Blackborad 5 Incompletes

Students with an incomplete grade from spring and summer 2005 courses will have access to Blackboard 5 through December 31, 2005 to complete their work.

Blackboard 6 (http://learn.vccs.edu) will be available to students on August 15. At the same time, the current Blackboard url (http://bb.vccs.edu) will be redirected to Blackboard 6
(http://learn.vccs.edu). After this date, the only way to get to Blackboard 5 will be by a new url (http://bb5.vccs.edu). On August 16, all courses on Blackboard 5 will be made unavailable to
students.

Instructors have two options for students with an incomplete in a Blackboard course site:
Option 1: Moving Content to Blackboard 6 - http://learn.vccs.edu/ The faculty member can request from their college Blackboard Administrator that the course be exported from Blackboard 5 and imported into Blackboard 6 (all enrolled students from spring and
summer 2005 will have accounts in the new Blackboard 6). The student can then be enrolled in the course site. Student course data (grades, drop box postings, discussion board posts, etc.) will not be brought over to the new system. This is a good option for students that only need access to course content.

Option 2: Completing the course in Blackboard 5 - http://bb5.vccs.edu/ The second option is for the student to complete the course in Blackboard 5. All student accounts will remain in Blackboard 5. The risk with this option is that the Blackboard 5 system is no longer a
supported environment. Blackboard will end support for Blackboard 5 in September 2005, and the VCCS will not have any official support after our August 15 Blackboard 6 Go Live date.
If an instructor would like to use Blackboard 5 for an incomplete, it is the instructor’s responsibility to make the course available to students and to communicate the url for the course location (http://bb5.vccs.edu).To make the course available to students, go to the course ControlPanel, select Course Settings and then set Course Availability to Yes.

Exceptions and Constraints
If a college has a significant number of courses that should be left available after August 16, please submit them on a spreadsheet on an IssueTrak help ticket. The issue type is Blackboard 5. Blackboard 5 may only be used for incompletes and courses that started before August 15. If instructors foresee a reason for students to have access beyond that date, the course will need to be exported and imported into Blackboard 6. Faculty may also log on to Blackboard 5 to retrieve content that they still need from there. Faculty should be aware however that the server, while functional, will not be actively maintained as a production server.

Blackboard 5 will no longer be available after December 31, 2005.