Blackboard will be unavailable during the following time so that routine maintenance can be performed:
February 21, 6-9AM (complete)
April 18, 6-9AM
May 16, 6-9AM
July 4, 6-9AM
August 1, 6-9AM
September 12, 6-9AM
October 10, 6-9AM
November 26, 6AM-6PM (Thanksgiving)
December 19, 6AM-6PM
Blackboard will be taken offline from 6-9 am on Saturday September 13, 2014. The outage will be used to implement an upgrade to Turning Technology audience response system (clickers). for more information about the clicker upgrade, please contact Technology Across the Curriculum’s clicker team: clickers@oregonstate.edu
Following a three year period of inquiry, assessment, and collaboration among faculty, students, and administrators to understand the needs of our teaching and learning community, OSU has chosen to replace the current Blackboard learning management system (LMS) with a hosted platform called Canvas. This is a university-wide LMS migration that impacts all modalities of courses taught at Oregon State, including traditional face-to-face, hybrid, and Ecampus online courses. Find out more here: http://blackboard-transition.oregonstate.edu/
Want to see new features coming soon in Blackboard, or get a tour of Canvas? Instructure (Canvas) and Blackboard will offer online demonstrations of their systems on Tuesday May 13 and Wednesday May 14.
You may attend the web conferences in Kidder 202, or join the conferences online from your own computer. Each event will be be live-streamed and recorded. You can access the web conferences here: http://live.oregonstate.edu/
These demonstrations are a great way to see the systems in action and ask questions (remote participants may enter questions in the webinar chat window).
Tuesday May 13, 3:00-4:30 pm – Instructure Canvas
Wednesday May 14, 2:30-4:00 pm – Blackboard
Questions? contact Lynn Greenough: lynn.greenough@oregonstate.edu
With OSU’s Learning Management System evaluation in full swing during Spring term, the work to investigate publisher integrations has been deferred. A decision on which learning management will be selected is expected in mid-June 2014. The Blackboard Steering Committee will then take appropriate action, based on the LMS decision outcome. Please stay tuned to this blog for further details.
OSU’s MediaSpace is now integrated with Blackboard; this update was applied on April 19, 2014. Instructors can add a Course Gallery to their Blackboard course sites, which allows both students and instructors to add video and audio content.
Content be recorded from a webcam and added directly to the Blackboard site, or users may display existing MediaSpace files in Blackboard. Find out more about the Course Gallery here.
As many of you know, an integration to the McGraw-Hill Connect and Create platforms was implemented in Blackboard in Summer 2013. Many instructors have been asking about integrations for additional publishers.
Now that the upgrade to Service Pack 13 is complete, the Blackboard Steering Committee will begin evaluating publisher integrations. Our evaluation will be guided by:
We are well aware of the desire to have effective integration between online publisher content and our LMS, and will keep you updated via this blog
There is a new blog for a project called eLearn@OSU.
The project is a campus-wide campaign to evaluate and select a Learning Management System (LMS) for Oregon State University.
Check out the blog to find out more about how OSU is taking the next steps to bring next-generation learning technology to our community.
Blackboard will be taken offline approximately once a month for system maintenance. These scheduled outages will benefit Blackboard users by keeping our system stable and up-to-date.
6AM-9AM on the following Saturdays:
January 25 2014 – complete
February 22 2014 – scheduled outage canceled
April 19 2014 – complete
May 17 2014
July 5 2014
August 2 2014
October 18 2014
November 15 2014
If you have questions about the planned outages, please email lynn.greenough@oregonstate.edu
There are no larger upgrades scheduled at this time, but we will keep you informed as that changes.
Blackboard was upgraded from Service Pack 9 to Service Pack 13 on December 21, 2013.
At a glance, here are 5 exciting features in the upgrade:
1. Interactive calendar
2. Streamlined assignment grading
3. Improved content editor
4. Improved discussion boards
5. New options to analyze test results
In addition to these five, there are several new updates in Service Pack 13 that will benefit students and instructors. See TAC’s web page for more details on what’s new in the upgrade.