Blackboard Course Recycling Phase 2 Recycling is here!

Reasons to LOVE recycling… How many of you have ever wished for more control over YOUR Blackboard course? Have you ever had a student who registered late and needed to be added to your Bb course? Have you ever wanted to have your students enrolled in Bb on the FIRST day of classes? How many of you have ever had to deal with lost or corrupted data in your copied courses? Images missing, test questions missing, strange characters in your lecture notes…

Recycling will… PUT YOU IN THE DRIVER’S SEAT! You’ll now be able to do all of those things yourself – when you want them done!

Copy Course Process Overview Since the beginning of our time in Bb, PCC has adopted a “course copy” philosophy. Near the end of every semester instructors are prompted to complete a Course Copy Request to let us know what courses they’ll be teaching next semester. Our Bb Administrator then makes a copy of each course to be taught and populates the students into the course after the purge.

Problems with Course Copying Course content is often lost or corrupted in the copying process, especially in publisher course cartridges. Course copying slows system wide performance. Instructors end up with a huge list of courses to sort through. Instructors have no control over when their courses are populated. Instructors do not have a way to generate a complete backup of their course. Students do not have access to the course until several days into the semester.

Advantages to Course Copying Student Data & Course Content is maintained for several semesters and can easily be accessed by instructors in Blackboard. It’s how we’ve always done it.

What is Course Recycling? Course Recycling is the process in Blackboard that reuses the same Blackboard course each semester but does not maintain & store student data. Each course is a continuous work in progress that is “wiped clean” of student records at the end of each semester. This is the way Blackboard was designed to work.

Advantages of Course Recycling Instructors have control of when their students can access the course. No data is lost due to course copies. Course cartridges should work with less problems. (Many won’t need to be re-downloaded every semester.) Course recycling will improve system performance by freeing up server space.

Concerns with Course Recycling Instructor Responsibility Increases:  Student record keeping  Recycling their own courses (data may be lost if instructors recycle their courses pre-maturely) Incompletes will need to be added to the next semester’s class or handled outside of Blackboard. Student data is not maintained in the system. Instructors are now responsible for making and storing their own backups.

Transitional Phases Phase 1 – Spring 2006:  Research best practices  Prepare documentation  Provide training  Modify existing course forms

Transitional Phases Phase 2 – Summer 2006 – Summer 2007  All courses must be copied over one more time to allow for our new naming scheme.  All courses will be recycled  You should export your attendance records, download your gradebook and export your course for all of your old courses.  We’ll begin removing the old courses in the Fall 06 semester.

Transitional Phase The first semester you teach a course under the Recycling method you will have an “old” course and a “new” course. New course names will look something like this: CIS111_TFarmer_HY It is important to complete the checklist steps in the CORRECT course.

Transitional Phases Phase 3 – Fall 2007 and beyond  All courses should be moved over to the new naming scheme  All “old” courses should be removed from the server

Student Enrollment A very important part of the new Recycling process is Student Enrollment. Instructors will now be able to enroll and remove their own students. Instructors CAN choose to have Bb Admin do their initial student populations (normally the day after the purge)  After the initial populations, the instructor is responsible for adding and removing students as needed.

For those of you who have been doing this since the early days, this is NOT the same cumbersome process we used several years ago for Student Enrollment! We’ll talk more about student enrollment in a few minutes.

Course Maintenance Forms Course Maintenance forms completely redesigned The new link will be named “Blackboard Course Maintenance” It will be found under the Distance Learning, Faculty Resources page. This series of web pages and forms will ask you questions about your course and present only the necessary forms for your completion. The end step is a printable checklist to walk you through the rest of the steps in the recycling process.

Course Maintenance Link Distance Learning, Faculty Resources Page

Resources We have compiled a manual detailing the steps you’ll need to follow during this new process. This is available online or in a hard copy if desired. We have also prepared multiple Instructor Checklist. Choose the right one for you and complete the steps each semester. All resources can be found on the Faculty Resources page of the Distance Learning website.

Important Notes: Start with your checklist The checklist references the manual You may leave out some of the backup steps if your Bb course is a supplement Page 18 & 19, be very careful which areas you select to recycle Early enrollment policy – course unavailable! Be careful when removing students

Course Recycling Model

Discussion…