Fall 2014 DL Update

I know you all have been so busy and many of you have online classes that begin on Monday; but I just wanted to update you on a couple of items.

Personnel

Some Personnel changes in the DL unit for this academic year. Brad Roberts will continue to support Jackson; Natasha Watts is new and will support all campuses; and Mindy Walters is new and will support Hazard, Knott, and Leslie. Bear with us as our new folks learn their new job responsibilities. Paul Currie, Laura Brashear, and Wendy Davidson are in different roles and will not be supporting DL this academic year, so please direct all questions to Brad, Natasha, Mindy, or myself.

Course Certifications

All online courses will be going through the course certification process this academic year. You will have a DL Mentor who can assist you in the design and delivery process. A schedule of courses will be created and you will be contacted about the process.

ADA

ADA and Section 508 will begin to take focus this year with online classes. An ADA checklist will be developed and shared with faculty who teach online.

Other Reminders

Be sure to have specific and detailed Course Calendar with due dates in your course at the beginning. This allows your students to know exactly what is expected and when! Review your syllabus, be sure to include course components, grading criteria with total scores. And finally, add a final grade column to your course and add grades a few days before you post them in PeopleSoft. This allows for any questions to be resolved before grades are officially submitted.

Blackboard Tips

·         Copy/paste in ANY form doesn’t work in Firefox unless you paste into Word first, then copy/paste into FF. Copy/Paste is working in IE but you “might” experience issues with drop down menu selection boxes when working in Grade Center.

·         When importing, if you receive an error with a red bar across the screen, your import really has failed. Wait a few seconds and try again.

If you receive the orange bar & the green bar, then the import has started and you need to wait until it completes. If you receive an email that it has failed, ignore the email. It only reports a failure because it was unable to associate a creator username for a couple of the links in the template and bulletin board.

·         If you create an export file, do NOT select calendar. Make sure Course Calendar is selected (if you have that content folder) but Calendar is further down the list and may cause numerous errors to appear in the notification email that is automatically generated by Bb to signal that the process has completed.

SoftChalk 9 is now available!!

For those that are interested in creating lessons for your online courses or you have used SoftChalk in the past, SoftChalk 9 is now available. In Blackboard, click eResources, then Software Support on the sub horizontal menu. Check out softchalk at http://softchalk.com/

Course Availability
Most imperative, please do not forget to make your class available before 8:00 a.m. on Monday morning. It is the instructor’s responsibility to open the course to students. You can do this at any time prior to the course start date. To make your course available to students from the Control Panel within your course expand Customization then click Properties; change the Course Availability option to Yes and submit the page. Your course is now open to students. NOTE: You should not change the options under Course Duration. Doing so will remove the course from students Blackboard page. This setting should remain set as Continuous.

KCTCS eMail

Please remember to check your KCTCS eMail daily. The KCTCS eMail is the official communication tool for KCTCS and when corresponding with student about official and academic content the KCTCS eMail should be used by the instructor and by the student.

Test Proctoring

If you are planning on having test proctoring in your courses, remember it is recommended that you have only 1 test proctored, two with rationale. Make sure you contact Ella Strong who can add you to the test repository so all your proctoring information can be loaded.

Recertification for Faculty

In the next academic year a faculty recertification will be released for all faculty to complete. This will not be as extensive as the full faculty certification but will include updated materials, syllabus items, etc.

Technical Issues

Just a reminder to contact the Blackboard Helpdesk for all Blackboard functional questions, technical support, and performance issues at our help desk site: https://bbcrm.edusupportcenter.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=8158 or 1-866-590-9238.

And last but not least, KCTCS has installed Blackboard Analytics. 

Blackboard Analytics is a tool used to report student activity, engagement as well as inform about course design and development. Four course reports are available for all KCTCS instructors within the Control Panel > Evaluation >  Course Analytics in your Blackboard course.