Blackboard installed a fix for this issue at 3pm (CT) this afternoon and bounced our system, and it looks like this is fixed. If you run into the issue still, please let me know. ko

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

We discovered that some instructors are having problems getting the text they enter into a text box in Blackboard to remain after submitting. A primary example is when a new assignment is created by clicking on the Select drop box in the Assignments content area.

The instructor fills out all of the content areas, including the text box to give instructions to the students for that particular assignment, and clicks submit. The feedback message indicates everything is OK, but when the assignment is viewed the instructions are gone.

This issue should be fixed in our planned maintenance on 8-5-08, but until then you can fix it this way:

• Login to Blackboard
• On the welcome page you will see a Tools box on the left side of the screen

• Click on the Personal Information link
• Click on the Set Visual Text Box Editor Options link
• Set Availability to Unavailable

Then, go back to your course and add text. It will remain now.

Again, this should be fixed in our scheduled maintenance in a couple weeks.

Basically, they've eliminated all roles from their system at the time of installation. The customer has to set them up from scratch. They had been providing "sample roles" that could be used as the basis of creating the roles that would actually be used--even those were judged to be "predetermined roles," one of the key elements in the lawsuit.  D2L provided the court with a relatively (by legal standards) brief and clear description of what they did, which is worth a read.  Their recent post on their patent blog also includes links to more documents, including Bb's contempt filing (saying that D2L hadn't addressed the injunction requiring them to stop selling/using an infringing version).

There is a fair amount of absurdity in all this. The fact that a patent can be issued about this (although it hopefully will be found invalid or at least weakened beyond the point of usefulness) and the fact that it can be avoided by a change like this (although I'm sure this isn't the end of this thread either--whether it still infringes could be brought to a jury) seem almost comical to me.

Take the following from the court documents:

Desire2Learn now deletes all roles from a client’s existing system before it installs version 8.3, so that when a client begins using version 8.3, it contain [sic] no roles.  This is a substantial change in how version 8.3 operates and is provided to clients – requiring clients to undertake the painstaking process required to create roles and set associated permissions manually – as confirmed by the uncontested declarations signed by Desire2Learn clients.

This seems like a disparagement of D2L...perhaps something a disgruntled customer would write. But, in fact, it is D2L themselves writing this in their own defense. It's completely through the looking glass...

I see the losers: the customers who have to do more administrative work to have their systems work in a reasonable way. I see the winners: The lawyers collecting fees from both sides (out of the license payments to D2L and Bb). I know there is a broader perspective, here, but reading through the description of the actual technical change struck me as a interesting end-point (which it won't be!) to years of time and millions of dollars and lots of bad feelings....

Michael Feldstein has blogged about this as well (with a comment from Chuck Severance) and is currently at the D2L conference. I'm sure he'll have more to say in the days and weeks ahead.

The link below is to my blackboard site. Blackboard is a site offered to teachers to use as an enrichment tool along with their teaching. I bring laptops into my music classes to have the kids log on and play games or do research to enhance my lessons. The kids love it, and even during their sessions with their computer teacher they ask if they can go onto my site.

Just click the link below. That will take you to Mrs. Frack's Music Class. Feel free to browse any category. But external links is where the music games are located. They are entered by grade level but can be interchanged and fun for all ages.

As a review:

1. Click the link below

2. Click the purple button which says "external links"

3. Click on a grade level.

That's it! Remember, the games are fun for all ages. So give it a go!

Music Games

As updates come my way, I will communicate with you.

Thank you!

Kevin

I'm getting alot of questions about when courses will appear and go away on Blackboard, so here are the established rules:

1. Bb courses are generated automatically from Banner, Friends University's official registration system. If your course assignment is not correct in Banner, it will not be correct (nor will your course appear) in Blackboard.
2. Instructors will receive new courses on their Bb account 30 days prior to the course start date
3. Students will receive new courses on their Bb account 7 days prior to the course start date
4. All courses, from instructor and student accounts, will be unavailable 60 days after the course end date. So, if you grant, or are taking, an Incomplete, you will need to get it done within this time frame.

• This all depends on the instructor and student being assigned in Banner (via the Registrar's office) correctly. So, if you are teaching a class or taking a class, are within the above time parameters, and still don't have your Bb course, check with the Registrar's office to see if you are scheduled to be in that class. This is most likely the issue. If you are registered, the issue needs to come back to me and I will find out where the kink is.

Also, here's a blackboard-8.0-jump-start document I put together for the adjunct conference a couple of weeks ago.

New Mexico chose Blackboard for its K-20+ elearning solution. All public institutions of learning will use Blackboard. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. There are advantages and disadvantages to standardizing on a single learning management system. Training should be simplified.  However, I find most LMS software to be intuitive. Will K-12 teachers be required to post content on Blackboard? New Mexico probably received a pretty good price break.  Could they save more money by using their budget to customize an open source LMS like Moodle?  There's a lot of talk now about next generation LMS.  What if Blackboard's Project NG flops? Stay tuned.

(delicious tags: Blackboard e-learning eLearning CMS online_learning K-12 higher_education)

One of the questions on the email lists was "Is this a good thing for Higher Education?" There are a variety of ways to answer this question but, as you can probably guess from the quote selected for the article, a lot of it depends on why you think Blackboard is doing this. Do they really mean to be more open/interoperable than they have seemed to many in the past? Or are they again trying to wear a cloak of openness while really meaning to keep everyone else out?

Basically, Blackboard is interested in maximizing the value of its shares over some period of time (this latter is always tricky to guess at...given the incentives and motivations of the management team, which I don't have any insight into, this can be very short term in some cases). On the assumption that profit growth is the general motivation for Bb decisions, it is instructive to notice that their stock price has significant revenue/profit growth built in (just check the P/E ratio).  Where will this growth come from? With such significant market share in HE teaching and learning, it is hard to see enough of it coming from that sector, even if you factor in potential growth outside of North America and Europe.  K-12 is an obvious "green field" that Bb is aggressively pursuing.  In addition, Bb has, cleverly in my view, been consistently diversifying its business away from teaching and learning technology. So you see the acquisition of NTI and the commerce system and the transaction system and who knows what next.

It is apparent to me that Bb is trying to move beyond the T&L silo and by moving up the administrative and IT hierarchy, eventually running into Oracle and Microsoft. The connector product is consistent with that strategy: "Hey, run multiple systems if you want. We'll be the container and try to aggregate the results for you." The connector product is also consistent with the interpretation that Bb is looking for a veneer of openness/interoperability without really being committed to either--once can see this as Bb wanting to "own" all the data. You'll have to be your own judge. Or, as others have suggested, see if they are as eager to connect with Sakai/Moodle in the other direction or to implement and drive standards like Common Cartridge and Learning Tool Interoperability.

And, FWIW, the lack of revenue growth in HE teaching and learning (and likely corresponding reduction of R&D in that area) is why I think, in the long run, innovation in HE teaching and learning will come from open source communities and, therefore, why the success of Sakai is so critical.

Finally, what should the Sakai community's attitude be to announcements like this? Bb asked me for a quote to include in their press release. I declined. But that doesn't mean I have a bad attitude about this. First,  I'm not sure it is a good idea for Sakai to be in the business of endorsing the moves of commercial LMSs, regardless what we may think of a particular organization or its actions. More specifically, though, this is a product announcement timed to coincide with their annual conference. As far as I can tell very little work has happened yet (correct me if I'm wrong...the brief demo I saw was static HTML files). Before we make up our minds about whether this is a "good thing" or a "bad thing" we should, in the spirit of Sakai's "do-aucracy," see what happens and see how useful it is to the Higher Ed community. And if Syracuse and Blackboard need help making it work, we should by all means jump in and help them.

I'd also love to see the press follow up on this in 6 month or a year to see what's happened. I think there is likely to be some interesting and meaningful things to say at that time.

Today, July 14, I spent just under two hours working on the Instruction booklet that I want to include with the template. I didn't get as far with the actual writing was I would have liked, but some of the time was spent on Screen capturing and other layout/content problems. One thing I have realized is that I need to start really using some of the programs and applications that I am learning. Doing them just for class doesn't really make it stick. I have found myself sitting front of the computer trying to remember what program I used in a specific class. I have never been able to remember things if I don't actually use them for real - not just for an assignment.

After taking a break, I went to the library and spent an hour and a half searching for more literature on Online faculty peer review. I think I have found some valuable pieces. I definitely found some that I am looking forward to reading just for myself. I have 8 articles that I sent to myself and another four that are being sent through ILIAD.

I haven't had much time to work on the Second Life directory. My supervisor appears to be fine with this, since I have found a real focus with the Blackboard template and the literature review. I still want to get into it, if nothing else to get more familiar with it. I really think that there is an awful lot of potential with Virtual Reality, but I don't feel that it is being evaluated as well as it could be.

General plan for tomorrow: more work on Blackboard, print and begin reading literature. Start Lit. Review for supervisor.

Time spent: 3 hours, 45 min Blackboard; 1.5 hours Literature review (4 hours 15 min)

Total time: 19.50 hours

Netiquette

We expect other drivers to observe the rules of the road and the same is true as we travel through cyberspace. Here are a few pointers to help you out:

Avoid writing e-mail messages or posting in newsgroups using all caps.

IT LOOKS LIKE YOU'RE SHOUTING!

To add humor and personality to your messages, use smileys, also known as emoticons, expressions you create from the characters on your keyboard. A few popular ones include:

:-) Happy :-e Disappointed

:-( Sad :-< Mad

:-o Surprised :-D Laughing

:-@ Screaming ;-) Winking

:-I Indifferent

Keep your communications to the point. Some people pay for Internet access by the hour. The longer it takes to read your messages, the more it may cost them. This is true whether you post messages to a newsgroup or a mailing list.

Remember that anything you post to a newsgroup or type during a chat session is a public comment. You never know who's reading it, or who may copy it and spread it around.

When posting a message to a public bulletin board, forum, or newsgroup, stick to the topic. Don't indiscriminately post unrelated comments, or worse--advertisements--to every newsgroup you can think of. This practice, known as spamming, will quickly lead to another unpleasant Internet practice, flaming. What is flaming? Sometimes you might offend someone unintentionally. Be prepared to receive some angry e-mail or be treated rudely in a public discussion. This is called being flamed. If you attack back, you will spark a flame war. To contain the heat, the best response usually is no response at all.

If you post an ad to a newsgroup, or send it in an e-mail, clearly identify it in the subject line. That way people who aren't interested can delete it.

To keep messages short, use some common abbreviations:

<BTW> means "by the way."

A <G> enclosed in brackets indicates grinning.

A good one to keep handy in case you're worried about offending someone is <IMHO> -- In My Humble Opinion.

One of our favorites is <ROTFL>, which stands for Rolling on the Floor Laughing.

We spent a good amount of time talking about blogs, wikis and podcasts.  Since we've been knee-deep in these tools for quite some time, some of the information was redundant, BUT these presenters tended to place a pedagogical slant to the information presented.  So, while I grasped the technology involved with the creation of the content, they encouraged the participants to put an educator's "filter" in place...taking the time to think about curricular outcomes.

The biggest issues from this past week were mostly related to clarity: making sure students followed the instructions for assignments and for turning things in. One of the biggest changes I'm noticing in the way I handle things is that I'm becoming more insistent that students follow certain procedures. For example, I insist that they name document files in a certain way so that I know at first glance what it is. Initially, I felt a little guilty asking students to do this; but I decided that being a stickler in this regard would be better for my overall mood. Besides, the document title formula is not that complicated:

lastname_assignment

So, for example, a student file name should look something like this:

Smith_WW1

Jones_Quiz1

Boone_Summary1

WW, in case you didn't know or couldn't figure out, is "Weekly Writing." I've also had to remind them that they need to put their names on the actual document (a no-brainer, I think, but I can imagine how a student might think that having his or her name in the email would be enough), and I've asked them, for my own sanity, to include the line number on the document as well. The line number is a four digit number that is the section number; since I have two classes, both of them emailing me documents at any given time, this is a major time and stress saver for me.

Online classes, I'm learning, function almost entirely on these kinds of seemingly innocuous requirements; creating a kind of course etiquette so that no one is confused and everyone knows what's going on. In a F2F environment, this is part of "community building" -- establishing standards so that the students and I all know what to expect and how to expect it.

This is the first time I've noticed any kind of real correlation between digital and F2F environments, beyond the course material itself. And I'm also realizing that, as detached as I still feel online classes are, the major burden of "community building" still falls on me. Maybe it's understating to refer to it as "etiquette." But I also think that most of what we use to define community, culture, and civilization as a whole relies on everyone knowing and understanding the expectations.

However, I am still struggling with the absence of the tangible; never seeing my students, never hearing them speak, and never touching an assignment are continue to create a disruptive level of dissonance on my part. In trying to understand the nature of online education, though, I am trying to come to terms with what may seem like some very basic things -- like the nature of reality. A concept that is helping me to come to terms with this is the philosophical position termed meta reality, developed by Roy Bhaskar . For the more philosophically minded, Bhaskar's concept has to do with how we describe the dualities that seem to define our existence: for example, happiness and sadness or freedom and oppression. What intrigues me about this particular notion it insists that, regardless of these dualities, that it is within our power to change them; that the world, separate as it is from us, is still dependent upon us. We can define our own boundaries. In a digital environment, reality becomes (for me) an increasingly important issue -- because the reality of digital space is almost entirely an artificially created construct. Our interactions have the potential to be real, but the setting is not. The probability of genuine interaction in a digital environment has been improved by the popularity of social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, and Xanga -- particularly for digital natives and more or less comfortable adaptives (like myself). Issues of etiquette boil down to following simple instructions because the overall rules of engagement are clear -- at least to natives and adaptives. (Ushering non-digital adaptives into a digital culture is another issue for another blog.) In terms of how I am coming to terms with the dualities that are defining my digital existence, I am finding that I am having to change the way I conceive things -- such as the wonder abstraction that is reality -- and that this shift is allowing me to at least see the potential for something as problematic as online education.

I am beginning to think of digital space geographically. When I started teaching, I was very conscious of classroom geography -- the way in which a classroom, by its design, encourages or inhibits the educational process. Straight rows and immobile work tables make it difficult for students to see that they are a community; in every F2F classroom where I can, I move desks around so that students are facing one another. This forces them to see the other students as people, and in a workshop setting, enforces a kind of humanity in all the interactions.

In a digital environment, this is a challenge. We don't see one another, and I haven't even attempted to try a workshop style approach beyond the Discussion Board. One of the things I am noticing, though, is that the artificially created environment -- in my case Blackboard -- has some serious geographical issues. It's not a hard program to learn to use; but students who are unfamiliar with it find it difficult to even turn in assignments or find where things are posted. Visually, it's not a particularly appealing program, and this adds to the frustration of interacting through it. When I am shifting from Facebook to Blackboard, even I get (momentarily) annoyed. I find myself thinking things like "This shouldn't be such a hassle." (That's the edited version of some of the things I think.) With the collaborative capabilities in Wiki formats as well as the ease of moving around in environments like Facebook, I find myself wondering why higher education isn't innovating itself. Online education is exploding because of the increasing costs of education and transportation; yet institutions aren't considering the digital geography that they are dumping students into.

This apathy is nothing new; but administrators, regents, and those who hold the purse strings need to realize that if we don't make some fundamental changes, not only will we not be doing our job as educators, but we also run the risk of losing students -- who may find that there are less complicated alternatives to a higher education. In order for digital education to function and to be successful, we must strive for clarity of intention, instruction, and interface. Otherwise, our students will see themselves merely as dollar signs and will see college only as a kind of intellectual fast food drive-thru.

Noticed this post this morning. I don't know much abour Sakai but the conclusions certainly make sense to me.

the faces
and the eyes
and the hands
and the voices

of my students
who always talk
to each other

while I talk about poetry.

This post was triggered by reading a discussion between Alan Cann from the University of Leicester and Neil Currant from the University of Bradford. I was interested as they were discussing PebblePad. This matters as the University of Bedfordshire is currently in the early stages of rolling out PebblePad. Prior to this we've been a mandatory Blackboard shop.

The discussion seems to be rounding off with a fair degree of common ground but what struck me was the issue of a single instituion-wide solution to a given eLearning need against the open adoption of an eclectic range of tools as required. As a full card-carrying member of the Web 2.0, creative commons, open source, PLE, mac-using tendency I've always seen Blackboard as an evolutionary dead-end. Surely nothing that bad could be the future of education technology? And indeed, no single proprietary platform could ever be the magic bullet of eLearning. Nothing will ever meet all our needs, forever. The trouble is, it's easy to get caught up in "anything but Blackboard" euphoria. But as Alan Cann pointed out, PebblePad is just another proprietary eLearning tool that seductively offers to meet all your ePDP/ePortfolio needs. The temptation is to roll it out across the University as "the way". Now the nice people from Wolverhampton are not Blackboard Inc - no preemptive patent attacks, no suppression of academic papers at conferences, but the dangers are still there. And then its based on Adobe Flash... No University should base its strategy on any single private company whose first loyalties are necessarily to its shareholders, not its clients.

If we're going to use PebblePad then it has to be intelligently. I do believe in holding academic course teams (or individuals, where there are more courses than staff :-) ) accountable for what they're doing but I think you mandate the quality and standards, not the use of any particular software brand - get the job done but how you do it is down to you. But Neil is right too - if you do the ultimate in personalisation and just say to all students, "go and find a bit of software that suits you and get on with it", what they'll hear is, "go to the pub". And then there's the acceptance of technophobia in academic staff. No academic could say "don't ask me to recommend books or produce handouts because I don't read and write too well" but it is OK to say "sorry, I don't do computers. Call tech support". Central ICT and eLearning are expected to provide a very high level of support to individuals and teams, normally with woeful levels of resourcing. It's very easy and understandable for them to want to stick to a single university-system that they can get a good understanding of.

So this is the paradox of personalisation. How do you enable a supportive, integrated eLearning environment that allows genuine personalisation for all members of the community? Regarding ePDP, given where we are, I would advocate specifying what we expect from an ePDP process - top down - and then offering PebblePad as a default, centrally supported option but encouraging experimentation by anybody who wants to do it differently - bottom up. This may come with a caveat of reduced central support and a request to share the outcomes of any innovative practice.

ps. Whilst writing this post, I've seen the posting on Blackboard's blog regarding the opening up of their platform to integrate with other VLE-like systems. This looks like an interesting development. Too early to really judge what it'll mean. My first thought is that we need to get their angle - how will this make them more money? Or is it a defensive move to keep them in the game longer? Whilst I'm sympathetic to Moodle and Sakai (and with all due respect to Ian Usher and what he's doing in Bucks), I do feel that the age of VLE-like systems is passing. So just connecting VLEs together might be useful in the short term, but I'm pretty certain that it won't be significant in the long term.

http://zacker.org/higher-ed-lms-market-penetration-moodle-vs-blackboard-vs-sakai

Adaptive Release for Blackboard 7 for Missed Quizzes

-Angel Brady

CONTROL PANEL>ARCHIVE COURSE> click on 'archive' to create a new archive file. You will receive an email when the process is complete. Return to the archive page and right click on the new blue link to download the file. you can now recycle this course to remove the content and students.

To recycle the course:
CONTROL PANEL>RECYCLE COURSE> select the items to recycle, you can choose all the boxes, including 'users' as you need to make a clean empty site.

Now take a copy of the current live site (2007-8). to do this, go into the current site:

CONTROL PANEL>COURSE COPY>COPY MATERIALS INTO AN EXISTING COURSE

Type in the course ID for the old, now empty 2006/7 site. If you don't know the ID, use the browse feature and search by name. Choose the items to copy across - it is easiest to select everything EXCEPT the users, as this will copy across the current students as well.

You can change the name of the copied site to 'MSc xxx 2008/9' by CONTROL PANEL>SETTINGS>COURSE NAME AND DESCRIPTION. This course will be unavailable. Remember to make it available in September and make the 2007/8 site unavailable!

Tags: how_to, blackboard