Blackboard Tip of the Month: Sort Your Grade Center with Smart Views
Did you know you can Sort the Blackboard Grade Center using groups and other critera? Using groups in conjunction with the Blackboard Grade Center makes it easier to filter data or enter grades. Even more when you have a big class and TAs in charge of grading different groups of students. You can also filter the view by student performance, categories of items, and even a combination of criteria.
Request Your Blackboard Courses in SPIRE
Winter and Fall 2022 Blackboard course requests are open.
Don’t forget that each semester you will need to request Blackboard for the courses you are teaching.
For detailed instructions, see:
Request your 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. Echo360 course requests for Fall 2022 are available in SPIRE. Just like Moodle, 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.
You can connect your Zoom and Echo360 accounts, and have all cloud recordings copied into Echo360.
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.
Once your Echo360 courses are ready, it’s easy to give students access to Echo360 recordings through Moodle.
Planned downtimes
There are no planned downtimes for Blackboard in October 2022.
You can check the status of Blackboard, Zoom, and other supported teaching technologies on the IT Services Status for Remote Teaching and Learning page.
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 Monday-Friday between 10am and 3pm to meet with a staff member. Please note that wait times depend on the volume of requests.
- Contact the 24/7 Blackboard Helpdesk. The helpdesk can also assist students directly.