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Overview Blackboard Learn, the course management system utilized by College of Southern Maryland faculty, staff, and students, continues to be an important platform for facilitating teaching at learning at CSM, with all courses having an online element in Blackboard. Over the past several years, there have been significant upgrades implemented to the system which have added many new features as well as an improved overall user experience. Purpose The purpose of this document is to propose an upgrade the Blackboard Learning Management System (LMS) from Service Pack (SP) SP9 to SP13 Released: 6/19/13 Supported until Oct 2014. The main benefit of this decision to upgrade to SP13 vice SP14 is that we keep Outcomes intact for a few more months (See Outcomes section). Project Objectives and Goals The college has not upgraded the Blackboard LMS for a couple years and is several SPs behind. It is a critical project for CSM to improve the overall online experience of CSM students. The goal is to upgrade
between the end of the spring semester, and the beginning of summer I semester time-frame. Project Success The project success resides on the successful testing and evaluating by faculty and staff of data migrated from the live server to the test server during the testing phase (March 17 April 7). Outcomes Jason Sparks (by phone) confirmed that with SP14 we won't be able to use Outcomes the way we use it now. Bb has a change management document; however they do not offer support for migration. All our work will have to be recreated in a separate tool if we decide to continue this subscription. There is much concern that the new Outcomes package is Blackboard-driven not faculty-driven. It requires faculty to use it in a much more standardized one-size-fits-all way and is more appropriate for course-level, not program-level, evaluation. The main benefit of this decision to upgrade to SP13 vice SP14 is that we keep Outcomes intact for a few more months so that all involved parties can make good decisions about how to archive the data we already have in Outcomes and how we proceed with the Outcomes subscription. Starting with SP14, we would have to move to the new Outcomes platform. Daphne Morris is the Blackboard Outcomes contact person. Dave Howard and Daphne Morris will discuss how to create an archival copy of Outcomes.
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Project Organization Leader: Kimberley Donnelly, Chair, Distance Learning and Faculty Development (DLF)
Information Management: Dave Marek, Associate Director Network Project Team, Information technology Services Department (ITS) Barry Hamilton, Network Manager, Information technology Services Department (ITS)
Project Coordinators: Joel Kinison, Instructional Technology Coordinator, Distance Learning and Faculty Development (DLF) Leah Geiger, Instructional Designer, Distance Learning and Faculty Development (DLF) Keisha Patterson, Instructional Technology Assistant, Distance Learning and Faculty Development (DLF)
Testing and Evaluation: CSM faculty and staff (30-40) selected to test and evaluate all critical components including; navigation, content, assessments and assignments, discussions, rubrics, Safeassign, NBC Learn, Intelecom, building blocks, system admin, outcomes, content collection, communities, retention center and enterprise survey.
Key Schedule Milestones Deploy SP10 13 on the CSM Blackboard test server by spring break, March 17, 2014 Performance testing and evaluating by a group of faculty and students, March 17 April 7, 2014 Final evaluation and development of training and communication, April 7 May 2, 2014 Deploy SP10 13 on the CSM Blackboard live server, May 15-16, 2014 Continue to evaluate and produce final training and communication plan for the fall semester 2014
Communication Plan Project Coordinators will provide announcements, resources, and training for CSM faculty, staff, and students. An upgrade notice will be provided through Friday Report and Blackboard MyInstitution Tab: The college plans to upgrade Blackboard 9.1 from SP9 to SP13, Thursday, May 15, 2014 through
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Friday, May 16, 2014. During this period, faculty, staff, and students may experience considerable system downtime. The system should be fully restored by May 16, 2014. Faculty should take this into consideration when preparing for summer session that starts May 19, 2014. Be sure to copy or work on courses before or after the installation period. Resources and training material will be provided under the Instructor/Student resources tab in Blackboard and the Announcement module. What does this upgrade mean for faculty? Faculty will benefit from the enhanced workflows and more effective user interface and an extended tool set of capabilities to improve their teaching with Blackboard. The upgrade will eliminate errors, such as access denied for assessments and the messaging tool, along with other access denied problems. Since, JAVA has been a main concern with operating certain interactive tools in Blackboard (i.e. Chat), JAVA will not be a determining factor if it is updated or not because the new version will not require the use of the JAVA applet to use multimedia tools. The look and feel of Blackboard will not change but some new tools will be available. Faculty will be able to view resources and attend training on the upgrade. The Project Coordinators will prioritize assisting the summer I faculty prior to the initial deployment. What does this upgrade mean for students? Other than adjusting to minor cosmetic changes, students should be able to seamlessly move from SP9 to 9.1 SP13 without any significant additional training. The upgrade will eliminate errors, such as Access Denied for assessments and the messaging tool, along with other access denied problems. The look and feel of Blackboard will not change but some new tools will be available. Students will be able to view resources and attend training on the upgrade. The Project Coordinators will provide orientations for students. Training All Blackboard training throughout the summer and fall will occur in Bb 9.1 SP13. Additional, a 1.5 hour content specific training sessions on Whats New in SP13 will be offered. Check the DLF Online Training Calendar for upcoming sessions. Blackboard 9.1 Releases included in the upgrade: SP10 Release Date: 11/5/12 SP11 Release Date: 12/27/12 SP12 Release Date: 4/24/13 SP13 Release Date: 6/19/13 SP14 Release Date: 10/23/13
Looking ahead Blackboard is switching to an April and October release schedule for upgrades -- no more numbered service packs. If the move to SP 13 goes smoothly, we recommend upgrading to either SP14 or the April 2014 release (aka SP 15) in Dec. 2014. Blackboard only actively supports the current release, plus 2 prior releases, so our SP 13 will be supported until October, 2014.
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Featured Highlights SP11 Maintenance QUICKLOOK Video Everywhere - Video Everywhere is a feature of the Content Editor Building Block providing faculty and students with the ability to record and reuse videos in Blackboard Learn Accessibility - Blackboard is fully committed to ensuring that our platform contains no barriers for users with disabilities and is both usable and accessible by everyone.
Featured Highlights SP12 QUICKLOOK Calendar - Calendar is significantly enhanced in Blackboard Learn. Retention Center - The Retention Center is an instructor-only tool that enables instructors to give focused attention to students who need it. It replaces the Early Warning System feature with easy workflows, while retaining all existing Early Warning System data and rules Discussions - The Discussion Board user interface has been updated in two primary ways: the thread detail page has been thoroughly redesigned while maintaining all of its current functionality and instructors can now require students to first post to a forum before they can see other students posts. Inline Assignment Grading - Inline Assignment Grading is a revision to the workflow for grading Assignments in Blackboard Learn. Instead of requiring instructors to download student-submitted files to view or edit those submissions, instructors will now be able to view student-submitted files inline, i.e. in the web browser. Tests and Surveys - The updates include group and user deployment exceptions, granular feedback control for Tests, improved handling of late submissions and more.
Featured Highlights SP13 Maintenance QUICKLOOK Tests - Teachers can verify student activity during a test using the new Access Log. The Access Log provides detailed information on student's test attempt interactions. All questions are now retained in exported and imported tests, including questions that originate outside the exported test, such as Question Sets
Featured Highlights SP14 QUICKLOOK Grade Center Improvements - Blackboard redesigned the My Grades page providing a new default option for the order in which grades are displayed.
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Groups Management - Groups Management significantly improves the experience of managing Groups with large numbers of students in a course. It adds capabilities to the existing workflows for Group creation and management. Course Messages Notifications - Notifications for Course Messages fill a gap in the Notifications framework. Prior to this release, when Messages were sent inside the Messages Course/Organization tool, there was no way for users to know that they had new Messages. Adding Course Messages to the Notifications framework provides visibility and notification in My Blackboard, and in the "What's New" module on both the institutional and course module pages. Inline Assignment Grading - This update to the inline grading experience improves the user experience of the recently introduced Inline Assignment Grading feature. Instructors now have the ability to expand the grading window to full screen. Inline Grading for Tools - The sidebars for grading Blogs & Journals, Discussions, and Wikis have all been updated to present an experience consistent with the Inline Assignment Grading sidebar.
My Blackboard: Profile & Profile Card New Feature for All Users
You now have an identity in Blackboard Learn, a profile, so you can share academic information about yourself with others at your school. Your profile includes your picture, your area of study or focus, and an about me description. The about me description can be used to share anything you want about yourself for example, the activities youre
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involved in at school, future career goals, where youre going to be studying for the Biology midterm coming up, or a status update. When you create your profile, you have the option to start by pulling in information from Facebook or Twitter like your profile picture or the about me description. Profiles also have privacy options, so you can keep your profile hidden, make it available to just the people who are in your Courses and Organizations with you, or make it available to everyone at your school. Once you complete your profile, your profile picture will appear in multiple places throughout the Blackboard Learn platform where your name appears: in the new People tool (see the next section), the Roster, the User Directory, Discussion Boards, Blogs, Journals, and Wikis. Plus, when you hover over someones profile picture, a profile card automatically pops up so you can see their profile information and learn more about them (see an example profile card below). One additional capability with profiles is the ability to report inappropriate content that you may come across when viewing profiles. All you have to do is simply click on the gray flag you see in the bottom right corner of every profile card and choose what content youre reporting and why.
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Text and Text-to-Voice Notifications Enhancement for All Users
You can now opt in to receive automated course notifications and system wide announcements through texts and/or text-to-voice calls. From course announcements, to an assignment thats due, you can stay updated anytime, anywhere from your mobile device.
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Record a video on the fly using a webcam and have it seamlessly embedded in course materials, interactions, and feedback through the content editor. Reuse previously recorded videos by choosing from ones own library of videos.
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able to view student-submitted files inline, i.e. in the web browser, without requiring any plug -ins, applets, or additional applications. Supported document types that can be converted are Word (.doc, .docx), PowerPoint (.ppt, .pptx), Excel (.xls,.xlsx), and PDF (.pdf). Files that have been uploaded and converted for display in the inline viewer can be annotated directly within the browser. The tools available for annotation are: Comment, Draw, Highlight, Text and Strikeout. The Inline Assignment Feature introduces a new sidebar for inline grading. This sidebar provides assignment details, previous attempts, the grade, rubrics, grading notes and grader feedback.
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The progress tracker is an enhancement to the user experience that provides a visible indicator that shows processes taking place in the background. This visual indicator automatically appears (there is nothing to turn on or activate) to show the progress of activities such as installing a building block. Progress trackers can take different visual forms, but the intention is to let users know a process is taking place and when it is complete.
Students can see earned Achievements as well as any unearned Achievements with the visibility enabled. They can also click on an Achievement to see information about the criteria for earning the Reward and their progress toward unearned Achievements.
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in one place due dates, adaptive release dates, test dates theyre all pre-populated based on your previous course setup.
My Grades Ordering & Design Update New Feature for All Users
Based on your feedback, weve redesigned the My Grades page for students. Now you can control the presentation of scores by last activity, due date or Grade Center alignment. Other improvements make this view easy on the eyes and easy to comprehend including: New Order By option in the top-right The All, Graded, Upcoming, and Submitted filters allow the student to narrow down the numb er of rows they see The text size and row spacing have been reduced, resulting in more information being displayed on the page at once Feedback is included right in-line, so the student doesnt need to click on anything to view it it just shows up on the page
Grading Schemas greater than 100% New Feature for All Users
Previously, the grading schema in the Grade Center had a maximum value of 100%. In Service Pack 14, this is no longer the case and percentages can be greater than 100%.
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