Effective March 28, the weekly backup of the Blackboard learning management system will occur each Monday morning beginning at 3:30 AM. The Blackboard system is unavailable during the backup process (2-3 hours).

The new schedule will *replace* the current Sunday evening backup schedule.

As mentioned in last week’s Tech Tip of the Week, please keep this time in mind when setting due dates for assignments and assessments.  We now suggest setting dates on later than midnight Sunday night to avoid early Monday-morning frustrations.

Did you know you can add titles to questions you create for Blackboard assessments?  You have the option to show or hide these titles for students (so as to not unintentionally give the answer away).

An assessment management best practice is to provide a descriptive title for each question.  For example, following is a question used by a UCA faculty member: “If a bedroom was 12′ x 14′ what is the minimum amount of window area required?”  An appropriate title for this question might be “Window Area Min.”

This management technique makes it easier to find the question you are looking to include in future exams.  Isn’t it easier to know what the question “Window Area Min” is assessing than it is the question titled “Ch. 3 Q4?”

For further information about Blackboard or other instructional technologies, please feel free to contact Vicki Parish in the Center for Teaching Excellence at 450-5059 or vparish@uca.edu.

Do you have an assessment you would like to use in multiple UCA Blackboard shells?  Have you ever noticed you can easily export assessments within UCA Blackboard but wondered how to import them into another class?  Believe it or not, it is just as easy to import that assessment into another class as it is to export it.

To export:  Put a check mark in the box next to the assessment you wish to export [Build Tab] and click on the Export button beneath all of your assessments.  This will bring up a new window for you to choose where to save the exported file.  I suggest you save the exported file in “My Files” so you can access the file from a different class.  Type in a name to save the file as and click Ok.

To import:  Navigate to the second class you want to give the assessment.  Under Designer Tools, click on the Manage Course option.  From within this page, choose Import.  Navigate to My Files (top left of the page) and select the file you just exported.  Click Ok.  It may take a few minutes, but it will automatically import the assessment to your assessments tool in this class with all of the same attributes and properties as the original assessment.

For questions or more information on export/import, contact Vicki Parish in the IDC at 450-5059 or vparish@uca.edu.

Did you know you can put students in groups for various projects and student interactions in Blackboard?  Do you realize that you can even have students choose their own groups within the perimeters that you set?  It’s true!

To create or edit groups in Blackboard, simply go to the Group Manager from the Teach tab.  From within here, click the Create Groups button at the top of the page.  You can choose which group type you wish to set up.  (To allow students to choose which group they will be in you will choose the Groups with Sign-In Sheets option.)

If you find you have any questions or these instructions are unclear, please feel free to contact me anytime at 450-5059 or vparish@uca.edu.  Happy grouping!

Do you need to get an announcement to your students and ensure that they see it?  Consider using the announcements function in Blackboard.  You can create an announcement for your students, teaching assistant(s), or auditor(s) quickly and easily.  To ensure that the intended recipient will in fact see the announcement, check the last option on the page, “Also deliver as a pop-up message.”   This will make a new window “pop up” when a student logs in with the announcement in it.  A student must move or close this window to see their Blackboard page.  Note: Pop-up blocker settings may need to be changed to receive these messages.  However, these settings should already be set correctly in order to access Blackboard in the first place.