Between August 12 and August 15, ITS will be upgrading our Blackboard server to the most recent version of Blackboard (it was released as Blackboard April 2014, in reference to the date of its release). This new version of Blackboard presents a number of changes and new features that faculty and staff will want to be aware of.
As a means of assisting faculty and staff in making the transition to the new version of Blackboard, the Center for Distance and Online Learning will be offering a series of scheduled transition-training workshops. This training will be conducted using our Blackboard training server (https://bblmstrn.hvcc.edu), which became available to faculty and staff on July 9, and which they can access in order to familiarize themselves with Blackboard April 2014 (Bb A2014). Faculty and staff can prepare their Blackboard content for the Fall semester using the production server (https://bbprod.hvcc.edu), either before or after the dates when the production server is upgraded to Bb A2014. The training server will be used predominantly for the purpose of training, although faculty and staff who wish to can prepare their Fall content on the training server and then export and import it onto the Production server after the latter is upgraded.
The scheduled transition-training workshops will focus on providing answers to the following questions regarding the new version of Blackboard (the bulleted items below are also links that you can use to view printable overviews of their respective topics):
- Will I export and import my courses differently?
- What’s different about the Course Menu?
- What happened to Course Files?
- Can I still view my courses from a student perspective?
- Are there new features in the Grade Center that I should know about?
- How is creating/modifying tests much more user-friendly now?
- What’s different about how I create and grade assignments?
- Is there anything new/different about grading through Rubrics?
Starting on July 15, these workshops will be held in BTC 1033 on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 11 a.m. – noon, and on Wednesdays from noon – 1 p.m. This schedule of workshops will continue through the week of August 18 – 22, and no RSVP is required for folks who want to attend a transition training workshop!
If the dates/times of the scheduled workshops are not convenient for you, you can contact Mark Petersen in the Center for Distance and Online Learning (629-8128 / m.petersen@hvcc.edu) to arrange a training session on a date and time of your choice.
If you instead wish to review on your own the changes and new features in Blackboard A2014, simply use the above links to view printable overviews of the topics that you are interested in learning about.
For more details about the upgrade schedule and your options for working in Blackboard before and after the upgrade takes place, use the following link: Information on the Upgrade to Blackboard April 2014
As always, please do not hesitate to contact the Center for Distance and Online Learning (629-7070 / DLHelp@hvcc.edu) if you have any questions!
Published: Fri, 18 Jul 2014 11:40:54 +0000 by m.petersen