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Current Blackboard
Version
Version 8.0.422.0
June
2009
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Follow along with this
podcast/website/e-newsletter and learn
Blackboard from the ground up.
Every other week David Gray and Dr.
Haydn Davis deliver instruction and
discussions on the technical and
pedagogical how-tos of building a
blackboard course site and getting it to
work to achieve your instructional
goals.
A great way to learn the key
features of Blackboard is to view our "Teaching
With Blackboard" screen videos.
Blackboard 8 Upgrade June,
2009
We have successfully upgraded to
the latest service pack of Blackboard 8
(8.0.422.0). Further, we have completely
rebuilt the database server, installing the new
64-bit operating system and 64-bit MS SQL
server; and have replaced the lately
out-of-warranty file server will a new device
using the 64-bit OS with a great deal more RAM.
Performance increases should be seen, offset by
increased usage.
What's New in Blackboard 8 SP3
(January 2009)
From January 6-8, 2009 we updated
the Blackboard system to version 8, service pack
3. You should now see faster performance
in the grade center, and can now use Firefox to
upload files. A number of minor bug fixes
were implemented as well. Additionally, we
have implemented disk quotas for the first time.
If your course(s) is larger than 250MB you will
receive an email warning from the system and
will not be able to add additional materials to
it. If it is over 200MB, you will receive
an email alert but will still be able to add
materials until you reach 250MB. If you
receive either of these alerts, please contact
us so that we can work with you to reduce
content size or otherwise resolve the problem.
In addition, we have added the
Wimba Voice
Tools,
Learning
Objects Campus Pack, and
Safe Assign
anti-plagiarism tools to the system
new for the spring semester.
What's New in Blackboard 8
(June 2008)
We have updated the Blackboard
Learning System to version 8 as of June 22,
2008. The biggest change is the
replacement of the version 7 gradebook with the
version 8 Grade Center. For more on the
Grade Center,
click here (PDF) and
here (video); for more on
the new critical thinking tools,
click here (video). To
see version 8 in person, login to
Blackboard or the
Blackboard sandbox. If you have
questions, email
onlineclasses@palomar.edu or
call ext. 2862.
What's New in Blackboard 7.3 (January 2008)
Mostly Blackboard 7.3 was a
collection of bug fixes to 7.2. The one
functionality change was the ability to apply
the "old" discussion board look to "new" (ie,
version 7.2) style discussion boards.
We have deployed a "Sandbox"
environment at Palomar College (http://bbsandbox.palomar.edu)
so that new Blackboard features can be tested by
faculty members before they are implemented on
the production system. Blackboard version
8, which has been released, will be available on
the sandbox by February 2, 2008. The major
change in version 8 is the introduction of a new
Grade Center feature, which will allow Excel
type functionality to the Blackboard Gradebook.
We expect to deploy Blackboard version 8 in late
May or early June, 2008.
What's New in Blackboard 7.2 (April 21, 2007)
There are a
number of enhancements to current Blackboard
tools:
·
Announcements – An
extra checkbox now appears on the Add
Announcement page, which will send an email to
all course users about the new announcement.
This vastly simplifies a Best Practice of
posting an announcement whenever an email goes
out to all students.
-
Email – Although the Email
tool still does not allow use of the Visual
Text Box Editor, now emails sent from within
Blackboard can contain HTML. If an email is
sent in conjunction with a posted
Announcement (as above) the limited Visual
Text Box Editor of the Announcement tool can
be used to format the email text.
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Gradebook - Instructors can
now add and store optional notes or
explanations with each grade that is visible
to students. A “Modify Comments” button is
available when an instructor edits a grade,
and a corresponding “View Comments” button
displays in the student My Grades list if a
comment has been provided.
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Discussion Board – Several
enhancements to the Discussion Board screens
have been added, including the ability to
search for posts on a specific date range
without having other text to search for.
Also the Thread Detail page may be switched
from the top or bottom of the page for
easier navigation of threads.
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Discussion Board Grading –
Grades based on the Discussion Board are now
included in gradebook calculations by
default. Also, when students drop from the
course they will no longer show up in the
Discussion Board grading interface.
-
Performance Improvements –
The Discussion Board forum lists and
Performance Dashboard information should
load much faster in all courses.
The Early
Warning System tool is added into course Control
Panels. This tool, although originally designed
for K-12 institutions, may be of use in
identifying trends (both positive and negative)
in student performance. Similar to grade-based
Adaptive Release, Early Warning rules are
established which will allow instructors to
receive lists of students meeting the rule
criteria, with tools to easily email students
listed for any desired follow-up contact.
New OS and
Browser combinations may also be used with this
new Blackboard version, including Windows Vista
with either IE 7 or Firefox 2. Firefox 2 is
also supported on both Windows XP and OS X 10.4.
In addition
to these new abilities, this version increase of
Blackboard will fix several reported known
issues, such as:
-
Posting graded Discussion
Boards on a copied course causes the
Discussion Board grades to disappear from
the gradebook in the source course.
-
When a Course Copy is
processed, all content is placed into a
single content area, instead of properly
distributed across multiple content areas.
-
When a Course Link is added
to an Announcement, the link appears at
first, but vanishes after a user clicks on
the link.
A Note on Publisher Course Cartridges
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.
What is the Blackboard Course
Life Cycle (ie, 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 more information, listen
to a discussion of this topic from our
podcast,
episode 37.
For this reason, we strongly
recommend that professors make archive
copies of their courses as they develop them
and 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.
Click here for information of creating
archive files.
A Note on Course Size
If your course exceeds 250MB
you will receive a warning from the
Blackboard system and not be able to add
additional materials to it. If you
receive this warning, please contact us
immediately. We will work with you to
reduce the size of your course or otherwise
resolve the problem. The reason for
this disk size quota is that archive files
created through Blackboard that are larger
than 250MB cannot be restored to the system.
This is a limitation of the Java-based GUI
used by Blackboard. We want faculty
members to be aware that archive backups
greater than 250MB are not valid and cannot
be depended upon to restore a course in case
of emergency. There are three possible
solutions: 1) reduce the size of the
course; 2) increase the disk quota for that
particular course; 3) move course materials
to a non-Blackboard environment and link to
them from within the course. We will
work with you to put one of these solutions
in place.
Related
Resources
Of Special
Interest
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History of
Online Classes
at Palomar
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In
the
Fall
of
1998,
Palomar
College
began
offering
online
courses.
We
had
only
2
offerings:
English
100,
taught
by
John
Tagg,
and
Psychology
205,
taught
by
Mark
Vernoy.
Since
then,
the
program
has
expanded.
In
the
Spring
of
2008,
we
will
be
offering
over
250
online
sections.
In
addition,
many
more
classes
which
were
not
totally
online
have
taken
advantage
of
online
resources
to
present
class
enhancements
and
assessments.
In
July
2005
Blackboard
was
fully
integrated
with
the
PeopleSoft
Student
Information
System,
so
that
course
shells
for
every
course
are
created
within
Blackboard
and
student
enrollment
is
managed
automatically.
The
use
of
the
shell
is
entirely
up
to
the
faculty
member
teaching
the
class,
those
that
want
to
use
Blackboard
can
make
the
Blackboard
course available
to
their
students.
A
Video
Series
about
the
early
days
of
the
online
college
is
available
(Windows
media
broadband
only).
Becoming
an
Online
Instructor
If
you
are
interested
in
becoming
an
online
instructor,
please
contact:
Dr. Haydn Davis
Academic Technology Coordinator
Phone ext. 2341
Office LL-110A
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