TLT Blackboard Support Blog

Follow us on Twitter!

Andrea Doherty — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:34:02 +0000

Did you know that Stony Brook University’s Blackboard has a Twitter account? Follow us and say hello!

We post info on upcoming workshops, downtime announcements, tips and tricks. Let us know what kind of info you’d like to see posted!

Why do we delete rosters from old Blackboard courses?

Andrea Doherty — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:29:16 +0000

The two main reasons are:

NetIDs are recycled.
Example: John Smith is a student with NetID jsmith. When John graduates, jsmith goes to new student Judy Smith. If we did not delete rosters from Blackboard courses, Judy would have access to John’s old courses.
Due to copyright reasons, some Blackboard content is only supposed to be available to students for one semester. Deleting rosters prevents students from accessing content after the designated time period.

Reminder: Roster and course deletions

Andrea Doherty — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:29:27 +0000

Winter/Spring/Summer 2009 rosters are scheduled to be deleted from Blackboard on Wednesday, November 18. For more information, click here.

2006 courses are scheduled to be deleted from Blackboard on Friday, November 27. For more information, click here.

2010 Blackboard Exemplary Course Program

Andrea Doherty — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:01:26 +0000

The following message was sent from Ray Henderson, President of Blackboard Learn:

==========

I am delighted to announce the opening of the 2010 Blackboard Exemplary Course Program. Consider submitting your course for review or participating as a volunteer course reviewer. Participants in the program will:

Learn course design best practices
Develop ideas and inspiration from reviewing courses from their own or other disciplines
Receive detailed feedback on courses submitted for review
Gain professional development training and experience
Receive recognition for your accomplishments and participation

The deadline for submitting courses for review is January 18, 2010.

To learn more about the Blackboard Exemplary Course program and to volunteer to participate visit the Blackboard Exemplary Course Program website. Please forward this to those who may be interested in participating. Thank you.

==========

To learn more about the 2009 award recipients and their accomplishments, click here.

Fraudulent e-mails

Andrea Doherty — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:57:54 +0000

Below is a message from Stony Brook University’s CIO, Richard W. Reeder. If you receive an email asking for passwords of any kind, DO NOT RESPOND! Instead, forward the email to abuse@stonybrook.edu and move it to your junk folder.

==========================

To The Campus Community,

Recently there has been a new wave of ‘Phishing’ emails directed to members of this University.

As with attacks of this kind, both in the past and very likely the future, the email requests that you reply to it with some amount of personal information.

The emails may look official and they will be formatted to appeal to you or in some cases threaten you with discontinuance of service if you do not reply with your password.

Please be aware that it is university policy that you will never be asked for critical personal information, particularly for your account passwords, via email.

In general, the IT services on campus, including Help Desk services, will never need your password for any reason.

If there is any doubt as to whether you should reply to an email that you are not comfortable with, please discuss the email with your local IT or Help Desk Services before replying.

Richard W. Reeder
Chief Information Officer, Div. of Information Technology
Stony Brook University
Phone 631-632-9085
Fax 631-632-2160

Unscheduled outage 10/27

Andrea Doherty — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:52:23 +0000

Blackboard experienced an unscheduled outage around 8:00PM on Tuesday, October 27. The outage lasted about 25 minutes. Apologies for the inconvenience.

2006 courses will be deleted on November 27

Andrea Doherty — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 20:42:15 +0000

If you taught a course in 2006 and used Blackboard, please read this important announcement!
==========
In order to conserve space on our servers, we are deleting all Blackboard courses from 2006 on Friday, November 27, 2009.

The only exceptions are:
1. Courses needed for department accreditation review.
2. Courses taught by instructors who are being reviewed for tenure.

If you fall into either of the above categories, you MUST fill out this form prior to November 27: http://naples.cc.sunysb.edu/DoIT/bbreq.nsf/bbkeepcourse
If we don’t hear from you, your course will be permanently deleted.

Should you wish to save information from your courses, you have several options:
1. Export your course
2. Archive your course
3. Only want to save your grades? Download the Grade Center.
4. Just need to save Assignment submissions? Download them.
5. If you only need to save one or two files, download them individually.

Please let us know if you have any questions!

Winter/Spring/Summer 2009 roster deletions

Andrea Doherty — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 17:18:30 +0000

If you taught a Winter, Spring, or Summer 2009 course and used Blackboard, please read this important announcement carefully!
==============
On Wednesday, November 18, 2009, we will be deleting all rosters from Winter, Spring, and Summer 2009 Blackboard courses.

If your course falls into either of the following categories, you MUST fill out a request form prior to November 18:
1. Does not follow the West Campus schedule
3. Courses that overlap semesters
3. You still have students completing incomplete grades
4. You have a pending dishonesty case with the Academic Judiciary

What happens when rosters are deleted?
All students are removed from your course, along with their grades, file submissions, and homepages. This information is permanently deleted and cannot be restored.
Any material created or uploaded by instructors will remain in the course.

What should you do to preserve your content?
1. Download your Grade Center to Excel.
2. Download any Assignments submitted by students.
3. Download any SafeAssigns submitted by students.

Please let us know if you have any questions!

Blackboard and Windows 7

Andrea Doherty — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:39:56 +0000

On the heels of today’s release of Windows 7, here is a summary of its compatibility with Blackboard.

Blackboard has been testing the main components of its products in Windows 7, and has announced that they are provisionally supported in Windows 7. That means that the system should work overall, but some components may be problematic. Blackboard intends to be compatible by 2010, and fully certified sometime in 2010. For more information, read Blackboard’s blog: Windows 7 on the Horizon.

If you intend on purchasing a computer or upgrading your existing computer to Windows 7, please only use the currently supported browsers: Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3.5. Be aware that while using these browsers, you may still experience some issues using Blackboard for the time being.

We will update our website and this blog when we receive more information.

SOLAR maintenance 10/16-10/18

Andrea Doherty — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 14:40:19 +0000

http://it.cc.stonybrook.edu/news/509

SOLAR will be down for maintenance from Friday 10/16 at 2PM until Sunday 10/18 at 6PM.

Make sure your NetID password is up to date. If it’s set to expire this weekend, change it now so you don’t get locked out of Blackboard, MySBmail, and other services requiring NetID!