Blackboard Upgraded to ver. 9.1 SP7 HF1 on January 3-4, 2012

Blackboard was upgraded to version 9.1, Service Pack 7 Hot Fix 1 on January 3-4, 2012.  The latest patch did not, except in minor instances, change the user interface.  It was focused on bug fixes and security vulnerabilities.  Among the noticeable bug fixes:

• Access Denied errors in discussion boards, user management and auto-saved assessments;

• Duplicate grade center categories are now allowed;

• Auto-submitted, auto-graded, timed assessments no longer display as “Needs Grading” after the first attempt is completed by a student.

As you work with Blackboard in the coming semester, please report any issues to us using our help system.

Unless something extraordinary happens, the next upgrade to the system will be after the conclusion of the spring 2012 semester and before the beginning of summer classes.

Teaching with Blackboard Screen Videos

We have produced a number of brief how-to vidoes, supplementing them with many more produced by Blackboard, Inc., to assist you in learning how to use Blackboard.  Click here to access them.

Getting Help

Use our online Help system.  Submit a ticket for direct assistance, or read the knowlede base to find answers.  For the most commonly asked Blackboard questions, you might also want to take a look at the Blackboard Questions FAQ.

Matrix of supported operating systems and browsers

Click here for our current Knowledge base article on Blackboard supported OS and browsers.

Current Known Issues with Bb9

At the end of the fall 2011 semester the performance of the Safe Assign anti-plagiarism service was very slow.  It could take up to two days to get results from the system.  Blackboard has promised to add resources to the system so that we will not see future slowdowns.

The Top Faculty Blackboard Question

How do I make my course available?

Login to Blackboard

Click on the link in the My Courses area to enter your course

Click the Customization link in the Control Panel (on the left of your screen beneath the course menu).

Click Properties under Customization.

Click the Yes radio button in area 3 of the resulting Properties form.

Click Submit.

A Note on Publisher Course Cartridges and Integrated Blackboard Content

An increasing number of textbook publishers are providing Course Cartridges to supplement their textbooks.  Course Cartridges are an easy way for instructors to supplement their Blackboard courses with content-rich materials developed by academic publishers. Using a Course Cartridge allows import of publishers’ content directly into a Blackboard course site. 

Cartridges may contain a wide variety of resources, including basic instructional text, PowerPoint presentations, subject-specific multimedia objects such as videos, or banks of test questions. Publishers may use different kinds of content in different Cartridges. Cartridge content is typically updated when new textbook editions are released.  Access to the Cartridges can be provided by your Textbook Sales Representative.  The course instructor will receive a "key" (a serial number) from the publisher which will enable you to import your own course cartridge.

More recently, publishers have been creating their own self-hosted Blackboard sites that can transparently communicate with Palomar's Blackboard site.  An example of this is McGraw-Hill Connect.  In these cases the publisher supplies a Blackboard building block to us, we install it, and then the two systems are able to communicate.  Once this structure is in place, students may click on a link in a Palomar Blackboard course, and transparently be moved onto the publisher's Blackboard system in order to consume educational materials, participate in interactive exercizes, take tests, etc.  Tests taken on the publisher site are displayed in the Palomar system grade center.  This is a superior model for keeping course contents updated.  See your publisher's sales rep to find out if your course has a publisher Blackboard component.

What is the Blackboard Course Life Cycle (i.e., how long will my courses remain on the server)?

We keep the current semester, the previous 3 semesters, and the future semester (as soon as future courses are created in Peoplesoft, approximately 90 days before the start of a semester) in our Blackboard database.  Courses are pruned from the system on a rolling year schedule.  For example, at the conclusion of the Fall 2006 semester, the Fall 2005 courses are pruned from the system.  Immediately on the conclusion of the spring 2007 semester the spring 2006 courses will be pruned, and so on.  The following chart illustrates course creation/deletion:

For this reason, we strongly recommend that professors make both archive and export copies of their courses once they are complete so that if they only teach a course every 2 years, say, they will be able to restore the content from the archive file.  Course archives contain all course content AND all student work.  Course exports contain only course content, without student enrollments and work.

Student access to courses is different.  Students can only access the course, during its life cycle, from the time the instructor first makes the course available until two weeks after the semester in which the course was taught.  We disable student access to courses at this time.  Student work and grades are available to the instructor at all times, but not to the student.  If a student later needs access to the course to complete an incomplete, contact us for assistance.