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.

Using Wimba Live Classroom in ELMS

The Office of Information Technology Academic Support group will be hosting the first in a series of Learning Technologies Brownbag Discussions this term on Friday, October 12 from noon-1 p.m.

Come join our discussion on using Wimba Live Classroom in ELMS (powered by Blackboard Academic Suite), a fully-featured live virtual classroom environment that supports audio, video, application sharing, content display, and whiteboarding. Dr. Helene Cohen will lead this discussion and share her experience using this powerful tool. The OIT learning technologies team will also be available to answer your questions and address your concerns about this tool.

Please see the Brownbag Web site for more information. Bring your lunch and nosh on light refreshments that will be provided for participants. There is no registration required.

MS Office file compatibility issues are not specifically an ELMS problem; however, as more faculty and students are sharing MS Office files via ELMS tools, the problem of the compatibility of those files in different versions of MS Office has been reported frequently.

There are two options to deal with problems resulting from instructors or students posting Word (or Excel or PowerPoint) files created in MS Office 2007 in an ELMS course space.

First, instructors (or students who are submitting assignments) should consider saving their Office 2007 files in older file formats. This may result in losing some of the functionality of Office 2007 in the documents, but it will make the files available to Windows and Mac users. To save an individual Office 2007 file in an older format:

1. Click the Office button (top left corner of the Office 2007 application screen)
2. Select the Save As command.
3. Select Word 97-2003 Document (or Excel 97-200 Workbook or PowerPoint 97-2003 Presentation).

A second option is to ask that students with older versions of Office download and install the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007. At this time, this solution only works for PCs (there is a beta version of a Mac File Format Converter for Word files only). Go to:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=941b3470-3ae9-4aee-8f43-c6bb74cd1466&displaylang=en
for the free software pack.

A special account has been created to enable faculty to access to their ELMS course(s) as a student. These accounts are being created automatically for faculty teaching during the Fall term.

The special user account will be of the form: elms-faculty-directoryid (e.g., elms-faculty-jsmith42)

To use the account is it necessary to set an initial password. To do so, faculty should visit

https://learningonline.umd.edu/elms-mgmt/localusers/editLocalUserForFaculty.jsf

The password for this account will expire at the end of every term. Once a faculty member has an elms-faculty account, he or she will reuse it each term; however, it will be necessary to reset the password before each new term at the Web address noted above. The account is only meant to be used by the faculty member whose directory ID is associated with; it should not be shared with others.

Please contact the ELMS support staff at elms@umd.edu if you have any questions. (Faculty in R.H. Smith School of Business can contact bbhelp@rhsmith.umd.edu; faculty in the Engineering School can contact bb-help@umd.edu with questions or for assistance.)