard will then list any students who are not enrolled in the university course associated with the site, and offer the option of quickly removing them. Click on the link to "remove them from the Blackboard site" and you will see a checklist with all of the students' names. You can remove old students from the course site either by selecting "Check All" or by selecting individual names.

At this point, you can return to Blackboard and begin adding content to your course site.

To make this process easier for instructors, we have reviewed the course sites currently on the Blackboard system. If a course site has been used within the previous year but is not linked to a course taught in a coming semester, it has been marked for us to make "unavailable". If a site has been inactive for a year or more, it has been marked as a good candidate for archiving. Otherwise, it will remain untouched.

Course sites that are made "unavailable" will simply be unavailable to students in the course. Instructor(s) will continue to have access to the sites and their contents. The archived sites will no longer be available on the main Blackboard system, but instructors will be able to retrieve them at any time by using the Archive Restoration tool, which is available as part of the Blackboard Wizard.

Each Blackboard instructor should receive an email containing our suggested actions for his or her Blackboard course sites. This information - along with the ability to override our suggested changes - can also be viewed by going to: https://www.case.edu/cgi-bin/blackboard/housekeeping.

If an instructor wants to delete a course site entirely, that can be done at: https://www.case.edu/cgi-bin/blackboard/remove-site.

We ask all instructors to select their desired actions before January 12, 2009, as we will implement these changes that day.

Blackboard is very flexible in the types of files it can store and in the ways that they can be named, but there are certain characters that Blackboard cannot handle. If a file name contains any of these illegal characters and the file is uploaded to Blackboard, any subsequent attempt to open that file will result in an HTTP Status 404 error or a completely blank page.
These characters are:

?, #, / and \

These file naming limitations apply to any content uploaded by instructors to content areas and to assignment names when those assignments are created in the Assignment Manager. They also affect any content uploaded by students to the digital drop box, Assignment Manager or as attachments in discussion boards.

If your attempt to open a file results in an HTTP 404 error, check the name of the file or assignment you are trying to open. It probably contains one of the illegal characters.

The only solution is for the original poster (either instructor or student) to rename the original file and then re-upload the renamed file. Removing the character will resolve the problem.

This is a problem specific to Firefox 3, so affected users should try either Internet Explorer or Safari to turn in the assignment. All other Blackboard functions work in Firefox 3 (except for Collaboration, which does not work in any browser at this time), so this suggested work-around only applies to Assignments.

We are hoping to find a solution to the problem quickly, and will make an announcement within Blackboard and on this blog when we do.

To Create a New Blackboard Course Site:

If you are creating a new course site, select "Add a New Blackboard Site" from the side menu. Following the steps, choose your semester and the course that you wish to create a site for.

You will be asked to make changes to the course site title, beyond the default Subject, Number and description (eg, MATH 121: Calculus for Science and Engineering I) We suggest that you modify the course site title with additional useful information, such as the semester, the specific course section, or instructor's name.

The last thing you will need is a Site ID, the unique identifier for each course site within Blackboard. The Wizard suggests a default, unique Course ID, but you can change it if you would prefer. However, since the ID cannot be changed after a site is created, we do not recommend putting the semester in the Course ID: if the site is reused in a future semester, having a previous semester in the ID could be confusing.

Once you have followed these steps and confirmed them, the Blackboard Wizard will create your new course site. You can then use the Wizard to add TAs, additional instructors, or additional sections of the course site. To do so, select "Add Users to a Site" and choose either to add Individuals (to add TAs or additional instructors) or Course Sections (to add additional course sections to the site).

To Reuse an Existing Blackboard Course Site:

If you want to reuse an existing Blackboard site, you will need to update the site's enrollment. To do so, you must first add your new students.

Select "Add Users to a Site" from the side menu and then choose the course site you wish to reuse. The next screen offers the choice of adding either individuals or course sections to the site. If you wish to add individuals as TAs, Instructors, or other roles, select Individuals. If you want to add cross-listings or other courses to the Blackboard site, select Course Sections. Click Next to continue.

Adding individuals:

For each individual you would like to add to the Blackboard course site, enter their Case ID (e.g. abc123) and the role you would like to assign to them; TA is the default setting, but Instructor, Course Builder, Grader, Student, and Guest are also options. You can add up to 10 individuals at once. Once you have entered the IDs and roles, click the Add Users button to add them.

Adding Course Sections:

In the Choose a Semester menu, you must select the semester in which the course is being taught. Next, select the course section that you would like to add to the Blackboard site and confirm by clicking the Add Course button. If you have multiple courses, sections of courses, or cross-listings you would like to add to your Blackboard course site, you can do so by selecting all of the appropriate sections using the checkboxes and clicking Next. Confirm your selection and all of the students enrolled in the course will be added to your Blackboard site.

Once you have added your new students, you will probably want to remove your students from previous semesters. You can do this most easily by clicking on "Verify Enrollment" from the side menu. Choose the Blackboard site you want to check and then click Next. The Wizard will then list any students who are not enrolled in the university course associated with the site, and offer the option of quickly removing them. Click on the link to "remove them from the Blackboard site" and you will see a checklist with all of the students' names. You can remove old students from the course site either by selecting "Check All" or by selecting individual names.

At this point, you can either add additional course sections or you can return to Blackboard and begin adding content to your course site.

The Virtual Classroom and Chat are Non-functional

The Collaboration tools (Virtual Classroom and Chat) will only load a blank window at the moment. We are working with Blackboard Support to remedy this problem as soon as possible, and will post an announcement as soon as we have a solution.

Blackboard 7.3: Announcement Emails are Not Yet Available

Blackboard has introduced an option to send an email to course participants when you post an announcement.

Checking the box should send an email including the title and body of the announcement. However, this feature does not yet work in our Blackboard system. Blackboard Support reports that this issue is definitely resolved in the next version of Blackboard, but we are working with them now to obtain a patch for it in Blackboard 7.3. Again, as soon as this problem is remedied, we will announce it.

Blackboard 7.3: Email Enhancements

Blackboard has returned to listing individual participants (visible from the Email: Select Users option) alphabetically by last name. In Blackboard 7.1, course participants were listed alphabetically by first name, causing trouble for managers and instructors of some large courses. This change also affects the blog and wiki member selection.

Blackboard has introduced an "All Student Users" option when sending email, allowing anybody in the course to send email only to to the students in the course.

The Email message box still does not use the Visual Text Box Editor tools, but it is now possible to include formatted text and links in a Blackboard email by entering HTML code. If you want to know more about using HTML to format text, you can find a basic HTML tutorial here and more advanced information from the Office of Web Development.

Blackboard 7.3: Enhancements to the Discussion Board

Tree View and List View

There are now two options for viewing discussion forums: Tree View and List View. List View shows only the first post in each thread, while Tree View allows readers to expand or collapse all of the threads in the forum at once.Expanding all threads shows the full hierarchical structure of the forum. (Click here to see a comparison.)

Forum Availability/Unavailability

Unavailable discussion forums now appear to the instructor with the following message:

Collecting Unread Posts

When viewing the discussion board, you will see the total number of posts, the number of unread posts, and the number of participants in each discussion forum. To help improve access and navigation within discussion forums, the number of unread posts now acts as a link that, when clicked, will collect all unread posts in a thread.

Locking and Unlocking threads

Instructors have the ability to lock and unlock discussion threads. A locked discussion thread is visible to all participants and can be read by anyone in the course who is not blocked, but it is incapable of being modified. The Lock and Unlock options have been moved into the Change Status To: drop-down menu, which is only visible in List View:

Changes in Forum Settings

Blackboard has introduced two new options in Forum Settings, and has updated a third.

Allow Post Tagging
Instructors can now "tag" messages or collections of messages with relevant search terms. Once the message or messages have been tagged, any discussion board participant working in List View can click on a tag to view the collected message(s.) Students cannot create these tags, but can use them to view collected messages. Click here to see an example.

Allow Users to Reply with Quote
Instructors can allow users to reply with quote, giving discussion participants the option of simply replying to a post or including the original message text in the reply. Participants must choose one of the two buttons: .

Subscribe
Blackboard has increased the Subscription options. Discussion participants may now subscribe to either message threads or discussion forums. Instructors can also choose whether subscribers to a discussion forum should see a notification email or a message with the discussion post text contained in the email. Participants must still opt in to receive the messages.

Blackboard 7.3: Gradebook Enhangements

Instructors now have the ability to give students comments on any gradebook item. Once a student has been assigned a grade, the Modify Comments button appears.

Clicking on the button opens a pop-up window with a text box and a checkbox that gives the instructor the option to share the comment with the student.

If the "Is Public" checkbox is selected, the comment will be available to the student through the student's My Grades. If the checkbox is not selected, the comment remains only for the instructor to view.

Blackboard will also be unavailable, along with the majority of the university's IT applications, from 5pm, Friday, May 30th until 8am, Monday, June 2nd. This outage is due to the university's data center renovation taking place that weekend. Applications that will be affected by the renovation include: Blackboard, e-mail, voicemail, the university Web site (http://www.case.edu), Oracle Calendar, ERP and SIS. More information about the outage can be found here.

We hope that this blog will serve as a informative resource to our Blackboard users. This is where we will post news about upgrades and maintenance, new Blackboard features, and known and resolved issues that might affect http://blackboard.case.edu users.

We also intend to use this blog to provide some insight into the workings of Blackboard, and we hope to give you some ideas of better ways to use the application to support your teaching and learning.

We hope that you will find this information helpful!