This article is a part of Instructional Technology's Planning Your Go Online Kit series. Explore communication, active learning, and assessment strategies in an online environment to keep your course on track in the event of campus closure. View our in-depth webinar recording from March 11. 

Campus may be closed, but that does not mean there has to be disruption to your course schedule. After creating and sharing a communication plan with students, you can take steps to foster an active online learning environment. Active online learning takes two primary forms: content creation and course engagement. 

Content Creation

How can you share course content and materials to keep students on track? To get started, be sure that you have shared the course in Blackboard, specifically reminding students of your expectations when campus is closed. Next, identify course content that can be converted into a digital format using a variety of different tools: 

• G Suite for Education: Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms. Create content on the web using a rich text editor, and files that are easily shareable for collaboration. 

• Google Drive File Embed: Instructors can directly link items from their Google Drive, like a Google Doc, into a Blackboard course. A view-only copy is accessible to students.

• Microsoft Office 365: Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel are available to download for all members of the UMBC community. Save your files to your OneDrive with 1TB of storage, and access Office 365 from the web.

• Panopto: Create lecture recordings and screencasts with Panopto, a video platform for instructors to easily publish and share their videos. Panopto adjusts the size of the video, depending on the viewer's screen size and internet connection. 

Especially in an online learning environment, the abilities of all learners should be taken into account. Ally is a tool built into Blackboard courses that scans uploaded course content, performs a series of steps to make them more accessible, and provides alternative formats for both students and faculty to read or listen to content. 

Active Online Learning means Continuous Learning

Captivating content and encouraging active participation will keep students on track to meet learning objectives. Even with campus closure, students will be able to meaningfully engage and participate online. Engage with your students using synchronous and asynchronous tools in Blackboard.

This article is a part of Instructional Technology's Planning Your Go Online (GO) Kit series. Explore communication, active learning, and assessment strategies in an online environment to keep your course on track in the event of campus closure. View our in-depth webinar recording from March 11. 

Communicating with students during an academic disruption begins with a clear strategy. Follow these steps to quickly get started during an emergency: 

• Download the student class roster and email addresses from Blackboard Original or from PeopleSoft. 

• Send students an email, or Blackboard announcement, as soon as possible to let them know how you will be communicating (email, phone, text, Bb announcements).

• Tell students your response time to emails or messages (i.e., within 24 hours). 

• Inform students about how they will submit assignments (email, Blackboard assignments). 

• Select one communication tool that supports either synchronous (real-time, online interactions) or asynchronous (does not occur at the same time) engagement. 

• Synchronous tools include Blackboard Collaborate, Webex, or Google Hangouts. 

• Asynchronous tools include Blackboard discussion forums, Ultra messages, and VoiceThread. 

This month's Ultra update focuses on increasing the visibility of Ally in Ultra courses. Faculty who upload files directly to the Course Content area or within folders and learning modules will see more prominent Ally accessibility meters. These tools are also available when content is embedded in Ultra assessments. Students can also access Ally's alternative file formats for content more easily.

Blackboard also enhanced self-enrollment for student groups, allowing students switch groups themselves within the instructor-specified enrollment period. This month offered a few quality improvement fixes. For example, line spacing is improved for Ultra discussion board spacing to improve the readability of posts. Additionally, students who are disabled in an Ultra course because they dropped the class will no longer appear in the participant list.

The next Blackboard Learn update will be posted to our test site around February 11th and pushed to production in March 5th 2020. Faculty who are interested in test driving new features before they are released to production should open an RT ticket to request early access. 

As always, if you have any questions, please consider the following options:

• Check our extensive FAQ collection 
• What’s new in Ultra? | Known Issues 
• Open a ticket via RT
• Follow the Instructional Technology & DoIT myUMBC groups
• Sign up for a webinar & other training 
• Request a consult with instructional technology staff
• Review your course content with Ally

After completing the deployment of a new Comcast television streaming service for resident students during the fall 2019 semester, the campus is discontinuing the Direct-TV service we had in place. Unfortunately, the Comcast service license only applies to resident students and is not cost-effective to license for departments. DoIT has worked with procurement to select an internet streaming service, Youtube TV, that departments can purchase for their spaces. Youtube TV allows for cloud recording, a channel guide and HDTV among other new features. DoIT and procurement have worked together to provide easy access to YouTube TV that can be purchased with a departmental P-card. For more information please see our CATV FAQ. To ease the transition to a new service DoIT will continue to serve local channels over the legacy TV system through Spring 2020 semester for administrative and academic departments. 

For additional questions or assistance setting up your YouTube TV subscription you may contact DoIT through our TSC at 410-455-3838 or https://doit.umbc.edu/tsc/.