Important Notice: Our Blackboard system is being moved to "managed" hosting

In order to provide the campus community with better service, IC has arranged for our Blackboard system to be hosted by Blackboard directly rather than on our local server.  This way we will no longer be subject to outages due to power or air conditioning problems.  As you can imagine, this project will require a good bit of planning to minimize disruption. Rest assured that IC and CTL will be working together to do everything possible to support the campus community during this transition and to keep everyone informed.

Fall 13 and Spring 14 courses are being moved to the new hosted service now.

Summer 14 classes will come over to the hosted environment after the final grade due date posted by the Registrar's office, 3 days after the last day of the summer term.  If you are teaching this summer, please download your Blackboard grade centers in the case that you may have incompletes and as a precautionary backup.  (George Hoffman in the CTL can assist or come to your school to do a demonstration as needed.)
 

Fall 14 classes will be moved over July 1-14.
 

Note that it takes Blackboard 2 weeks to process courses--during which time they will not be accessible either here or there.  However, you can load a copy of your course to CourseSites (the free online version of Blackboard) to handle either Summer term incompletes or work on preparing Fall classes. George Hoffman in the CTL can assist faculty with using CourseSites, backing up your courses, or downloading your grade center. [SPECIAL NOTE: As of this writing, CourseSites is generating an error when uploading courses. Blackboard is working on the issue. Stay tuned for updates.]

Because of the migration to the new system, IC is not able to do Fall course merges or set up Fall courses to work with ExamSoft at this time.  We'll let you know when these services are again available.

IC will post updates to the Blackboard Support Site and Tech Blog.  CTL will send notices out to faculty when more direct communication is needed.  Please see the calendar at http://www.su.edu/events/month/ for Blackboard drop in sessions or email ghoffman@su.edu to schedule assistance.  More information will be forthcoming and more training sessions will be scheduled in August, so please stay tuned.  Questions about the migration of courses to the new system should be submitted to IC using the work ticket system. If you have any questions regarding this upgrade please contact the IC Help Desk at helpdesk@su.edu or 540/665-5555.

** The above has been reprinted from the June 30, 2014 CTL Newsletter sent out by Dr. Anne Marchant **