In preparation for the Blackboard 7.3 to Blackboard 9.1 migration, we had created approximately 30 transition shells for more than 800  faculty to use to get acclimated to the new environment.  The usefulness of these shells has passed.  They will be archived and deleted from the system today.  If anyone created [More...]

Blackboard 9.1 Downtime Scheduled In anticipation for our full-campus conversion, we will be upgrading our database from test to full production. This will allow us to begin moving developmental shells into Blackboard 9.1 and expand our Pilot for Winter 2011. This process does involve downtime. We have scheduled the downtime for Wednesday, [More...]

The Switch 2 Semesters committee has recommended that the Blackboard 9.1 upgrade be expedited. After reviewing our options and consulting with UC, the decision was made to upgrade Columbus State to Blackboard 9.1 in time for Spring Quarter 2011 (instead of Summer Quarter 2011 which had been the original, um, rescheduled [More...]

For Students: Mary and I have been busy and we've recorded a series of video tutorials for students to help walk them through the new and old features of Blackboard 9.1. These were produced rather quickly and I am sure that we are rambling in most of them, but [More...]

I've finished updating the Student Orientation for 9.1. From a functional standpoint, nothing has changed for students between 9.0 SP 3 and 9.1 SP 1 so we didn't have to update much beyond appearance. I did create a Save function that allows students to save their completion and look it up [More...]

Chat Server is not Happy Cassie at UC has opened a ticket with Blackboard to determine why the chat server is behaving badly. They have some ideas that they are going to try today or tomorrow, but there is a possibility that the chat server will not be up and running for [More...]

Blackboard 9.1 Service Pack 1 I mentioned it last night, but we are on Blackboard 9.1 Service Pack 1 which is a more recent version than Blackboard 9.1 Hotfix 1. Now, in the past, Service Packs have primarily been about fixing bugs and I am all about having bugs fixed. In fact, Service [More...]

Blackboard 9.1 Upgrade Cassie at UC will be performing our Blackboard 9.1 Upgrade on Tuesday, June 15 beginning at noon. Blackboard 9.0 will be down during this upgrade. I am budgeting eight (8) hours for the downtime, but we may be up sooner. After the upgrade is completed, Mary and I will [More...]

Blackboard 9.0 DateRangePicker Patch Jane already noticed, but I wanted to let you all know that the DateRangePicker patch has been applied to Blackboard 9.0. This means that you should no longer see this error when editing exams that only contain a Display After or a Display Until date: If you ever see [More...]

Blackboard 9.0 "Weirdness" Both Carmen and Melissa have sent me screen shots and emails from students who suddenly had all content in their course disabled. Carmen and I have experienced this individually as well - only from the instructor perspective. All menu items will be unavailable or empty. Carmen fixed the problem by [More...]