August 2018 Technical Tips - Part I

Announcements

Blackboard Learn Outage – August 16-20!

Don’t forget that Bb Learn will be unavailable while we move from Managed Hosting to the Software-as-a-Service for Bb Learn. Bb Learn will be down for three to five days, so please plan accordingly. This migration requires significant downtime and is scheduled for August 16 – 20, 2018 (after Summer grades are due, but before the Fall term begins). You may want to have any course copies or combination completed before August 16. You can find out more about this update here.

Cline Media Update

Since May, you may have noticed some differences in how your Cline Library video files appear in your courses. They used to be a link to an html file that would then open a video on the Cline Media server. Now you may see Kaltura videos in their place. Why the change and who is doing the changing?

The Flash media server that Cline Library Course Reserves used was retired at the end of the Spring 2018 semester. The media for your course (movies, video, audio, etc.) that was provided by Cline Library has been migrated to the University’s digital media repository Kaltura.

As a courtesy, the Faculty Support team has attempted to replace any links in your course which connected to Cline’s Flash server. We completed over 2500 media file replacements for summer courses and have completed over 1100 for fall courses…so far.

We identify what courses have Cline media through a report we run regularly, so the sooner your fall courses have content, the sooner we can add them to our “fix” list if they have outdated media files. We want as many fall courses fixed before the semester begins, and as busy as things are the week before the semester, courses copied after August 20 may not get fixed before the class start date. Please get your copy requests in early!

NOTE: Course Reserves media that had previously been located in your content collection has been removed and any links that we were not able to replace have been put in a folder named “Kaltura Media.” This folder is hidden from student view.

Feel free to contact us with any questions.

Start of the Semester

e-Learning Center Open Labs

Prior to the start of the semester, the e-Learning Center will have some open labs scheduled so that instructors may receive in-person assistance with Blackboard, pedagogical practices, and pedagogical resources:

Location: Cline 169
Dates: 08/22-08/24
Time: 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Location: Gammage Training Room 315
Dates: 08/27-08/28
Time: 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Hope to see you there!

Course Copies and Combinations

Don’t forget to ask for your course copies or any course combination changes before your summer or fall courses start. Keep in mind that Bb Learn will not be available August 16 through August 20, so plan accordingly. You can use the course copy request form to ask for course copies. Please review our Knowledge Base article about course combinations for more information on how they are set up in Bb Learn.