Blackboard Outage During Winter Break

As you know, Prince George's Community College will be closed for Winter break December 20th through January 4th.

Please be advised that, during the Winter Break, there will be a Blackboard Outage 7:00 am - 1:00 pm on the following dates: 

Dec. 22, 2014
Dec. 26, 2014

This outage is due to a major network upgrade that may take all network services offline, including Blackboard and all PGCC websites. The upgrade is needed to enhance and improve the performance of the network system.

Enjoy your break and Happy Holidays!

Problem Deleting Grade Center Columns?

This is a reminder for all faculty who have used Turnitin in the past.

Those of you who have used Turnitin Assignments in Blackboard in the past now find that you have Grade Center columns that were attached to the Turnitin Assignments that you cannot delete.

Blackboard has informed us that they can delete these columns from the back-end database, but will need for us to:
       (a) rename the Turnitin assignment Grade Center columns to “Delete Me” and
       (b) send a list of course Ids for courses with Turnitin assignment columns to be deleted          from the Grade Center. The columns must be renamed and the course Ids sent to             eLearning by 4:00 PM on Friday, November 21st.

NOTE:  Blackboard will only do this ONE time so information must be sent to eLearning by 4:00 PM November 21st  

If your course has Turnitin assignment Grade Center columns, please do the following:

1.     Go into your Grade Center and rename all Turnitin assignment columns to
       ‘Delete Me’ by doing the following:
     a.    Go into Full Grade Center
     b.    Scroll over to the Turnitin assignment column(s)
     c.    Click on the column menu (down arrow next to the column name)
     d.    Select ‘Edit Column Information’
     e.    Change the Grade Center Name to ‘Delete Me’
     f.     Click Submit

2.  Complete step 1 for all courses that have Turnitin assignment columns.

3. Send the list of course Ids for each course with "Delete Me" columns to    eLearning@pgcc.edu.
              Example course id:  2014FA-EGL-1010-LD01.

FREE MDLA Fall Event on November 11th

The MDLA Fall Event “Learning and Using Tools of the Trade” is scheduled for Tuesday, November 11 at the Arundel Mills location of Anne Arundel Community College. PGCC is an MDLA institutional member, allowing you to attend this half-day event for FREE!

Register Now for the FallEvent!
SHARE WITH YOUR COLLEAGUES

2014 MDLA Fall Event:
Learning and Using Tools of the Trade

Tuesday, November 11, 2014
8:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.
AACC, Arundel Mills Campus

Click here to register

Blackboard Outage

Blackboard will be unavailable beginning Saturday, August 16th at 10:00 p.m. thru Sunday, August 17th at 8:00 a.m. due to maintenance.

ALERT: eLearning Services Closed on August 7th

The eLearning Services Office will be closed Thursday, August 7, 2014 for a staff retreat. Regular office hours will resume Friday, August 8th at 8:30 am

Thank you for your patience.

ALERT: eLearning Phone Support - July 14-18

Due to summer vacation schedules, there will be no phone support after 7:00 pm Monday-Friday the week of July 14-18, 2014. eLearning Services will resume regular phone-support hours on Monday, July 21st. 

Thank you for your patience.

ITC's Summer 2014 Newsletter

The Instructional Technology Council’s Summer 2014 Newsletter is now Available Online!

Highlights:

• Anne Arundel Community College and Excelsior College both launch online writing labs
• Exploring the online STEM curriculum
• Visual Identity in the online classroom
• Rowan-Cabarrus Community College's recent participation in X-Culture (a program in which students collaborate with each other internationally via free web 2.0 tools)
• Santa Fe College adopts the flipped model to help their faculty transition to a new LMS
• The Maricopa County Community College District (Phoenix, AZ) and Northern Virginia Community College respectively share their Open Educational Resource (OER) Adoption models

Click here to read the newsletter in its entirety.

Mark Your Calendar to Attend eLearning 2015! Feb. 18-21, 2015 – Las Vegas, Nevada Register Online Here!

Blackboard Upgrade to Service Pack 14 (SP14) - May 21st!

Blackboard will be upgraded to Service Pack 14 on May 21^st.  Blackboard will be unavailable during this upgrade beginning at 8:00 PM on Wednesday, May 21^st with an expected completion time of 1:00 PM on Thursday, May 22^nd.  

New Blackboard Features Available with SP14:  Achievements, SafeAssign and Grade Center Improvements

Achievements
The Achievements tool allows instructors to designate criteria for issuing rewards to students in the form of both Badges and Certificates. Students can see which rewards they’ve earned and what is required of them to receive additional rewards. Students are able to publish badges to the Mozilla Open Backpack, transporting evidence of their learning outside of Blackboard.

For more information on Achievements, click here.

SafeAssign (Turnitin will not be available as of Summer 2014)
SafeAssign, which replaces Turnitin, is a plagiarism prevention service offered by Blackboard. This service helps instructors prevent plagiarism by detecting unoriginal content in student papers. In addition to acting as a plagiarism deterrent, it also includes features designed to aid in educating students about plagiarism and the importance of proper attribution of any borrowed content.

For more information on SafeAssign and how it compares to Turnitin, click here.

Grade Center Improvements
Several improvements have been made to grading and the Grade Center:

• My Grades Ordering & Design Update – The page provides a new default option for the order in which grades are displayed.
• Instructor can define the “Score Attempts Using” setting from the “Options” page for tools (assignments, tests) that allow multiple attempts – This makes it easier to select the scoring option on an assignment that has multiple attempts. This is a workflow improvement to ensure that instructors know about and can easily find this setting for tools that support multiple attempts.
• Test total points adjustment – This enhancement addresses several related needs from instructors, all revolving around the total points possible for tests, and needing to adjust the total points possible.
• Grading Schemas greater than 100% – There is now an enhancement to allow for schema percentages to be greater than 100%.

For more information on the Grade Center updates, click here.

Blackboard Service Restored

Attention faculty and students:

Blackboard emergency maintenance is complete and service has been restored.

Thank you for your patience.

The 2014 MDLA Spring Conference is March 6th!

MDLA is now accepting presentation proposals, kiosk proposals, and actively seeking nominations for MDLA outstanding Course/Program or Individual. The February 7th deadline for proposals and nominations is fast approaching. Please register for this event and encourage your colleagues to:

• Submit a session proposal
• Submit a Learn n’ Go kiosk proposal
• Nominate an outstanding online Course or Program for MDLA’s annual award
• Nominate an outstanding Individual for MDLA’s annual award
• REGISTER for the spring conference!

2014 MDLA Spring Conference Details:

Thursday, March 6, 2014

7:30 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.

Maritime Institute (CCMIT), 692 Linthicum Blvd., Linthicum,  MD 21090 

***PROPOSALS and AWARDS NOMINATIONS DUE FRIDAY, February 7, 2014 ***

See http://www.marylanddla.org/index.php/events/spring-conference for more details

**Update** Blackboard Restored **Update**

Blackboard issues have been resolved. If you have further problems, please contact eLearning Services.

Blackboard is Temporarily Down

Attention faculty and students:

Please be advised that Blackboard is currently experiencing technical difficulties. Until this issue is resolved, you may have problems logging in to courses and/or doing anything within a course if you are able to log in. Blackboard is aware of, and working to resolve the issue. We will keep you all informed of further developments as we are updated by Blackboard Inc.

Thank you for your patience.

New Blackboard Features Available for Spring 2014

Safe Assignments (SafeAssign)
SafeAssign replaces Turnitin as a plagiarism prevention service. SafeAssign helps instructors prevent plagiarism by detecting unoriginal content in student papers. In addition to acting as a plagiarism deterrent, it also includes features designed to aid in educating students about plagiarism and the importance of proper attribution of any borrowed content.

Please note that beginning with the 2014 summer semester, Turnitin will no longer be available. SafeAssign has many of the same features as Turnitin.

Differences between SafeAssign (SA) and Turnitin:

• SafeAssign comes free with Blackboard, the Turnitin license is costly.
• Peermark, which allows a peer-marking function is not available in SA.
• In-line grading is not available with SA.
• Rubrics are not available with SA.

Date Management
The Date Management tool allows instructors to easily adjust all content and tool dates in their course from one convenient location. After copying your course, you can now easily transition from old dates to new ones relevant to the new course by accessing the Date Management tool via the Control Panel under "Tools". You can choose to adjust dates (due dates, availability dates, etc) automatically or individually.


Groups Management
The Groups Management Building Block allows faculty members to:

• Easily see which students are in which groups, including which students are not in any groups.
• Easily see and modify group memberships. Avatars are now available to distinguish among users.
• Choose and manage membership for groups sets with an improved workflow.
• Import and export groups and group memberships.
• Sort columns, perform bulk actions for deleting groups, and create Grade Center smart views for one or more groups on the All Groups page.
• Optionally, manage tool availability for all groups on the All Groups page.