Notes on Blackboard Upgrade Conference Call - 10/30/2007

Red - Greater interest to Faculty
Blue - My additional comments

Posted on Tuesday, October 30, 2007 - 4:23 pm by
David Carter-Tod
ITS
Virginia Community College System
dcartertod@vccs.edu

Attended: Blue Ridge, Danville, Germanna, John Tyler, New River, Northern, Patrick Henry, Piedmont, Rappahannock, Tidewater, Southside, Thomas Nelson, Virginia Western, Wytheville, System Office.

Did not attend: Central, Dabney, Eastern Shore, J. Sargeant Reynolds, Lord Fairfax, Mountain Empire, Paul D. Camp, Southwest, Virginia Highlands


The call started by reviewing the Welcome to Blackboard 7 document, going over dates and issues. Blackboard administrators are strongly encouraged to review this document if they have not already.

Question: After Nov 1, after getting courses created using for example, a course creation file, do categories need to be done?
Answer: Yes, but it’s really easy to do. Availability is easy to do in the interface the same way.

Question: How can Dec 20 be both Go Live and a Blackout day?
Answer: It appears that there has been some kind of miscommunication. There will be no blackout period.

Question: Whoa! That’s a whole lotta tabs!?
Answer: You’re right. We will try to reduce them. We can investigate the feasibility of combining tabs at the college level, e.g. College Connect and Teach, but we are not sure how this might be done yet. We are open to ideas and would want to work through AS & R on this issue.

Question: What is the timing of course archives and statistics for fall 2007?
Answer: All Fall 2007 courses that are brought to Blackboard 7 will also be archived on the server where Blackboard administrators can get to them. Going forward, courses active after December 20 will be archived in the Spring 2008 section, regardless of the term identifier.

**If you find you will have make-ups for the FA07 term you will need to let me (Ruth Smith) know.

Question: When will content system files get moved?
Answer: Current plan is to move content system files later at the December Go Live, so that files on learn.vccs.edu (bb6) do not get out of synch with files on bb7.vccs.edu (bb7). If a faculty member needs to create files on the content system or move them, they can simply access both systems via WebDAV and copy content from one to the other (via their desktop).

When we do move content system content, please check permissions. It is unlikely that we will be able to reproduce permissions on Blackboard 7 precisely.

Question: When will “other” courses get migrated, e.g. organizations, .devl, .wrks, .tmpl?
Answer: If any of these courses can be moved before Go Live that would be preferable. Otherwise these will take a back seat to the migration of Fall 2007 courses. Colleges should communicate to learn@vccs.edu if they would like these courses migrated earlier than Go Live.

Question: Who places modules on college tabs?
Answer: Blackboard administrators may do this themselves.

Question: What exactly are the end user requirements and recommendations, e.g. with regard to Vista, XP, IE, CPU, RAM, etc.?
Answer: We will get the official Blackboard documentation on this. On review, this is on page 24 and 25 of the “Blackboard_Academic_Suite_New_Features_for_Release_7.3.pdf” document posted on VCCS Discuss (https://discuss.vccs.edu/scripts/discus/show.cgi?19/7266.html).

Question: After Dec 20, will system administrators have access to BB6?
Answer: Good question. We think so. There are some ongoing discussions about this internally about the most appropriate kind of access to provide after Dec 20, but yes, we think so.

Question: Can there be an FAQ tab for students?
Answer: We will work with AS & R on something like this. Perhaps on the Help tab?

Question: How will batch loading of courses work?
Answer: Same as ever. Joshua Seigler at PVCC wrote a nice guide to how to do this - http://learn.vccs.edu/bbcswebdav/users/jseigler8379/Bb/BatchCourseCopy-howto.doc

Question: Can we get a copy of the Administrator Manual?
Answer: We will post it to Discuss

Question: Can we get sample (dummy accounts) students – for instructors to use to evaluate their courses?
Answer: Please file an IssueTrak ticket requesting any manual accounts you need.

**I've already taken care of this you will use the same login: TNstudent and pw: (call for pw) as we did in Bb 6.

Note: Messaging is turned off in Blackboard 7.

Question: What is the Podcasting capability in Blackboard 7
Answer: Wimba Voice Tools at Go Live. Other building blocks, e.g. iTunesU may also enable this. Other building blocks are under active consideration, e.g. Classtop and Learning Objects.