Los Rios Blackboard goes offline tonight 6/30

Tonight the Blackboard servers go dark for good.  If you have not already downloaded your Bb course materials, you have only a few hours left to do so.  As they say, parting is such sweet sorrow...

User Progress - What are students viewing

Instructors can view activity within their course using Edit Course > View User Progress > Choose User > Print > select areas for review (Content, Discussion, Dropbox, Quizzes) and click the Next button. Then collapse areas in content then use the Print button at the bottom of the window. View or Print or PDF this page in Landscape mode.

Branding Course Colors on June 24

Maybe you have noticed that the generic heading was on the summer courses, not the SCC red and gold. The course look will be updated on Wednesday, June 24th. Do no be alarmed.

If you want the Los Rios look, use the Edit Course > NavBars. In this list changing the active navigation bar is not intuitive - The Red X and the Green Check show the current status - and are BUTTONS so you can click the X for a different navbar to make it the active one.

Unintended consequences of disabling PAGER ACCESS during a quiz - 6/22

Today we learned that if an instructor has set up a D2L quiz and checked the box to "disable pager access" during the quiz, students who end up with a quiz "attempt in progress" (e.g., they did not click "submit" before closing the quiz, or clicked "save" but never "submit") will be unable to use the pager in any of their other classes until their quiz attempt is either submitted (which faculty can do on behalf of a student) or deleted (which faculty can also do).  Please be aware of this as you set up your quiz settings and also if you allow "attempts in progress" to linger in your class! -JH

More issues with importing tests - 6/18

There are still instances of test not converting properly from Blackboard since our 6/3 D2L upgrade. There are reports of some T/F answers having this: {term not found: QuestionCollection.Shared.lbl}. D2L has identified this as a bug, and we are working to test the fix and get it into production as soon as possible.

Publisher Test Banks

Norman Lorenz (Early Childhood Education) was working with publisher provided test banks in .ZIP format based on Blackoard. Uploading the full .zip file generated errors. Norman unpacked the zip file to find each chapter test bank in another zip file. Uploading the individual chapter zip files into new sections worked fine.

Corrupted Submissions

Where there is a will, there is an entrepreneur. Here is a web site offering students corrupted files for a fee. This is promoted as a way to "buy time" to finish an assignment using Word, Powerpoint and Excel.

MP3 Audio Files - Not playing

We brought over an mp3 audio file, 50 seconds long, from Bb to D2L and the file is there, but only 4 of the 50 seconds play when the audio is a topic link. A workaround suggested by D2L was to create an HTML page and add a Quicklink to the audio file for playback. This also does not work. This might also prevent WAV, WMF and MOV file from playing properly.

Solution was to have the audio file on a web server and link to it from inside d2l.

Problem has been reported to D2L.

Bb Exports & Bb Tests

If you have a Bb archive (.zip file) or your textbook publisher gives you a test file as a Blackboard .zip file, you can import these files directly into D2L. Use the Edit Course > Import / Export / Copy Components > from a file > browse to the file on your computer > click the Open button to begin the upload process.

Your textbook publisher might also supply test questions in Word or CSV (comma separated values) formats. These file types must be converted to a format D2L recognizes before uploading. Deep inside D2L's Question Library is a link to a sample CSV quiz file. Download and open this file in Excel. Use this as a guide to creating your own quizzes. Be sure to save the file as CSV in Excel before uploading to D2L. The Instructor Guide for Quizzes had information on uploading a file http://scc.losrios.edu/~instrdev/d2l/Quizzes.pdf#page=26.

Profile Feature - Not Working

With the update to v8.4 on June 4th, the Profile feature no longer recognized uploading a picture or editing or adding a Nickname. This problem (bug) is expected to be fixed before fall 09 classes begin.

Start Summer Semester

1) COPY
Copy previous course or development course for this semester
Edit Course > Import/Export/Copy Components > Copy Components from another Org Unit > Next > Select the source from the Existing Offering list > and follow the steps and make selections. This guided process is a quick way to copy content each semester.

2) CREATE
The center box on your My Home page could have multiple tabs: Student - Instructor - TA Grader. Click the tab to see your enolled classes. In the box classes are listed by semester, use the [+] to expand the list for a semester. Click [-] to collapse the list of classes. On your next login, D2L remembers your [+] settings.

If you do not see a course for the current semester, make a course request using the Self Service Faculty Request process each semester. Use your employee id and email password to log in. New class shells are created overnight.

3) ENROLL STUDENTS
Students are automatically enrolled 5 days before classes begin by the PeopleSoft system.

Open the class for student access

Summer Classes begin ...
On your My Home page if course has a small gray circle, this course link is not visible to students. Click the pencil icon to jump right to the Course Offering Information screen. Click the checkbox for Active > Save.