February 2021 Blackboard News

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Announcements Blackboard News

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The Spring 2021 Semester is here!

The Spring 2021 semester is here, and we wish everyone the best start to it. We’re here to support you as you begin teaching your courses.

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:

  • First day of Spring classes – February 1, 2021
  • Last day for add/drop – February 12, 2021
  • President’s Day – Classes will be held – February 15, 2021
  • Wellbeing Wednesday Observed – No Classes – February 24, 2021

IDEAS Webinars

We’re moving ahead with our webinars right at the start. Our webinar series will continue throughout the Spring semester. We’ll be covering specific teaching technologies, as well as topics like building instructor presence, designing effective online assessments, and best practices for lecture capture.

This Spring, the IDEAS team will also be hosting a series of four interactive workshops focusing on Engagement in courses taught online. Participants will develop strategies for using resources and technologies to increase the levels of student engagement and participation in their courses. They can expect to collaborate with their colleagues across campus to share ideas and best practices. The workshops will focus on:

  • Beyond Lecture: Presenting Content Creatively
  • Facilitating Engaging Synchronous Learning Activities
  • Facilitating Engaging Asynchronous Activities
  • Building Student-Instructor Relationships

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.

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.

Automatically copy your Zoom cloud recordings to Echo360

You can connect your Zoom and Echo360 accounts, and have all cloud recordings copied into Echo360. If you enable this, you can even have a recurring Zoom meeting publish directly to an Echo360 course. Unlike Zoom recordings, which are kept for 120 days, Echo360 does not have a storage limit on your recordings.

Blackboard Tip of the Month: Viewing Test Statistics

Instead of putting the spotlight on a single tool or setting this month, we have a few things to highlight that might help make your Blackboard course run a little smoother this spring.

Did you know that…

  • You have access to a handy checklist for starting your semester using Blackboard? The Course Update Checklist page has a list of common topics to make sure are ready and includes resources and information for each of them.
  • You can create groups in Blackboard? These groups allow you do things like facilitate peer-to-peer instruction in forums, or have students submit assignments in groups. For more information, check out An Overview of Groups and Groupings in Blackboard.
  • You can add user and group overrides for Tests in Blackboard? These allow you to set special options such as increased time limits, staggered start and end times, and additional time access for students, or groups of students, who need it. For more, check out Creating Exceptions for Exams/Tests/Quizzes.
  • You can generate transcripts automatically for your recordings? Both Zoom and Echo360 can automatically generate interactive transcriptions for your recordings? These transcripts allow students to search for information in your recordings, including key terms and phrases. Automated transcriptions are not 100% accurate, but if you edit them they can be a powerful study aid for your students. For information, check out Add and Edit Transcripts in Zoom or Add and Edit Transcripts in Echo360.
  • You can improve accessibility with Blackboard Ally? Blackboard Ally is a built-in tool that automatically evaluates any files attached to your Blackboard course to help identify possible accessibility issues. For more information, check out An Overview of Blackboard Ally.

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:

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