September is National Preparedness Month: Are You Academically Prepared?

Contributed by Henry Newkirk, Instructional Designer II (HSH)

Hello everyone, and congratulations on getting the semester off to a great start! As we forge ahead, remember that September is National Preparedness Month and that September is the peak of the hurricane season along the Texas gulf coast. Have you considered how you might prepare for campus closures due to the weather? What is your plan as an instructor? If you have not taken the time to think about an instructional continuity plan for your class(es), please consider making a simple plan now. Let’s review some essential preparation tips faculty can use to make up lost instructional contact hours for their face-to-face, web-supported, or partially online classes.

The great news is that, especially after two or more years of “emergency online” teaching, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Instead, let’s examine how you can use the wheel to your advantage. There are several essential elements you should know how to do to prepare your Blackboard shell for an emergency. You may find the information in our Disaster Recovery – Blackboard Basics document to be a useful starting point.

Please note that you already have a blackboard shell for all your courses. Once you log into Blackboard there are several resource links that I would like to bring to your attention.

 

The first resource option is the UHCL Faculty Blackboard Support link. Click this link to access several categories of resources to support your teaching.

One link on the Blackboard Faculty Support page leads to a link named Instructional Continuity, where you will find a variety of information, text, and video instructions on operating under extreme conditions. Here is a sampling of resource links from that page:
Blackboard-Specific Resources

• Document: Disaster Recovery Basics
• Video: Post-Disaster Blackboard Basics [9:44]
• Video: Create an Announcement [2:34]
• Video: Upload a Syllabus (or other documents/files) [2:29]
• Video: Using Course Messages [1:35]
• Web Page: Using Online Discussions
• Video: Create Assignment Drop Box [2:32]
• Video: Grading Assignments [1:17]
• Video: Creating an Online Test [1:41]

The final resource we will discuss is the OIT Instructional Design and Technology Blog. There are well over 223 archived blog training and support items we’ve posted over the past several years, including the team’s newsletters and our “Crash Course” videos. You can search for specific items by keyword or select from the list of topic-specific labels to find the information most useful to you.

In conclusion, we hope that these resources will support your efforts to maintain instructional continuity in the event of a campus closure. The following planning list includes critical items you may want to consider as you craft your personalized emergency plan.

1. What tools will you use to communicate with students?
2. Post an updated syllabus in each course.
3. How will you provide documents, videos, readings, and other content to students?
4. How will you collect student work?
5. How will you establish and maintain class interactions between yourself and your students and among the students themselves?
6. Do you know how to use Zoom or Microsoft teams for web-conferencing so that you could host virtual classes? Consider recording class sessions.
7. Think about how you will assess student learning and what adjustments you might make if on-campus attendance were suspended.
8. Familiarize yourself with instructor tools in Blackboard for grading student work and providing feedback via text, audio, and video.

The above items were adapted from the Continuity Planning Checklist. If you have all the items above planned for, you are well on your way to being prepared. If you need assistance in planning, please contact the Support Center and one of the IDT team’s staff members will be assigned to assist you.

Start-of-Semester Common Faculty/Staff Questions and Answers

Contributed by Jenni Willis-Opalenik, Ph.D., Director - Technology Learning Services

As an FYI for next term, here are a few significant inquiries that our team receives and some responses and reminders.

Can you please merge my Blackboard courses together (after the semester has started)?

Although it is possible to merge courses together once the semester begins, doing so is inherently a destructive effort that will delete any work or communication your students in the classes have submitted thus far. In addition, if you have already put content in the shells that will be merged, we can only copy over content from one of the existing shells, but not both. We strongly recommend that instructors submit merge requests at least a week before classes are made available to students.

We just hired a new instructor. Can you please give them access to the Blackboard shell(s) for their classes?

Instructor and student enrollments in Blackboard shells are based on multiple automated processes that run between eServices/PeopleSoft, Blackboard, and other local applications. As a result, we cannot manually add either new instructors or newly added students to credit course Blackboard shells. We also have to manual mechanism by which to expedite this automation. The automated processes begin only AFTER the hiring college/program/department enters the new faulty member as a primary instructor of record. Once the new instructor is in the schedule, they will have access to their Blackboard shell(s) within 72 hours. This same timeline applies to student enrollments after their schedule change/add is entered into eServices/PeopleSoft.

My TA keeps losing access to my class(es). How can we fix this?

It is CRITICAL that students serving as TAs do not enroll in the course(s) for which they will serve as TAs. Doing so will make it impossible for the IDT team to manually add the student's PCLAB account as a TA in the course(s). The student will need to have and use a UHCL staff computer account as a TA, instead of their student/PCLAB credentials. The TA's staff computer account should be automatically created within 48 hours of when their employment record is created or updated in eServices/PeopleSoft.

Reminder - Student Course Drops/Incompletes: Restoring Student Access

Contributed by Sam Houston, Learning Technology Administrator I

Two common issues can arise when trying to restore student access to a dropped or closed course. Please review the following information to avoid problems restoring student access to Blackboard courses.

• Student Drops: If a student adds and then drops a course, their account is marked unavailable in the Blackboard course. Unfortunately, there is no way for us to give the student's account access to the course again. This occurs because automated processes in PeopleSoft (e-services) process the last action, a "drop," so the account will continuously be marked unavailable in the course.
• Incompletes: If you have a student who received an incomplete in your course during a previous semester and would like us to add that student to your current semester course, please advise the student not to enroll in the current semester course officially. Instead, instructors should email supportcenter@uhcl.edu requesting that we add the student to your current semester course and advise your student to wait for our administrators to take care of the enrollment.

2018/2019 Blackboard Course Shell Deletions Starting Soon!

Contributed by Jenni Willis-Opalenik, Ph.D., Director - OIT Technology Learning Services

OIT's Technology Learning Services team will delete 2018 and 2019 Blackboard semester offerings on Friday, May 27, 2022. In addition to this newsletter article, multiple emails from the IDT team to faculty will be sent beginning Wednesday, April 27. Periodic course deletions are needed to reduce the size of our Blackboard database (and to avoid incurring additional storage space costs from Blackboard).

Course shells to be deleted are only those that have SP18, SU18, FA18, SP19, SU19, and FA19 in their CourseIDs. Our team's Learning Technology Administrators (LTAs) will restore faculty access to their 2018 and 2019 semester offerings this week so that you can review those courses and decide whether or not you want to retain an offline copy for your records. Faculty who would like to retain copies of their 2018 and 2019 courses may use either the Archive or Export option in Blackboard to do so. The difference between the archive and export process, as provided by Blackboard, is as follows:

• The archive course feature creates a frozen snapshot or permanent record of your course. An archive includes all the content, course statistics, users, and course interactions, such as blog posts, discussions, attendance data, and grades.
• The export course feature creates a ZIP file of your course content that you can import to create a new course. Unlike the archive course feature, the export course feature doesn't include any users or user interactions with the course.

Please note that neither process results in a version of your course contents that you can access or use outside of Blackboard. You may import a Blackboard export file to load old contents into a new blank semester shell. To access an archived file, you would need to work with our Learning Technology Administrators (LTAs) to temporarily restore a shell from that file to access materials or data. OIT will not be retaining any copies of 2018 and 2019 course shells, so please make plans to export or archive courses that you want to save before Friday, May 27, 2022.

Locating and Showing Hidden Courses

Contributed by Sam Houston, Learning Technology Administrator I

Instructors can hide courses in their Backboard course lists. If you find that you are missing a course, you may have inadvertently hidden it from your view. Note: If you are missing a current merged course, please see our article, Has a Current Merged Blackboard Course Disappeared?, from our March 21, 2021 newsletter.

To look for and show hidden courses in your Blackboard course list:

Navigate to your courses page, click the drop-down menu next to Filter, and click Hidden from me.

NOTE: If “Hidden from me” is not in the drop-down menu, you currently do not have any hidden courses.

On the resulting page, click the ellipses (three dots) to the right of the course and click Show course.

Please note: If you show all your hidden courses, you should automatically be brought back to your default course view. However, if you choose to keep some courses hidden, you will need to click the drop-down menu next to Filter and click All courses to return to your default course view.

To hide a course from your view:

Navigate to your courses page, click the ellipses (three dots) to the right of the course, and click Hide course.

If you have any questions about the above information, please feel free to contact the Support Center at either 281-283-2828 or supportcenter@uhcl.edu, and a member of our team will be in touch to assist.

Understanding Blackboard User Roles for TAs, Tutor, Etc.

There are many situations in which instructors may want to have a non-enrolled user given access to a current Blackboard course. In this article, we'll present three of the most assigned user roles in Blackboard and we'll describe how/when they may be used:

• Instructor: The official instructor(s) or record for a course will be automatically added to its corresponding Blackboard shell in the role of Instructor. Upon the request of the instructor-of-record, Chair, or Dean/Associate Dean, the IDT team can add other instructors (if they have completed UHCL's required online Blackboard training) to a course shell. Users with the Instructor role have access to all of Blackboard's tools, functions, and course data (including student grades).
• Teaching Assistant: Faculty regularly request that we grant specific students Teaching Assistant access to one or more of their Blackboard shells. Teaching Assistant role users have access to nearly ALL the same features, tools, and data as Instructor role users. For this reason, we strongly recommend that Teaching Assistants complete UHCL's online Blackboard training before being added to any shells. IMPORTANT! When such an account exists, the IDT team will ALWAYS use a student's staff (UHCL\ domain) computer account to assign Teaching Assistant privileges. Doing so clearly delineates work those students perform in Blackboard shells as a student from that done as a Teaching Assistant.
• Student: All officially enrolled students in a course will be automatically added to their class's corresponding Blackboard shell. However, there are also instances in which non-enrolled users may appear in a Blackboard shell in the Student role:
• Teaching Assistants in the College of Business (BUS): Per instructions from BUS academic leadership, TAs for BUS courses may only be granted Student role access to the courses in which they are assisting instructors.
• Tutors/Embedded Librarians\Supplemental Instructors: For this category of assistants, faculty typically want them to be able to communicate with students in the Blackboard course, but they often do not want them to have access to student grade information. Therefore, the Student role is the best fit for these situations.
• Students with Incompletes: For students completing work to resolve an Incomplete, faculty have the option of either reactivating the student's access to the previous semester's Blackboard shell or having the learner added to the current semester offering.

To request the addition of Teaching Assistants to your Blackboard shells, we recommend that you use our team's online form, Request Adding TA(s) to Course(s). For all other requests, please email the Support Center at SupportCenter@uhcl.edu. Please include in your request the course information (including section number), the name and UHCL email address of the person to be added, the role to grant the user, a brief explanation of why they need access, and (if possible) their UHCL employee/student number.

Tips for a Great Start of the New Semester

It's not too early to begin preparing your SU22/FA22 Blackboard shells. For this week, I thought I would look at a few articles from past newsletters that may be useful as you get your course ready for the new semester.

Copying content from a master course or a previous semester’s course shell is one of the first things an instructor does to prepare for a new semester. There are a few mistakes we see regularly that can make this process more confusing or frustrating than it needs to be. In an earlier newsletter, I presented the article Blackboard Tip: Using the Course Copy Tool, in which I took a look at the Course Copy tool and discussed some simple tips for completing the process as smoothly as possible.

There is another tool in Blackboard that many instructors don’t even know about that can be a big help when preparing for a new semester. The Date Management tool allows instructors to update all of the date information in their courses, including due dates, adaptive release dates, and test dates. In another previous newsletter article, Blackboard Tip: Date Management Tool, I discussed the Date Management tool and how to use it to update the dates in your course each semester.

The entry point of a Blackboard course is the first page the user sees first when they open the course. When an instructor is preparing a course, they may decide they want it to open to a different page than it has in the past, particularly if they are borrowing course contents from another instructor. I wrote another newsletter article, Blackboard Tip: Changing the Entry Point of Your Course, discussing this feature, and provided instructions for resetting the entry point to your course.

Finally, in the blog post Don't Panic!, I discuss the most important tip I know: Don’t Panic! Remember, your IDT Team and the Support Center are here to help you get your courses ready and will do what it takes to make that process go as smoothly as possible. Please do not hesitate to contact us if there is anything we can do to help you.

SP23 Critical Reminders from OIT's Technology Learning Services Team

Course Merges and Content Copies

If you are teaching courses in SP23 that you would like merged into one course shell in Blackboard, don't forget to fill out the Course/Section Merge Request form no later than Wednesday, January 12, 2023, so that your courses will be merged before students gain access to them on Sunday, January 15, 2023.  Note for 8W2 classes ONLY: You will have until Wednesday, May 15 to get your merge requests in for 8W2 so that we can process them before those courses go live at 12:00 am on May 18, 2023.

Once your courses have been merged, you will be able to copy contents from your existing courses into your newly merged course.  Information about other preparatory measures for the next semester's courses is available on our team's blog post, Blackboard Tips and Reminders for the New Semester.

IMPORTANT! If the section number for any of your classes is changed or canceled, or if a section is added that you need to have merged with these sections, please email the Support Center ASAP so that we can resolve any issues arising from those changes before students gain access.

If you have any questions, please contact the Support Center at either 281-283-2828 or supportcenter@uhcl.edu, and a member of our team will be in touch to assist.

Add TA to Blackboard Course

TA adds are not time-sensitive like course merges and can be done anytime via our "Request Adding TAs to Courses" online form. Please carefully select which role you would like your TA to have in the course when filling out the form. Additionally, if your TA has an active Staff account, regardless of their role, it will be used to add them to your course. This is done to keep work done as a TA separate from work done as a Student as much as possible. The exception is TAs who are doing their job for course credit. If your TA is getting credit for their TA work, please note this on the form to add them via their Student account if they also have an active Staff account. Note for BUS TAs: Per the Dean of the College of Business, all TAs in BUS courses may only be given the role of Student. We will only add TAs to any BUS course with the role of Student, regardless of what is marked on the form.

For the Fastest Assistance, Contact the Support Center!

OIT's Instructional Design and Technology (IDT) team works closely with OIT's Support Center. These two units work closely to ensure that faculty, staff, and students can access timely and helpful support regarding IT-related issues. The members of the IDT staff have formed excellent relationships with many of our faculty/staff clients, and we know that some of you contact your designated ID (or another member of the IDT team) directly by email or telephone for assistance. Although we love hearing from you, the IDT team encourages users to rely on the Support Center for your point of first contact. Especially during our most business times of the year, going through the Support Center offers several benefits over directly contacting individual team members:

• Your question isn't sitting in a team member's email, waiting until their workload permits them to review their emails;
• Your email or voicemail is less likely to be "lost" in the crush of communications, especially around the start of each term; and
• If an individual staff member is incapacitated or otherwise unavailable, an inquiry that goes to the Support Center ends up in the IDT team's help ticketing queue, where it will be seen and can be assigned to another available member of our staff.

Contact the Support Center by email at SupportCenter@uhcl.edu or telephone at (281) 283-2828.

Tech Tip: Where Are My Blackboard Courses For the New Semester?

Blank shells are automatically created late in the previous semester and should be available to you (except in cases of recent schedule changes) well before the new term begins. However, they will not appear as "Current Courses" in Blackboard until the new semester begins. For example, and as shown in the following screen captures from FA20 and SP21, to access the next semester's shells, begin by logging into Blackboard and clicking the Courses link on the left menu.

On the Courses screen, you have two options for displaying your next semester's shells: (1) click the Current Course menu item and change that setting to Upcoming Courses, or (2) click the Upcoming Courses link, located toward the right side of the screen.

Once you can see your new shells, you can click the star icon on the far-right side from the course name to add that course to your Favorites list.

Blackboard Tips and Reminders for the New Semester!

Blank course shells have been created for SP23 courses. All faculty are reminded of the following recommendations:

• Course Merge Request Deadline: If you have two or more classes that you want to merge into a single Blackboard shell, please use the online merge request form at least two weeks before classes begin. We will be unable to perform merges once students begin accessing your courses.
• Teaching Assistant Access: If you have TAs or others who will be assisting with your classes this semester, use the online Add TA to a Course request form to get things started. NOTE: Whenever possible, we use the TA's UHCL staff account credentials, rather than their student credentials. This better delineates work that they do in courses as a student from work done as a TA.
• Student Access for Incompletes: If you have given a student an incomplete for one of your courses, please notify the Support Center via email (supportcenter@uhcl.edu) to request that we either add the student to your current semester Blackboard course or extend the student's access to your previous semester Blackboard course. In your email, please include the following information:
• Names and ID numbers of the students who received an incomplete.
• The course rubric(s) (e.g., ACCT3331.01).
• Whether we should add the student to your current semester Blackboard course or extend their access to the class in which they received the incomplete.
• (If we are extending access to your previous semester Blackboard course) The date through which you would like the student(s) to have access.
• Take Your Course for a Student "Test Drive:" Use Blackboard's Student Preview to look at your course from the perspective of a student. Are all dates current for the new term? Can you see everything that your students need to access? Are your welcome message and getting started materials in a prominent location, so that students don't have to hunt and peck for critical information?
• Copying Course Contents: Faculty may use Blackboard's Course Copy feature to transfer contents from one of their own existing Blackboard shells into their SP23 shells. Faculty who need to borrow content from another instructor should email the Support Center and include an email from the content owner granting permission for us to copy their contents into your course.
• Course Updates: Clear or hide outdated and/or unused course materials, e.g., old discussion posts, announcements, old syllabi, etc. Update any assignments/assessments with availability and due dates with new dates for the current semester.
• Add Critical Help Resources for Students: If you will be using Zoom, Collaborate, or Echo360 this semester, please encourage your students to review the materials posted on our Student Blackboard Support page. We have a Student Checklist for Online Technology Readiness, as well as tool-specific handouts and videos.
• Schedule Changes: If you were originally scheduled to teach a course in SP23 that has been reassigned to another instructor, please email the Support Center and let us know the course information. A Blackboard shell for the new instructor will not be generated until your shell has been removed from the Blackboard system.
• Proctoring Information: Will you be requiring students to use a proctoring service when completing online tests/exams? If so, make sure that you provide students with links to resources about how to prepare for a proctored assessment. UHCL provides two recorded proctoring options for faculty: (1) ProctorU Review+ (with Proctored Launch), and (2) Respondus LockDown Browser and Monitor. The Student Information tab on our team's Online Proctoring Resources page has the information that students need to get ready for a successful proctoring session.

For questions about preparing for the next semester, please reach out to our Instructional Design and Technology (IDT) team by contacting the Support Center. A staff member will enter your request into the help ticketing system, where it will be routed to the next available member of our team.

Changes to Course Provisioning, Etc.

As announced in an email to faculty sent on April 15, 2020, the OPALS system has been removed from service. Beginning with the Summer 2020 semester, faculty will receive a blank Blackboard shell for every course that they have in the schedule for that term. Faculty will be able to use the Course Copy feature in Blackboard to copy content from whichever previous semester offering or existing master course they desire into the new blank shell. Please use the links provided below for information about how to complete tasks that were previously processed in OPALS:

• Copy contents into your new semester shells
• Merge multiple courses/sections into a single Blackboard shell
• Request development of a new fully online course

If you have any questions about these, or other, Blackboard-related tasks, please contact your designated instructional designer or contact the Support Center to have a help ticket created and assigned to a member of our team. You may contact the Support Center via any of the following means:

Email: supportcenter@uhcl.edu
Phone: 281.283.2828
Create a Support Ticket