![\"Staff](\"http:\/\/blogs.reading.ac.uk\/tel\/files\/2017\/02\/blackboard-course-rollover-staff-survey-2016-q13pie.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nWe have taken these views on board when planning for the Summer 2017 rollover.<\/p>\n
The default position will remain that any RISIS module or programme which was used in Blackboard in the current academic year, and is scheduled to run again in 2017-18, will be copied forward.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n For staff who do not want their course to be copied, or who want only some of their course content to be copied, we will provide additional options. We are still working on the technical details of these, but will provide full information when this is ready.<\/p>\n We will also provide guidance for staff whose courses differ from the standard set up pattern e.g.<\/p>\n as well as those using Shared Courses or Non-RISIS courses in Blackboard.<\/p>\n This year Course Rollover will take place on Saturday 8th<\/sup> July<\/strong> 2017<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Saturday 15th<\/sup> July is being held in reserve in case of technical issues, or further work needing to be done. We anticipate that Blackboard will be unavailable during the morning on 8th<\/sup> July (and 15th<\/sup> July if required), but Blackboard should be considered \u201cat risk\u201d for the whole of the day.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n As part of the rollover process \u2013 and regardless of whether a course is copied forward or not \u2013\u00a0we plan to\u00a0extract Module Convenor data from RISIS, and automatically enrol Module Convenors on their corresponding Blackboard course (subject to this data being present in RISIS).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Over 70% of respondents were satisfied with when students get access to their Blackboard courses. But we\u2019re looking at ways of enabling student enrolment where earlier access is required.<\/p>\n Access to Blackboard for new students is dictated by when they complete the enrolment process and there is probably not anything we can do to change this for the coming year.<\/p>\n However, we anticipate that returning students who have completed their RISIS re-enrolment for the coming year will be enrolled on their 2017 courses in Blackboard earlier than last year. This is likely to take place early in August, at the official start of the\u00a0new academic year; but we will also be suggesting workarounds for lecturers who, for example, want to use Blackboard before and during the summer break to engage with second year students starting work on their final year project. Further details to follow.<\/p>\n Note<\/strong>:\u00a0Some staff were concerned that courses should not<\/em> be made available to students too early. The ability to make courses available remains\u00a0with in the course teams \u2013 all new courses in Blackboard are created as ‘unavailable’ by default, and it is up to the lead instructor on the course to make it visible to students at the most appropriate time.<\/p>\n A number of staff indicated that they wanted to make reading lists for the coming year available to students over the summer. In fact, the\u00a0Talis reading lists are freely available online<\/a>, independent of Blackboard, so students can access them before being\u00a0enrolled on the relevant Blackboard course.\u00a0Module Descriptions for 2017-18 modules<\/a>\u00a0will be published in a few weeks’ time and these will include a link to the relevant Talis list, where one exists \u2013 so there will be a mechanism to flag up summer reading to your students, regardless of when Blackboard enrolment takes place.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Several respondents commented that \u2013 particularly with large cohorts \u2013 creating Groups in a Blackboard course can be very time-consuming. We do not think that, in the short term at least, it will be possible to populate Blackboard Groups automatically from RISIS. However it is possible to set up Groups, and populate them with members, from an Excel file. So if you are able to export the required data from RISIS to Excel, it should be possible to set up your Groups, and choose the students for each Group, without having to manually enrol them one at a time. Students will need to be\u00a0enrolled on the course in order to populate the groups in this way.<\/p>\n Please see Importing Group members from an Excel list<\/a> on the Course Management<\/a>\u00a0page of this support site.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Several staff commented that they would prefer that all content items copied forward were, by default, set to be unavailable to students. This is not something that is technically possible to achieve at the moment and, without the ability to provide a choice for staff, would potentially introduce additional workload for\u00a0those staff who do want all content to be visible to students.<\/p>\n However, Blackboard does already have a Date Management<\/strong> tool which could address this issue where content is time-released. This tool allows you to collectively adjust all dates on course content by a certain number of days. So if you have set course content to be released on a certain date in 2016-17, it is a fairly straightforward process to adjust dates as appropriate for the next academic year. You\u2019ll find guidance on the use of this tool on using the Blackboard Date Management tool<\/a>\u00a0on the\u00a0Content Delivery<\/a>\u00a0page of this\u00a0support site.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Every year I have to remind myself about how to make courses available. The process is not very intuitive<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Several staff made similar comments, and it\u2019s a fair criticism. To make a Blackboard course available you have to go to Control Panel > Customisation > Properties<\/strong> \u2013 it\u2019s far from intuitive.<\/p>\n But you could also use the Qwickly<\/strong><\/a> (sic) tool on the Enrolments tab, where courses can be made available with a single mouse-click.<\/p>\n A common complaint was the difficulty of removing oneself, or colleagues, from courses with which you, or they, are no longer involved. We have deliberately restricted the ability to delete users from a Blackboard course, because of the dangers of accidentally deleting a student (thereby deleting all of their assessment records on that course) and there isn’t the ability to just allow the removal of staff enrolments. Senior staff in the Student Support Centres do have the ability to delete staff enrolments in Blackboard.<\/p>\n However, it is also possible for any Instructor or Teaching Assistant to set Blackboard users as \u2018Unavailable\u2019<\/strong> \u2013 this immediately removes the course from that person\u2019s courses list, and means that they will not be added to the course next year<\/strong>.<\/p>\n What you may not realise, is that you can also set your own enrolment to be \u2018Unavailable\u2019<\/strong> on courses which you no longer wish to see. We have amended our user guide to reflect this \u2013 see How to remove yourself and other staff from a Blackboard course<\/a>.<\/p>\n And if you simply want to hide courses from a previous year on your Course list but need to still be enrolled on it, there are ways of doing this \u2013 see Customise your list of courses<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n
Improvement to Staff enrolments<\/h2>\n
Student enrolments<\/h2>\n
Talis reading lists<\/h3>\n
Allocating students to Groups<\/h2>\n
Availability of course content<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nMaking courses available<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nOther issues raised<\/h1>\n
Clearing out your courses list<\/h2>\n
Set staff as Unavailable in courses<\/h3>\n
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