Blackboard at UNO
UNO Blackboard News:
Known Issues :
At this time there are several problems with the Blackboard Discussion Board functionality including but not limited to: freezing, not loading, error messages and posts not showing.
UCC is in collaboration with Bb Technical Services working toward a solution.
New!
Introducing SafeAssign™ by Blackboard®.
We are pleased to introduce SafeAssign, a new plagiarism prevention service offered by Blackboard and integrated into each course in Blackboard.
SafeAssign allows you to protect the originality of work and ensure a fair playing ground for all of your students by detecting unoriginal content in student papers right within your existing teaching and learning environment.
* Powerful Prevention – SafeAssign uses a unique originality detection algorithm that runs a comprehensive comparison of submitted papers across an industry-leading collection of databases. Papers are automatically checked against an institutional database specific to your institution. But to protect their originality across campuses, students have the option with each paper to submit it to the Global Database against which all papers from all institutions are checked.
* Originality Report –Instructors get an innovative, interactive Originality Report for every paper submitted that details the results of the matching process.
For more info, visit How to use SafeAssign
SafeAssign Tutorials for Faculty are available on UNO SharePoint: https://sharepoint.uno.edu/ucc/uts/training/tutorialstest/Pages/default.aspx
Introducing Scholar by Blackboard®.
Scholar is integrated directly into the Blackboard Learning System™; just click on the new Scholar tab in Blackboard and create your account. Practically every student and instructor around the world does web research as part of their academic work. They might look for resources for a particular course or assignment, or for research in their discipline or specialty. But the deluge of information from the Web can make it very difficult to quickly and easily find educationally valuable sites, or to keep track of the resources that you've already reviewed and vetted. Scholar offers a solution to these challenges, by allowing you to:
* STORE bookmarks in a central online service for anytime, anyplace access
* CLASSIFY bookmarks to organize and make them easier to find
* SHARE resources among peers and colleagues
* DISCOVER relevant, reliable resources more easily
* EVALUATE the quality of the resources
* UPDATE courses automatically with dynamic content streams
* ENABLE student contributions to course collections
First thing to know about Scholar
How does Scholar work?
How does Scholar work in a course?
After you have created your account, you may want to follow these quick and easy steps to start building your collection and using Scholar in your courses:
1. Set up the Scholar Bookmarklet - this allows you to add websites to your Scholar collection as you find them, with one click from your browser. For more info - visit Installing and Using the Scholar Bookmarklet
2. Import your existing bookmarks from your browser or another social bookmarking service. For more info - visit Importing Bookmarks
3. Register your course with Scholar and build your Scholar Course Homepage with dynamic, up-to-date streams of relevant Scholar resources. For more info - visit Registering a Course with Scholar
Current Known Issues:
Blackboard does not currently recognize Office 2007 file types.
Please click here to view documentation on how to configure Office 2007 to save in the Office 2003 file format to work within Blackboard.
Blackboard Tip:
If you are uploading files to Blackboard, or attaching files to a Blackboard Discussion Board post, or are an Instructor creating Assignments and Assessments in Blackboard, please remember the following naming conventions:
- Use only letters, numbers and underscores (_) in filenames and content names.
- Do include exensions on filename. The valid extension for a Word document is .doc, PowerPoint is .ppt and Excel is .xls.
- Don't use periods anywhere else in your filenames except before the extension.
- Don't use spaces, commas, pound signs (#), question marks, equal signs, dashes or any other special characters in your filenames, Assignment names or Assessment names.
Web Tutorials:
Documentation:
This process is daily during the first four weeks of each semester. After four weeks, the process is run twice weekly.
Step One: Registrar enters data into PeopleSoft:
- Semester Courses
- Instructor of Record Assignments
- Student Enrollment
Step Two: Each morning, the registrar PeopleSoft data is sent to UCC to update the Centralized Account Management System (CAMS)
Step Three: Each day, when the CAMS update is complete, the up-to-date registrar data is loaded into Blackboard.
PeopleSoft is not directly connected to Blackboard. There is a 24 hour timeframe between changes to Registrar data and when those changes are placed into Blackboard. If an Instructor of Record assignment is made today, the instructor will be placed into that Blackboard course tomorrow. If a student enrolls in a course today, the student will be placed into the corresponding Blackboard course tomorrow.
This entire process is automated and there is not a way to manually circumvent it without introducing errors into the process.
What's New in Blackboard
IMPORTANT NOTE TO AOL USERS:
America Online (AOL) users may not be able access Blackboard properly using the browser supplied with AOL.
The only compatible AOL browsers are version 5.0, 6.0 or 7.0 with Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher also installed on your computer. Do not use earlier versions of AOL's browser, as you will have difficulty using many of Blackboard’s tools.
To access Blackboard, AOL users must download a standard (or stand-alone) version of either Netscape Navigator (Communicator) or Internet Explorer. (AOL sometimes refers to browsers other than their own as "external browsers.")
Follow these procedures to access Blackboard:
- Download either Netscape or Internet Explorer (see chart above for supported versions based on the operating system you are using).
- Install the downloaded browser software on your computer. (Installation instructions are provided at Netscape and Microsoft's download sites.)
- After you've installed your new browser successfully, restart your computer.
- Sign on to AOL as you normally do, but stay at the AOL Main (Welcome) page.
- Keep AOL running in the background and start your new stand-alone browser (either Netscape or Internet Explorer). The stand-alone browser will use your AOL Internet connection.
Note: If you have problems getting your new browser to work with AOL, check out the Member Services area of AOL. Click on "Internet and World Wide Web." Double-click "Using other browsers with AOL." for further information.
Instructors: Important Information about Course Combination Requests:
It is important that you request combination of your courses or sections before adding any content to the courses.
When courses are combined, the automated process disables the original course shells and creates a new blank course shell that has all of the students from all requested sections enrolled therein. Neither original shell will exist anymore, there will be one big new course containing all the students.
Therefore, if an instructor has added content to the original shell(s), they will no longer be able to access it after the combine process.
If you have already added content but would still like to combine shells, first please export the content as per the instructions. After you have exported the content from the shell(s) to be combined, please send email to blackboard@uno.edu letting us know and we will create the combined shell. Then, you would re-import the content into the new, combined shell.
Getting Help
How do my students get help with Blackboard problems?
Email a UNO Blackboard Administrator
Blackboard Student Online Manual
CC Help Desk: 280-HELP (4357) (Computer Center Room 101-R)
Email the UNO Help Desk
Where can instructors go for assistance with Blackboard
problems?
Email a UNO Blackboard Administrator
Blackboard Instructor Online Manual
UCC Help Desk: 280-HELP (4357) (Computer Center Room 101-R)
Email the UNO Help Desk |
