RT 5.0 Upgrade Coming 8-7-2021
Request Tracker (RT) will be upgraded from RT 4.4 to RT 5.0.
This upgrade will require downtime on Saturday, August 7, 2021 between 8:00 am and Noon.
In addition you can watch a very short video showing the highlights of this new version here.
For those wishing to test it out in our development area please see the information contained within the presentation for how to access.
Please contact me if you have any questions or concerns.
Thank you
Joe Kirby, Assistant Vice President, Business Systems
Division of Information Technology (DoIT)
Office - 410-455-3020
If you have any questions or concerns please submit a ticket to umbc.edu/go/1067
Thank you for your patience in this matter.
Joe Kirby , Assistant Vice President, Business SystemsDivision of Information Technology (DoIT)
Support Response -
http://www.umbc.edu/doit Administration 627
Office - 410-455-3020
Email - kirby@umbc.edu Blackboard course shells for FA2021 were created on July 26, 2021.
The Ultra Course Preview setting is again enabled in FA2021 courses, which allows faculty to convert a new Original course to see what it looks like in Ultra. Please review the release notes for the latest updates as well as feature parity charts to compare Original and Ultra tools and check third-party tools are available. Have a question about Ultra? Ask an Ultra Ambassador!
Ally, an accessibility tool, is also enabled in all course shells. Ally automatically scans uploaded and created course content, then performs a series of steps to make that content more accessible. Please review the Ally FAQs for more information about the accessibility indicators on course content and alternative formats.
For faculty who will be teaching hybrid or online, the instructional technology team would like to share several resources to support online course development and instruction.
- Choose from our PIVOT Solo lessons to refresh or enhance your online teaching preparation. Five key topics cover course organization, active learning, community building, assessment, and supporting students.
- Explore our Panopto folder for a wide variety of recorded webinars on various instructional technologies available at UMBC.
About Course Creation
- If you are an instructor, and your name is not associated with the course you are teaching in the SOC, please see your Departmental Scheduling Coordinator to resolve the issue. Once you are listed in the SOC, your Bb course shell will be created automatically.
- If you and your Department Scheduling Coordinator believe you are correctly assigned as the instructor of record in the SOC and you do not see your course shell in Blackboard, please submit a Request Tracker (RT) ticket via my.umbc.edu/help.
- If you need a Bb shell for a research or independent study course, please submit a new course request.
Instructors who teach multiple sections of the same course will find those enrollments merged into one Bb course shell. These sections may be split upon request by an RT ticket, which we recommend submitting at least one week before the semester starts, if not as soon as courses are created in Blackboard.
Student enrollment in Bb mirrors the official registration in SA and updates hourly. However, courses are not accessible to students by default until the instructor of record makes them available.
As always, if you have any questions, please consider the following options:
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Tue, 27 Jul 2021 10:06:43 -0400
DocuSign webforms Down
Please be aware that we are experiencing an issue with the Enterprise DocuSign webforms.
We are working on the issue and will update this message as soon as we have a better idea of when it will be back online.
This does not affect those going into DocuSign directly via
I apologize for the inconvenience.
Joe Kirby , Assistant Vice President, Business SystemsDivision of Information Technology (DoIT) Support Response - http://www.umbc.edu/doit Administration 627Office - 410-455-3020 Email - kirby@umbc.edu
]]>
Please be aware that we are experiencing an issue with the Enterprise DocuSign webforms. We are working on the issue and will update this message as soon as we have a better idea of when it...
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Tue, 27 Jul 2021 09:20:05 -0400
Gradebook filters, progress tracking, badges ready for Ultra
New course navigation & other enhancements coming in August
This upcoming FA2021 semester features new development in the Ultra gradebook, starting with gradebook filters. This function allows faculty to view data and content in the gradebook by multiple variables including individual student names, groups, gradable items, and categories. Faculty can bookmark their filters to reuse. Ultra gradebook filters mark an important feature parity with the smart view in an Original course's grade center.
Progress tracking is a brand new enhancement to Ultra courses, allowing students to manually mark and track their progress. This feature is especially helpful when learning modules are used in Ultra courses, providing students with both visual cues
to identify where they are in their consumption and manual task to mark complete for course activities. As this is the first phase of progress tracking, this feature can only be enabled if the course has no activity. Please review the FAQ to enable this setting.
The achievements tool in Original courses allows instructors to designate criteria for issuing rewards to students in the form of both badges. The new Badgr integration for Ultra and Original courses replaces the achievements tool and provides a platform for faculty to reward and motivate students for project completion, skill proficiency, experience levels, and more. Watch for updates about an upcoming webinar later in August to learn more about this exiting new tool.
Other new features coming to Ultra include a redesigned navigation menu. The top menu has featured icons since Ultra launched several years ago, and lacked any contextual information. The new menu will be completely text based and relocated to the left side of the page, where it is more responsive for mobile access. Moreover, this location is sticky -- that is, the menu remains at the top even if you scroll down the page, allowing you to easily change your tool and page view. The Student Preview tool will also change its location to the top right corner, which is more consistent with Original courses. To encourage, identify, and exchange effective practice in the use of data to inform teaching and learning, the Provost’s Office has awarded UMBC’s first learning analytics mini grants to five faculty (their proposed topics are included below):
Raji Baradwaj and Brian Dean (MATH): “Analysis of Student Homework Performance and Final Exam Performance – What is the nature of any correlation?”
Tara Carpenter (CHEM): “Modeling Effective Learning Strategies in Introductory Chemistry”
Karen Chen (IS): “Bumpy Journey: Exploring Gateway Courses Failures and Major Switch - a Case Study with Information Systems Majors.”
Nandita Dasgupta (ECON/MATH): “Statistics as a Prerequisite for Introductory Econometrics: Options and Outcomes”
The one-year professional development awards are renewable annually, pending receipt of a final report, paper submitted for publication or conference presentation. In addition to use of UMBC’s Report Exchange (REX) data warehouse, and a Tableau “viewer” license, the faculty will be able to consult with staff from Analytics and Business Intelligence, Instructional Technology and Institutional Research and Decision support (IRADS).
Note: After Covid interrupted plans for 2019-20 academic year, the Learning Analytics Community of Practice was re-launched this past spring, including a talk about student grade surprise by Indiana University’s Jennifer Meta Robinson and the inaugural LA mini grants call for proposals. More information about this year’s workshops, speakers and another learning analytics mini-grant call for proposals will be announced shortly.The recently added report "Incoming Student Course Distribution" has been updated to show the distribution of incoming students across all the GEP requirement areas. Note that the "GEP" page shows all GEP courses, whereas the "Courses" page will only show the courses selected in the parameter filters.
REX report : Incoming Student Course Distribution
Folder : Student Records and Enrollment > Course Enrollment
]]>
The recently added report "Incoming Student Course Distribution" has been updated to show the distribution of incoming students across all the GEP requirement areas. Note that the "GEP" page...
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Mon, 12 Jul 2021 09:26:03 -0400
UMBC to pilot Collaborate automated transcription recording
Pilot will take place during summer session through 9/15
Update @ 10/1: The pilot has concluded.
In partnership with Blackboard, UMBC will pilot a recording transcription feature in the Collaborate web conferencing platform this summer. This feature will be available from July 15 - September 15, 2021.
Captions improve the accessibility of content for individuals who are deaf or hearing impaired. However, captions with videos offer opportunities for students to access the information in ways they need or want it.
- Anyone working in a noisy environment can read captions.
- Non-native speakers can read captions to reinforce their understanding.
- Students learning to read can follow along with the speaker.
- Students can see the spelling of terms that will be on a test.
In Collaborate, the recording transcription feature is triggered by the instructor through the recording settings page for the session. Please
review this FAQ for step by step instructions.
Collaborate leverages AI powered speech to text recognition to generate a transcription of what is said during the session. After the captions are created, captions are available from the recording list. The captions also immediately appear in the recording player for anybody having access to the recording.
As with Panopto, if you want to improve or correct anything in the captions, you can download the caption file to edit and replace it.
During the pilot, Blackboard would like to gather feedback from faculty who use the feature. Surveys will be distributed to faculty who use Collaborate recordings during the pilot. Please share your thoughts as this feedback is important to improving the feature for all future users.
As always, if you have any questions about teaching, learning, and technology at UMBC, please consider the following options:
Many of us haven't been on campus in well over a year and in that time it is possible that you have changed your myUMBC password. If you have trouble connecting to eduroam, we encourage you to update your eduroam configuration by first forgetting the wireless network, then adding it again. Please see this
FAQ for more information on setting up eduroam.
Eduroam is the preferred wireless network on campus and provides greater access to campus services and the Internet. All traffic is encrypted with WPA2 and once configured on your device, all settings will be automatically saved for future use. Eduroam can be used on computers, smartphones and other mobile devices.
Ray Soellner
Assoc. Director - DoIT
]]>
If your myUMBC password has changed over the last year, you may need to update your eduroam configuration when you return to campus. Many of us haven't been on campus in well over a year and...
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Fri, 09 Jul 2021 14:05:32 -0400
Akindi Bubble Sheet Training
Learn more about the Scantron replacement
Are you ready for the move? At the end of the Spring 2021 semester, DoIT announced that test scoring services were moving to Akindi, a Scantron alternative. During this transition, we will be offering faculty many opportunities to learn more about implementing Akindi bubble sheets when delivering face-to-face, multiple choice assessments.
This training is recommended for all faculty that plan on deploying paper-based assessments in their courses.
Training will be offered on:
- Wednesday, August 18, 12pm-1pm
- Wednesday, August 25, 12pm-1pm
- Monday, September 13, 3pm-4pm
- Thursday, September 16, 1pm-2pm
- Friday, October 1, 9am-10am
Note: Faculty only need to attend one of the above sessions; the sessions are repetitive.
Agenda:
By the end of this session, faculty should be able to:
- Create an Akindi assessment in their Blackboard course shell
- Add an answer key to an assessment
- Generate, download, and print PDF Akindi bubble sheets for distribution.
- Upload completed bubble sheets into an Akindi assessment
- Mitigate errors and flags from assessments that may need manual review (e.g., bubbling two responses, missing ID).
- Locate the scores of Akindi assessments in Blackboard
- Review bubble sheet analytics
- Return the scanned, electronic bubble sheet to students
Attending
To RSVP for the event, please click “Going” on the corresponding myUMBC event (linked above) and be sure to add the event to your calendar!
Next Steps
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Are you ready for the move? At the end of the Spring 2021 semester, DoIT announced that test scoring services were moving to Akindi, a Scantron alternative. During this transition, we will be...
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Tue, 17 Aug 2021 07:56:27 -0400
