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[octoprof]

We are changing in BlackBoard 9.1 (from BB (WebCT) CE 6 or something like that). I'm in the pilot group (clearly I've lost my mind).

Our WebCT courses have been copied over to BB 9.1 development shells.  I had a very nice online course last term.

I'm at the point of wanting to jump on a train and never come back.

<whimper>

Any encouragement from current BB 9.1 users?

[ms_turtle]

We went to BB9.1 this semester after using BB6.X for 3-4 years. I primarily use it for the gradebook and posting course materials such as documents, video clips, and a few quizzes. The gradebook is slow, but the features for course materials work well. Overall, I don't see that much difference, however.

[prytania3]

We are switching over during the summer. I have only heard rumors that it is nothing like the Blackboard of old, and it's not at all user friendly. But they are only rumors.

[samspade]

We are switching over during the summer. I have only heard rumors that it is nothing like the Blackboard of old, and it's not at all user friendly. But they are only rumors.

Wow. An even more unfriendly version of Blackboard? Did they increase the number of clicks needed to get information?

[bioteacher]

BB 9.1 has a lot fewer clicks for some things. But with everything so visually different, I've had more than a few cases where I was hunting and hunting for for the proper place do to task X. The manual, as usual, is worthless as it answers no practical questions while providing screen shot after screen shot of "literal" (as opposed to practical, I know there is a better word but I'm too tired/fried to figure out what it is) tasks no one really is confused about.

The assignment feature for grading has the interesting "feature" of requiring you to grade each version that is submitted, even if you don't want to. I allow 3 submissions to allow for internet goof ups.

So far, it's has not simplified anything in any significant way, nor has it broken anything beyond all recognition (yet). That's the nicest thing I can say about it so far.

[madhatter]

I've had more than a few cases where I was hunting and hunting for for the proper place do to task X.

Uh huh. The surveys & tests feature is my personal nemesis.

I'm teaching a summer class online, and I've spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to do what should be simple tasks like posting quizzes. My last adventure in quiz-making was chronicled here. But, I thought I had mastered that. Not so much in my new course shell. After I created a quiz, I went to the Course Documents area to post it. But... the option to create a test was missing! There followed the usual stupid hour of wandering around the site clicking at things at random in the hopes of stumbling across the solution, followed by pointless checking of the help guide and Googling. Finally, I broke down and called our IT desk. Someone got back to me a few hours later and told me that I had to to to "Customization" in the Control Panel, select "Tool Availability", scroll down a list of fifty or so items and click a box for "Test" under "Available in Content Area." Then I could go back to where I expected to find the "Add a Test" button and use it.

See? Intuitive. User-friendly. Practically does the work itself.

Don't even get me started on the iPad BlackBoard app...

[bookishone]

So far, what I notice is that I can't have a newly posted course announcement emailed to all users. That was a useful feature. Perhaps that's why it's gone.

[bioteacher]

On my campus, that feature never worked. They took it away rather than fix it.

[kohelet]

Our Bb guy is a good friend.  He explained that in Bb9, emailing the announcement to users sends and email from the *Bb administrator's* email address, not the *instructor's* email address.  He said this is the #1 requested bug fix sent to Bb from campus Bb administrators, so maybe it will be fixed soon.

I'm spending the weekend getting my online course ready.  It's all imported into Bb9, but I've barely looked at it since importing.  I may be back here soon!

[bookishone]

Our Bb guy is a good friend.  He explained that in Bb9, emailing the announcement to users sends and email from the *Bb administrator's* email address, not the *instructor's* email address.  He said this is the #1 requested bug fix sent to Bb from campus Bb administrators, so maybe it will be fixed soon.

I'm spending the weekend getting my online course ready.  It's all imported into Bb9, but I've barely looked at it since importing.  I may be back here soon!

Good to know. I will continue to hope.

[Modified to add]: Does anyone know, does the new Bb fix the email problem where you can email a single/select user but

1) there is no "sent" mailbox, so all you have for record is the copy you sent your own separate .edu email address, and this copy doesn't include the recipient's name/email -- a problem if you are emailing different messages to different students. Workaround: always include full name/description of issue in the sent email, though this doesn't fix the problem of not being able to search/sort by recipient afterwards (a significant issue).

2) the recipient gets an email that doesn't offer any indication of who (or who else) got the email. I've had students who were worried that their emailed essay comments or returned essay file went to the whole class (not true).

Really, if Bb is going to offer email at all, a record of the recipients would seem to be an obvious and basic element to include.

[kohelet]

bookishone, I find Bb email so frustrating that I hide it from students (and I zealously disabled "messages" pre-Bb9).  My courses work so that all discussion is on the discussion board, so it works for me.  If a student needs to email me privately, my email address is on the faculty contact page.  I do use it from behind the veil to email students sometimes, but you're right, it leaves an unsatisfactory trail.

. . . But I'm mostly logging on here to say I'M DONE!  My course is a thing of beauty.  It wasn't too painful.  It is, however, too late!  Can't believe I stayed up past 1:00 a.m. working on this.

[bioteacher]

1) there is no "sent" mailbox, so all you have for record is the copy you sent your own separate .edu email address, and this copy doesn't include the recipient's name/email -- a problem if you are emailing different messages to different students. Workaround: always include full name/description of issue in the sent email, though this doesn't fix the problem of not being able to search/sort by recipient afterwards (a significant issue).

2) the recipient gets an email that doesn't offer any indication of who (or who else) got the email. I've had students who were worried that their emailed essay comments or returned essay file went to the whole class (not true).

Really, if Bb is going to offer email at all, a record of the recipients would seem to be an obvious and basic element to include.

For 1. The new version does let you click a button for return receipt. The email blackboard sends you will then start with a list of who the email went to. This is new and I LOVE it.

For 2. The email addresses of the other recipients are always hidden. That was true of previous blackboard, too. Whether or not students realize it's confidential may depend on you teaching them about that feature at the start of every term. :-)  You could do this by sending a mass email and asking students if they can tell who else got the message. That would allow them to "test" the system before it matters.
 

[bookishone]

1) there is no "sent" mailbox, so all you have for record is the copy you sent your own separate .edu email address, and this copy doesn't include the recipient's name/email -- a problem if you are emailing different messages to different students. Workaround: always include full name/description of issue in the sent email, though this doesn't fix the problem of not being able to search/sort by recipient afterwards (a significant issue).

2) the recipient gets an email that doesn't offer any indication of who (or who else) got the email. I've had students who were worried that their emailed essay comments or returned essay file went to the whole class (not true).

Really, if Bb is going to offer email at all, a record of the recipients would seem to be an obvious and basic element to include.

For 1. The new version does let you click a button for return receipt. The email blackboard sends you will then start with a list of who the email went to. This is new and I LOVE it.

For 2. The email addresses of the other recipients are always hidden. That was true of previous blackboard, too. Whether or not students realize it's confidential may depend on you teaching them about that feature at the start of every term. :-)  You could do this by sending a mass email and asking students if they can tell who else got the message. That would allow them to "test" the system before it matters.
 

I'm delighted to hear about 1., and that's a good idea for 2, though it would be even better if Bb included the recipient list at the top of the message for all recipients, just as every single other email client does!

[bioteacher]

Oh My Lord. I just suffered an entire DAY with that !@#%^@^& software.

The task: so simple on the surface. I have 22 students. Each wrote a paragraph summary and short outline of their assigned research topic. They loaded that with 5 pdfs (journal articles they will use for their research) and one spreadsheet (their grading rubric; I make them evaluate themselves.)

My job: read the paragraph/outline. Add comments via markup feature in word. Look at the PDFs and make sure they are appropriate. (Not editorials, not from 1965, not from Rolling Stone Magazine). Load the word document and my own grading rubric back to blackboard, put their score in the little box, done.

It took all dang day. If you download everything in one big batch, you get this HUGE prefix to all of the file names. A pdf called Smith1.pdf becomes "Topic20Choice20Assignment_XXXXXX_attempt_2011-05-13-22-31-08_v20vacc20for20HIVimmune20reconstitution-SMITH1.pdf" where Smith1 is the last name I ask students to include and XXXX is the university user name. Try sorting that into folders for each student. Gah.

If you download them each individually, you play click and download for 3 hrs. A different type of pain that saves no time.

Lets say you want to grade all of the students in a row. You finish one student and click on "save and go to next" and you would expect to go to the next student's assignment, right? NO! Why would you go there? Instead, the system jumps you randomly around the roster, sometimes revisiting already graded students and sometimes landing on a new student.

If you try to back out, you get yelled at for not saving. In fact, to leave the grading screen, you have all of these as choices:
1. Save as draft
2. Exit
3. Save and exit
4. View previous (randomly chosen!)
5. Save and next (Randomly chosen!)

Best of all, above this series of choices are the directions: "Click Save as Draft to save changes and continue working later. Click Submit or Save and Exit to finish. Click Cancel to quit without saving changes."

The directions don't match the choices!


And the cherry on the cake of my day was learning that if a student submits multiple times (because the system choked and didn't load a file etc.)  you have to enter a numeric grade in the box for EVERY VERSION the student submitted or the gradebook won't record it.

I'm sharpening the knives and skewers now. Anyone care to join me as we invite the programmers to a blackboard party?

[amlithist]

Y'all are not encouraging.  Well, maybe you are, in that my problems apparently don't spring from the fact that I'm just too stupid to use this program, that all of it has been appearing on my screen in what may as well be Mandarin Chinese for all the good it's doing me, and/or that I've had a debilitating stroke that's only affected my ability to use Blackboard.

Um, yeah.  I just spent probably 10 hours, total, over the weekend, trying to get an online class ready to go for June 6.  This is a "canned" class--one I've taught a lot of times online and should just need to upload and rearrange in Bb 9. 

I. Cannot. Find. A. Damn. THING. in this new version!   What is wrong with me??  I've NEVER had real problems with Bb (aside from its usual charming glitches and our IT stupidities). 

Did I mention they did our changeover at 6 pm the night before intersession classes started?  Idiots.

Seriously--I've carried this class over semesters for a few years, and even with tweaks, updates, and cutting/adding materials, it has NEVER taken more than a morning to get it ready to go.  Now?  Ten hours in, and I think I might be ready to run the first week.  No, wait, that's not true:  I still don't have my syllabus and links set up, or if they are, I have no idea where the $*%^ I put them.

Someone here told me about a month ago, when I asked about the move to Bb 9, "Kill yourself now."  Again, I should've listened...............

<<walks away muttering>>