Category: Uncategorized

 

If your courses contain materials created in Campus Pack (wikis, blogs and podcasts) the first time the link is clicked following the upgrade on the 17th August it will automatically update from the old version of the tool to the new.

To do this the following steps are requried –

Click View

 The upgrade process will start – this may take some time but it will not stop you using  another browser tab.

• Click on the Personal Learning Space
• Click Add Content
• Click Podcast
• Give the Podcast a name and add a description (if you want to)
• Click  Add New Episode
• Add a title for your podcast and Continue
• Select Record Media
• Click Record when you are ready to start
• Click Finish when you are ready
• Use the onscreen buttons to review
• Click Save & Exit

Campus Pack 4 – Personal Learning Space –

• Select the Personal Learning Space tab in Blackboard
• Select your name
• Select Settings

You can now manage your profile by adding an image and set your visibility in the public directory.

• Go to your Messages tab and
• click Compose Message.
• Click in the To field
• find the person’s name in the Directory; then click OK.
• Type your subject and message and click Send.

• Go to the Groups tab
• Click Create New Group.
• Enter the name and a description of the group
• Select Member, or Select Manager to invite people
• Search for the relevant names in the directory
• Repeat the two steps above until invites complete and Submit

 

The Sign Up List tool in Blackboard is a building block provided by a third party. Since well before beginning our upgrade process in the summer to Blackboard 9.1 we have been expecting the release of the new building block – as the developer institution also upgraded to Blackboard 9.1 over the summer. We have left the Sign Up tool as available in Blackboard as we did not want to stop access to any information contained in current courses.

While the current version of the sign up list is still available for use there are some important considerations as it is not fully functioning. If you do wish to use this please read the notes below prior to adding to your course.

What works –

• Adding a sign up list to content area
• Students adding themselves to lists
• Students removing themselves from lists when the list is not full
• Notification that the list is full
• Adding students to reserve list
• Export to excel (does not show reserve list)
• Export to CSV file (does show reserve list)

What does not work –

• Instructors manually adding users
• Instructors manually removing users
• Students removing themselves when list is full
• Moving students from reserve list to main list
• Printing directly from Blackboard

We will post further information as soon as the updated tool becomes available from the the third party, in the mean time another option is to use the sign up functionality in the Groups tool. This has the advantage of linking directly to the Group tools such as email. If you would like some guidance on using this please contact bb-help@bristol.ac.uk.

UPDATE 07/11/2011 – We have now received the alpha version of the building block for 9.1 and this is being added to our test environment so we can fully test functionality.

 

 

If you receive a message stating that emails have not been sent when posting an announcement, please check your course name. If the name has a colon (:) in the title the email tool in Blackboard will not work. This is a known issue with the software and is due to be fixed in an upcoming Service Pack.

Workaround.

• Create the announcement as normal
• Copy the message text
• Post the announcement
• Go to course tools and click send email
• Select the group of users you wish to send the email to e.g. All student users
• Paste the text from the announcement in to the message box
• Click Submit

 

We have created a webpage summarising the current performance audit and tuning project, with a timeline of current activities available from :http://www.bris.ac.uk/esu/e-learning/projects/bbperformanceaudit/