The Start of a New Year
We’re starting the new year off with a bang! We’ve been busy developing as many supports for your Winter and Spring 2021 semesters as we can.
This month’s Blackboard News includes information about Online Teaching, Support for Instructors, IDEAS Webinars, Requesting your Spring Blackboard course, Requesting your Spring Echo360 courses, the Blackboard tip of the month, Planned Downtimes, and Blackboard help and resources.
Upcoming Important Dates
There are a number of important dates for this semester that are a bit different than in a normal semester. Some of the highlights related to instruction are:
- Last day of Winter classes – January 16, 2021
- Winter grades due – January 20, 2021
- First day of Spring classes – February 1, 2021
IDEAS Webinars
We’re moving ahead with our webinars right at the start. Our webinar series begins January 4th, 2021, and will continue throughout the Spring semester. We’ll be covering specific teaching technologies, as well as building instructor presence, designing effective online assessments, and best practices for lecture capture.
To see our full list of webinars, and register, check out the IDEAS Spring 2021 Webinars page.
Can’t decide which workshops to take? Have questions? Don’t hesitate to contact the IDEAS Team for help in deciding which workshops are right for you. Contact us at instruct@umass.edu.
FlexForward to Online Teaching
The IDEAS Team has built out the Spring 2021 Quality Standards Blackboard course. This training course is self-paced and meant to help you every step of the way as you transition and build out your course. Each of the 8 modules includes information, resources, and actionable steps you can take to incorporate what has been presented. We encourage you to explore these modules and content to help you as you design your courses.
If you have any questions, please contact us at instruct@umass.edu.
Support for Instructors
Even though we’re not on campus, we’re still here to help you with your courses and teaching technology. We have 3 avenues for support, in addition to the webinars we are currently running. Please read carefully since there will be some changes on our available hours of support.
- Support through email. Send an email to instruct@umass.edu with your course information and a description of how we can help.
- Schedule an appointment with us. Please send an email to instruct@umass.edu with a brief description of your goals/needs, and suggest a few times you are available between 9am and 4pm, Monday – Friday.
- Join our Instructor Support Zoom meeting between 10am and 3pm, Monday – Friday to meet with a staff member. Please note that wait times depend on the volume of requests.
- Wednesdays from 10am to 12pm, the Instructor Support Zoom will be joined by our campus partners in CTL to provide collaborative support to our instructor community.
IDEAS Webinars and Events to Support Online Teaching and Technology
We are still running our webinars, and we are constantly adding more dates. Our webinars are focused on helping you prepare and create engaging content for the current Fall 2020 and to prepare for Winter and Spring 2021 semester as well. We’re offering workshops on building online and accessible content, creating engaging media, and new ways to deliver lectures to your students. Check out our IDEAS Webinars page for more information and to register.
Request your Spring Blackboard Courses
Spring Blackboard courses are available for request through SPIRE. Don’t forget that each semester you will need to request Blackboard for the courses you are teaching.
For detailed instructions, see:
Request your Winter & Spring Echo360 Courses
Echo360 allows you to create recordings of your lectures to deliver to students. Students can access recordings to learn new content or review content to reinforce the information. The system also allows you to add interactive content and measure student engagement.
Echo360 Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) uses speech to text algorithms to create an interactive transcript for your recordings. After you do a little editing for accuracy, your students will be able to study for exams, find relevant information in recordings, and even turn on Closed Captioning for your media.
Echo360 course requests for Winter & Spring are available in SPIRE. Just like Blackboard, each semester you will need to request Echo360 for the courses you want to use it in.
For step by step instructions, see Request Lecture Capture. Once your Echo360 courses are ready, it’s easy to give students access to Echo360 recordings through Blackboard.
Blackboard Tip of the Month: Viewing Test Statistics
Did you know that Blackboard can analyze a test after it has been taken by students, so that you can see additional information including the difficulty of individual questions and the average question scores? This can be a quick way to identify topics that may need additional review, or to find and assess questions that may be too easy or too difficult.
A bonus tip: You can always reach out to the IDEAS Team for help with working on your Blackboard course or incorporating supported teaching technologies into your course.
Planned Downtimes
There are no planned downtimes of Blackboard services in January 2021.
Blackboard Help and Resources for Instructors
To learn more about Blackboard or to get help, you can:
- Review our Blackboard Support Articles.
- Contact the Instructional Media Lab (instruct@umass.edu) with a question, or to set up a time for a one-on-one consultation.
- Join our Instructor Support Zoom room between 10am and 3pm to meet with a staff member.