Thursday, January 17, 2008

Blackboard 6 Servers Are Shutting Down

Important Blackboard 6 Notice from the VCCS . . .

The Virginia Community College System (VCCS) is planning to shut-down the Blackboard 6 servers permanently on Friday, January 25. If you have any old Blackboard courses or organizations on the Bb 6 servers and you want to keep their content, you have until Friday, January 25 to export/import that content from Bb6 to Bb7. Remember that all of your Bb course and organization content from SP 07, SU 07, and FA 07 has already been migrated to the Blackboard 7 servers.

If you need another Bb 7 course or organization shell to use so you can complete the export/import process for old courses, send our NOVA Bb Administrator an email requesting the Bb 7 course shell (Michelle Gee mgee@nvcc.edu). Remember that you already have your SP 08 Bb course shells in Bb 7 and many of you have already completed the export/import process from Bb6 to Bb7 for those courses.


Use the print or video demo to help you move any content from the Bb6 servers to the Bb7 servers.

Finally, make sure you have made your SP 08 Bb7 course “Available” after your students are enrolled. Enrolled students will not be able to participate in your courses until you make them “Available.”

To make a Bb SP 08 course available, go to the Control Panel > Course Options > Settings > Course Availability > Set Availability. Click the button next to the Yes under Set Availability and click submit.

Be sure to leaave any comments by clicking on the Comments link below this entry.

Friday, January 11, 2008

Automatic Student Enrollments in your Sp 08 Blackboard Courses

Automatic Enrollment of your Students in SP 08 Bb7 Courses Has Begun. . .

The good news is that now our NOVA Blackboard administrator has been given the okay to batch enroll our students into our Blackboard 7 SP 08 courses. As noted in previous Blackboard communications, the batch enrollment of students began yesterday on January 10. It will continue through the end of the day today, January 11. We thank you for your patience as everyone is working as fast as possible to complete this task.

Remember that even after the students are enrolled, you must make your SP 08 Bb7 course “Available.” Enrolled students will not be able to participate in your courses until you make them “Available.”

To make a Bb SP 08 course available, go to the Control Panel > Course Options > Settings > Course Availability > Set Availability.

From time to time, the VCCS may have to make some updates to the new Bb7 servers. Please remember that if you cannot get into Blackboard, when you try again, be sure to open the browser again, retype the URL, and click enter.

If you want to leave a comment to this blog entry, go to the green bar at the end of this posted entry and click on “Comments.” You can then write your comment or question and click on the orange “Publish Your Comment” button. I will respond.

Thursday, January 3, 2008

Blackboard 7 migration is almost completed!

the latest on Bb 7 . . . .

The Blackboard 7 migration has been ongoing during the holidays. As of today, the following has been completed:

All faculty have Spring 08 Blackboard course shells for use for their SP 08 courses.
If you discover that you do not have a Bb course shell for one of your courses and you need one, please contact Michelle Gee
(mgee@nvcc.edu ), so she can associate the shell with your name.

Use the print or video demo to help you move any content into these Bb 7 SP 08 course shells.

All faculty and staff must export/import their materials into their Bb 7 SP 08 courses because of the new method for creating courses in Bb 7. If you experience any major problems, please contact Michelle Gee or me.

All Fall 07 Blackboard courses have been migrated to the Bb 7 servers.
Please check out those courses if you still are using them to be sure that everything migrated correctly. Be sure that all of your students, discussion forums, assignments, information, etc. were migrated correctly.

Faculty, staff, and students should now use My Nova on the NOVA homepage or
http://learn.vccs.edu to access their past SP 07, SU 07, and FA 07 Bb courses if they need to use any of these. Students completing incompletes for SU 07 or FA 07 or completing an ELI course for those semesters should be using the new Bb 7 servers now. The usernames and passwords remain the same.

All Fall 07 Blackboard courses on the Bb6 servers have been made unavailable to your students now. DO NOT make them available and continue to use them.
We do not know when the VCCS staff are shutting down the servers and the servers are no longer supported. You can still export/import any materials you want from there if something is missing in Bb 7.

Blackboard course organizations were migrated last night. Michelle Gee, our NOVA Blackboard administrator, has made all of the NOVA organizations available today.
Organization content system content has NOT been migrated.

By January 10, our NOVA Blackboard administrator will automatically enroll your students in your SP 08 Bb 7 courses.