ELMS (powered by Blackboard) will be unavailable from Monday, December 22, 2008 at 11:59 p.m. through Tuesday,  December 23, 2008 at 7:00 a.m. while the off-site Blackboard engineers perform necessary maintenance and upgrades to the system. During this outage the grade submission tool in ELMS will also be unavailable.

We apologize for any inconvenience that this outage will cause. If you have any questions or concerns about the outage, please contact us at elms@umd.edu.

- ELMS Support Staff

The E-mail feature associated with the Announcements tool is not working at this time.  We are working with the Blackboard Technical Team to resolve this issue.  As a workaround, please use the Send E-mail tool available from the Communications link in the Course Menu in order to communicate with members of the ELMS space.

The “My Courses” module on the ELMS Home tab is not displaying courses for some users. We are working with the Blackboard Technical Team to resolve this issue. As a workaround users that are affected can access their course spaces, by visiting the “Course Sites” tab or through the myUMD portal.

Blackboard version 8.0 new features include:

Offering a Smarter Blackboard Grade Center(TM)
The newly redesigned Gradebook now enables teachers to focus on teaching, not data entry. New features include in-cell editing, grading periods, smart views, and progress reports.

Facilitating Self and Peer Assessments
Self and peer assessment features help facilitate student group work for faculty. Self Evaluation enables students to review and grade their own assessments by following criteria set by their instructor. With Peer Evaluation, students can review work submitted by their peers using specific criteria, compare their responses, and offer constructive criticism.

Managing Digital Content Easily with the Blackboard Content System
Enhancements in this release include: Reusable Objects (allows faculty to create and then reuse content) and 360 Degree View (conveniently summarizes file information, such as where it is linked, URL, etc.)

For more information about these new features, view our faculty What’s New document.

The OIT Learning Technologies group

OIT’s Institute for Instructional Technology will conduct a series of FREE workshops for the university instructional community this summer on topics including managing assessments, content, communication and collaboration in ELMS, as well as the new ELMS 8.0 Grade Center. For a calendar of workshop dates see: http://www.oit.umd.edu/iit/calendar.html. To view workshop descriptions and register see: http://www.training.umd.edu.

ELMS (powered by Blackboard) now allows faculty to request quota increases for their course spaces, non-term course spaces, or organization spaces. The new quota management feature is available on the ELMS Management Tool Web site at: http://learningonline.umd.edu/elms-mgmt/.

You will see a link for requesting a quota increase under the Tasks menu area. This feature is available to faculty and organization leaders. If you are interested in training or have any questions, please contact elms@umd.edu.

We are developing a new version of the ELMS Course Request page. This new version will be easier to use and will allow request of ELMS spaces containing multiple courses.

We will be releasing the final version of this new page in January but a beta version of this page is already available. To access the beta version, go to the current request page and select the link to the beta version on the top.

Note: You can submit requests for your Winter 2008 and Spring 2008 courses either through the current course request page or using the new page.

If you have any questions, please contact the ELMS Support Staff(elms@umd.edu).

The Office of Information Technology will offer several free training workshops to faculty in January.

Workshops focus on a variety of technology applications in a hands-on, instructor-led environment and include:

• What’s New with ELMS 7.3, January 7, 22 OR 25
• ELMS 7.3 (powered by Blackboard Academic Suite)
• Getting Started with ELMS, January 7 OR 15
• Managing Content and the Content Collection, January 9 OR January 18
• Managing the Gradebook, January 9 OR January 15
• Collaboration and Communication, January 10
• Assessment and Evaluation, January 10
• Wikis in the Classroom, January 14
• Teaching with Wimba Live Classroom, January 14

Register for workshops at www.training.umd.edu (Course Catalog, OIT Institute for Instructional Technology) at least 3 days before the workshop date. See the course calendar at www.oit.umd.edu/iit/calendar.html for times.

Last updated 10/19/07 3:40 pm

ELMS [http://elms.umd.edu] (Powered by Blackboard) is currently available to the university community.  Although the root cause of  the outages has been identified by the Blackboard engineers at the off-campus Blackboard hosting site, the specific module that is causing the problem has not been identified.  The system has been stabilized by turning off several modules that may have caused the   outages.  ELMS support staff will be working with the Blackboard engineers next week to begin determining which module is causing problems.

Until the correct module is identified, users will note that the What’s New module is not available to them when they log into the ELMS environment.  In addition, instructors will notice that the section and course columns will have information in them, but they will not be updated on a daily basis with any changes that may have occurred the day before.

We apologize for the inconvenience the outages have caused. We will continue to post updates on the system status at this Web site.

Thank you for your patience in this matter.

ELMS Support

ELMS [http://elms.umd.edu] (Powered by Blackboard) has been unavailable throughout the afternoon of Monday, October 15, 2007. Access is intermittent. The outage is due to an issue at the off-campus Blackboard hosting site. Blackboard engineers are currently working on resolving the issue. We apologize for the inconvenience this is causing.

An update will be posted when the system becomes available.

Thank you for your patience in this matter.