Friday, August 17, 2007

Blackboard 7 Upgrade Update

Bb Migration Timeline - Additional Dates for time line:

  • 11/01/07–batch upload students into Bb 7.2 for SP08 unavailable to faculty until after 12/20/07. (Faculty won’t be able to email their SP08 students until after 12/20/07.
  • 11/01/07–DO NOT load course cartridges until after 11/01/07 for SP08 courses
  • 12/20/07–content system won’t be linked up (all links to content system will appear to fail –but will correct itself at GoLivedate
  • 12/07/07–end of incompletes for FA07 (all FA07 incompletes must be made up
  • 12/20/07 –faculty and students will no longer see FA07 courses in Bb 6 (http://learn.vccs.edu/)
  • 12/20/07–there will be a short blackout period (1 to 5 days) for incompletes (exclusion FA07 courses –these will already be gone) and MedLab(non-traditionally scheduled courses).
  • 01/04/08–Bb 6.2 retired (no longer available to faculty, students or Bb administrators.)
    –Normal backup archives still available to Bb administrators.

Training focus for faculty (recommendation):

  • Discussion board
  • Announcements -immediate email notification
  • What’s New Module
  • Adaptive Release, review status, and performance dashboard
  • Early Warning system

Things faculty need to know:

  • Java
    -
    Java 6 must be loaded prior to a student taking a test or the browser locks the 1st time
    -Java 6 can take up to 1 hour to download on a dial up modem.
  • Content System
    -
    12/20/07 –content system won’t be linked up (all links to content system will appear to fail –but will correct itself at GoLivedate
    -Don’t use content system for NEW classes SP08 until after 12/20/07.
  • E-Mail
    -Messages sent to students from instructor now include course ID in the subject line.
  • Course Cartridges
    -
    11/01/07 –DO NOT load course cartridges until after 11/01/07 for SP08 courses

News from the System Office:

From: Inez Farrell ,Director of Instructional Technology, VCCS
Sent: Fri 8/17/2007

ITS has agreed to upgrade Blackboard to7.3 instead of 7.2 using the same timeline.

Benefits of 7.3 over 7.2

  • Full Microsoft Vista support: while 7.2 is generally compatible withVista, 7.3 is Blackboard-certified for Vista. For college computers and anystudents buying computers this is a critical issue.
  • Revised Discussion Board: a major client complaint about the 7.xreleases has been the rewritten discussion board. End users (faculty andstudents) have found it difficult to use. 7.3 includes a revised UI thatresolves these difficulties and is more similar to the historical discussionboard that users are used to.
  • Integrated Content System archiving: For 6.2 in order to ensure theintegrity of archived courses, ITS had to write a custom archive process forlinked content system content. In 7.3 this functionality is shipped withBlackboard in such a way that respects content system meta-data.
  • Performance Enhancements and fixes

There should be no negative impact on training. The discussion board changegives instructors the option of using the more historic version over thenewer version.

ITS will now plan to upgrade Explore (http://explore.vccs.edu/) so you will all be familiar with the changes.