Monthly Archives: May 2007

Instructor Tools: Podcast LX, Click to create, click to subscribe

By Glen Parker | Published: May 22, 2007
USF Academic Computing has renewed it’s license for Learning Objects – Campus Pack software. This suite of tools is integrated with your MyUSF courses. New this year: Podcasting. Sample podcast subscription screen, complete with simple RSS subscription and quick iTunes subscription link An instructor creates a podcast and adds episodes with the same few steps [...]
Posted in Blackboard, New Tools | Comments closed

Blackboard Suggestion Box, make yourself heard

By Glen Parker | Published: May 21, 2007
I found a Blackboard Suggestion box today while doing some research into another problem. [ http://www.blackboard.com/products/suggest.bb ] Have a simple change to the Gradebook that would shave hours of your daily workload? Mad as hell about the changes to the Discussion Board? Want a Bb-enabled version of Rate My Professor? Whatever [...]
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Instructor Tools: StudyMate, create Flash-based learning activities and games

By Glen Parker | Published: May 21, 2007
USF Academic Computing has secured a site-license so that all USF instructors can use Respondus StudyMate product. Here are a whole bunch of good reasons to give StudyMate a try Create Flash-based activities and games using an “offline” Windows interface Create activities for use on iPods, Sony Playstation Portable (PSP) and other small screen devices Four templates [...]
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Internet Explorer bug breaks Blackboard Visual TextBox Editor (WYSIWYG)

By Glen Parker | Published: May 21, 2007
This one goes out to the content creators among us. Instructors, you know who you are. A bug in all versions of Internet Explorer prevents the Blackboard Visual TextBox Editor from successfully uploading files when embedding attachments in content items. The symptoms of breakage look like a 404 Not Found error or a [...]
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Blackboard Summer Course Access broken – resolved

By Glen Parker | Published: May 20, 2007
Snapshots are run regularly which normally update Blackboard with information about instructor assignments and students enrollments. Around 8am, Sunday May 20, we had a bad run of those snapshots which returned no information from Oasis. This lack of Oasis data was then processed, which resulted in all Summer instructor and student assignments disabled in Blackboard. [...]
Posted in AC, myUSF News | Comments closed

New Early Warning System and the Performance Dashboard!

By Glen Parker | Published: May 18, 2007
Working with Grand Rapids Community College, Seton Hall University, the University of South Florida Academic Computing and other clients, Blackboard has focused Release 7.2 on Student Achievement, providing major new functionality to: Alert faculty and advisors early on to trends in student performance, and enable them to communicate with students to take appropriate [...]
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The parade of bugs continues

By Glen Parker | Published: May 17, 2007
The bug that was addressed on Sunday has apparently introduced a new problem to those beleagured T2000 servers. This time, the machines that were patched are having permission problems writing to the shared storage. In particular it’s affecting the ability to upload files in certain situations we don’t [...]
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The Pencil is Back! Long live the Pencil!

By Glen Parker | Published: May 17, 2007
It took longer than we wanted, but the ability to customize the Course List module is back to working correctly again. If your unfamiliar with the feature, the Course List module provides a very nice option to edit which courses are actually displayed to you, so that if you’ve been added to courses that [...]
Posted in AC, Blackboard | Comments closed

Blackboard 7.2 Post-upgrade problems

By Glen Parker | Published: May 14, 2007
Many serious problems with Blackboard were encountered after the upgrade Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning. The symptoms were ugly error messages that appeared in many places, in particular when submitting a test, posting to the discussion boards, or uploading files. The problem was identified and normal operations restored by 4pm on Sunday. – Details – What the [...]
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myUSF Scheduled Tasks

By Administrator | Published: May 4, 2007
The following dates regarding enrollment and availability of the course sites may be of interest for everyone: May 5th: A07, B07, C07, X07 Summer courses will be made available (i.e., visible) to students May 14th: F07 Fall courses will be made available to instructors May 28th: S07 Spring courses will be made unavailable to students
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