Through a University System of Maryland partnership, DoIT has offered online training to UMBC full-time and part-time faculty via the Online Learning Consortium (OLC) over several years. UMBC remains a member of the Online Learning Consortium, but the partnership providing access to a large number of workshop seats is ending.

The OLC workshop format utilizes proven teaching strategies and learning activities while modeling best practices for online and hybrid learning. Participants engage with experienced instructors and collaborate with peers via synchronous (live) and asynchronous environments. Workshops are delivered online over 3-7 days. Faculty can take workshops through the end of the year, but registration must be completed by February 23, 2018. We have 100 seats remaining.

The following list identifies workshops and when they will be offered each semester. The workshop descriptions are linked in titles with the dates. If more than one date is available, it will be listed at the bottom of the description page.

Additionally, OLC offers three self-paced workshops with 365-days of access.

• Strategies for Increasing Interaction & Engagement 
• Giving Effective Feedback 
• ADA & Web Accessibility 

Finally, faculty who complete all four of OLC workshops on the topic of Accessibility and Universal Design for Learning in 2018 may receive a digital credential from OLC. The specific workshops are: 

• Fundamentals: ADA & Web Accessibility 
• Designing with Accessibility in Mind 
• Strategic Planning for Web Accessibility
• Applying Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Principles to Online Courses to Increase Accessibility and Engagement 

To register for a workshop, please open an RT ticket. Be sure to include the name of the workshop you would like to attend and the date(s). Instructional technology staff will assist with your registration, answer any questions you may have about the experience, etc. Please request your registration by Friday, February 23, 2018.

Prepare your Blackboard course shell for the new semester with our baker’s dozen checklist.

1. Review new tools & features in Blackboard.

Our Blackboard site is upgrade twice a year so check out the new features and updates. We are now using a new system theme to better support mobile devices and screen readers.

2. Copy your course content from a previous semester.

Bypass the long wait and digital file transfers required for export and import. Use course copy -- it’s faster and more convenient. 

TIP: Request a master course shell for ongoing content development and maintenance.

3. Check course links for broken or missing content.

If you use a lot of external links, check the validity of those resources. This tool will also let you verify permissions on course files copied from other courses.

4. Upload multimedia files & large files to UMBC Box or Google Drive.

Update course content with new resources, but put the big stuff in the cloud. Your Blackboard course will thank you for a streamlined delivery.

5. Update due dates, adaptive release dates, availability, etc.

Use the Date Management tool to modify nearly everything with a date in your course whether availability or adaptive release. (Collaborate sessions and publisher content are not supported by this tool.)

6. Evaluate & configure Qwickly Attendance for your course.

Check out the optional attendance tools for student self check-in or instructor tracking.

7. Set up the grade center.

Students benefit from knowing how they’re doing in your course throughout the semester. If your course uses a weighted grading system to calculate the final grade, set up your grade center as soon as possible.

8. Enable discussion board notifications.

Encourage students to subscribe to the discussion forum to keep updated on important threads and stay engaged with participation requirements.

9. Set up Bb Collaborate Ultra sessions.

Prepare for snow days, virtual office hours, and tutoring, or provide students with a virtual place to meet, prepare, and deliver team presentations.

10. Record an orientation video screencast & request closed captioning.

Invite students to explore the course with a course tour and orientation video. Let students know what to do first before classes start and where to find important content. 

TIP: Collaborate Ultra is a great alternative to screencasting software. Be sure to request captioning for accessibility!

11. Post a welcome announcement.

No matter what format you teach, create an online introduction to create a sense of connection and build community in your course.

12. Set your course availability.

Use one of three methods to turn your course on for students.

13. Download the Bb Instructor mobile app.

Keep up with your course on the go with Blackboard’s mobile app. Post announcements, engage in discussions, and deliver virtual sessions in Collaborate. 

~*~

Do you have a tip to share with other faculty? Please comment in this post and let us know!

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

• Check our extensive FAQ collection

• New Features | Known Issues | Updates & Fixes

• Open a ticket via RT

• Follow the Instructional Technology & DoIT myUMBC groups

2018 High-impact OER Mini-Grant Program Informational Webinars

The Maryland Open Source Textbook (M.O.S.T.) initiative is seeking proposals for its 2018 High-impact OER Mini-Grant Program to strategically support 2- and 4-year Maryland public higher education institutions' efforts to adopt open educational resources (OER) as a means to greatly reduce textbook costs and address college affordability for students.  Sign up for one of this week's informational webinars to learn more about the 2018 program and walk through the application.  There will also be Q&A to answer specific questions about course eligibility, proposal ideas, curation of existing OER, and more. 

Register for one of this week's webinars (https://goo.gl/forms/m9jfDEJqolRXtaah1): 

• Wednesday, Jan. 10th, 2:30 - 3:30 p.m.
• Friday, Jan. 12th, 11 a.m. - 12 p.m.
  

Two types of mini-grants will be awarded for Fall 2018 OER implementation: 1) Adopt/Adapt OER ($500 - $1,500) and 2) Scaling OER ($1,500 - $2,500).  Proposals must be received by 5 p.m.Eastern Time on Friday, February 2, 2018.

Maryland OER Summit Keynote Video and Other Resources

Access resources from Advancing Postsecondary Student Success Through OER: A Statewide Summit on Open Educational Resources, including the keynote address video and PowerPoint presentation from Cable Green and David Wiley, and handouts, PowerPoint presentations, posters, and additional resources from the OER Summit presenters.  To find the resources, go to the “Program” tab on the Summit event page: http://www.usmd.edu/cai/advancing-postsecondary-student-success-through-oer-statewide-summit-open-educational-resources. 

Sign Up for the M.O.S.T. Basecamp

To receive the latest news and updates from M.O.S.T., join the M.O.S.T. Basecamp.  The M.O.S.T. Basecamp will also connect you with other colleagues in the state adopting and scaling OER and provide you with a place to share resources and best practices.  To join, click here: https://3.basecamp.com/3233682/join/MQrvqxBnAFMp.

Blackboard will be updated on Friday, January 5, 2018 beginning at 5 PM EST as part of DoIT’s biannual Blackboard update. No downtime is expected: Blackboard should remain online and available, but some tools and services may be slower to respond during this twelve-hour cycle as those backend processes restart across supporting servers.

Prior to the update, Blackboard’s overall look will be refreshed during the holiday break with a new system theme featuring standardized colors, fonts, and spacing for greater consistency between the learning management system, Bb Collaborate, and Blackboard’s mobile apps.

The new theme also provides:

• Support for Mobile Devices - When users log in to Blackboard on a mobile device or tablet, screen elements such as the course menu and control panel compress or change position so they stay visible. As the screen gets smaller, modules and tool tiles stack so you will still have access to everything at your fingertips. 
• Support for Accessibility - The updated theme follows WCAG 2.0 principles and accessibility guidelines for structure, color contrast, and navigation. New ARIA landmarks define the page structure in courses, menus, and content areas to better assist users with screen readers in navigating page elements.

Standardized across the entire Blackboard system and all courses, this theme is also the first step toward the Ultra Experience, which UMBC will begin to explore with a small pilot in SP2018 in partnership with Blackboard.

Two new features will also be available in this release:

• Course Availability Status - An open or closed padlock, located next to the Student Preview icon in the upper right corner of your course, will represent its availability state to students. Instructors can modify the availability of the course with one click within the shell.  
• Chemistry Notations in Content Editor - The math editor will be updated to feature tools specific to chemistry including an embedded periodic table of elements.

Finally, the inline grading tools will be upgraded over the same weekend after the main Blackboard site is updated. The Blackboard update occurring on Friday, January 5, is a requirement before the inline grading tools can transition to the New Box View on Saturday, January 6. Inline grading tools may be unavailable for up to six (6) hours that morning. Faculty will be able to download student submissions during the conversion process, but the inline grading tools within Blackboard will be temporarily unavailable. Please review the FAQs about grading with inline tools during this transition.

In preparation for this downtime:

• Instructors: If you need access to your gradebook during the downtime, please review this FAQ for information on downloading a copy of the Blackboard Grade Center to Excel.

After the Blackboard update is finished, please clear your Internet browser cache and cookies before logging in using these step-by-step instructions.

The UMBC Blackboard team identified a time period that should have a reduced impact on our users. If our Blackboard site is down longer than expected due to unforeseen circumstances, updates will be posted to this news article. We appreciate your patience as we continue to improve our systems to bring you a better Blackboard experience.

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

• Check our extensive FAQ collection
• New Bb Features | Known Issues | Updates & Fixes
• Open a ticket via RT
• Follow the Instructional Technology & DoIT myUMBC groups
• Request a consult with instructional technology staff

Four faculty will redesign and teach courses using Blackboard’s Ultra Experience, the next generation of Blackboard’s learning management system during the SP2018 semester.

As part of a unique partnership with Blackboard, the pilot is a collaboration between UMBC’s Blackboard Faculty Advisory Team, DoIT, and Blackboard staff to ensure a successful faculty and student experience before a scaled deployment of a major upgrade.The partnership also allows faculty, students, and instructional technology staff to provide essential feedback about the current state of the Ultra Experience and shape its future development. 

The four faculty and courses are:

• Liz Stanwyck - STAT 451: Introduction to Probability Theory
• Tim Phin - HIST 456: The Roman Empire
• Gary Williams - EHS 102: Emergency Medical Responder
• Mary Tabaa - EDUC 792: TESOL Internship

What is the Ultra Experience?

The Ultra Experience is the first completely cloud-based system from Blackboard, representing a new focus on improved workflows and deep integrations to support teaching and learning. Featuring a more personalized, proactive, and intuitive interface for faculty and students, users will encounter a navigation and activity stream that provides quick access to the most critical information to easily stay updated and take action in and outside of the virtual course environment. 

Embedded analytics keep students informed about their progress and tell quantitative stories about learning. The new interface provides a more seamless transition between mobile and desktop, allowing students to move between app and browser. 

Why the Ultra Experience?

Since 2000, UMBC has maintained the original Bb Learn 9.1 environment, beginning with self-hosted servers on campus. In January 2015, UMBC migrated its self-hosted environment to Blackboard’s managed hosting facility in Virginia. During the Summer 2017 term, DoIT announced the transition to Blackboard’s cloud-based architecture to update our system with little to no downtime, increase the scale the system in response to load, and increase services when demand is high. The transition to Blackboard cloud was also a technical requirement to evaluate and subsequently migrate to Blackboard’s future systems using the Ultra Experience, which was announced by Blackboard in July 2015.

Tools have been added, upgraded, or retired over the years to Bb Learn 9.1, but with the exception of Blackboard Collaborate, which was deployed in the Ultra Experience to all courses in WT2017, no significant changes to the overall Learn 9.1 interface has occurred. Each month, however, Blackboard releases new tools and improvements to the Ultra Experience, allowing faculty to quickly innovate. Although the original Learn 9.1 experience we currently use will be supported in the near future with some modest development, the future of Blackboard is in Ultra. 

We’re very excited to introduce the Ultra Experience to you over the next 18 months. As you explore the new interface, redesign your content, or take classes, please tell us how you use Ultra to enhance and improve the way you teach and learn. In the coming months, we will share a migration website and timeline, frequently asked questions, and roadmaps with demos.

Blackboard course shells for WT2018 and SP2018 were created on December 6, 2017.

About Course Creation

Bb shells for WT/SP2018 are available for all courses (designated as lecture, lab, field or discussion) listed in the UMBC Schedule of Classes (SOC), provided that there is an instructor of record listed. As new course sections and/or instructors are added to the SOC by Department Scheduling Coordinators, corresponding Bb shells are automatically generated overnight. 

• 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:

• Check our extensive FAQ collection
• Open a ticket via RT
• Follow the Instructional Technology & DoIT myUMBC groups
• Request a consult with instructional technology staff