Did you know that cabinet locks will be disabled?

Did you know that Blackboard sites are deleted after 2 years?

Share screens with hangouts lite

With the MRU Gmail account, you can share your screen to get tech help.

If you haven't activated click teh green dot beside your chat in the bottom left hand of Gmail

Then the magnifying glass and type in who you want to share it with, and click on their name when it comes up.

Then click the camera icon in the new hangout (chat) box that opens.

Click the green share screen button (upper left), choose the screen you want to share, and click share.

When you're done, click Stop sharing at the foot of the screen.

Self and Peer Assessement Tips

In Blackboard there's this tool called Self and Peer Assessment where students randomly get assigned assignment submissions from other students in the class, and based on criteria pre-set by the instructor, they evaluate them.

It's a little finicky, here's how to use it.

You find this tool in a content area, assessments, self and peer assessment

The tricky thing is the dates, particularly the evaluation start date, which is usually (BUT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE) immediately after the submission end date. In fact it's best don't set the evaluation date until you're ready (leave it far in the future)

When you ARE ready to randomly assign evaluations, review those who have submitted, (even maybe looking to see that they have submitted a workable document?)

not those who have not submitted, and make those individuals unavailable (for 5 minutes)

edit the self and peer assessment assignment, by changing the date of the evaluation to now

submit

you can (if you wish) return those who have not participated to being available, or just let the system do it later

you can see who is reviewing which students by going into control panel, self and peer assessment, menu button beside the assignment, view evaluations. You will note that students who did not participate will not be included. If they are available again, you will see their names, but they will not be evaluating anybody.

After the evaluation start date is reached, it cannot be changed because the random evaluation assignments are made to the students. At this point there cannot be any new submissions. Students who are late cannot participate. (Although I have made an enhancement request to change this)

By the way, if you want only peer, and not self evaluation, or visa versa, now's the time to set that. The default is both.

Also, if you have a student who will not be participating (maybe they never show up to class), then make them unavailable, at least until after the evaluation start date in order to excluding them from being assigned random students submissions to assess.

 After the self and peer dates are made, it may look as though all is done. Not so. You are brought to the Assessment Canvas where you create questions. 

Usually there would be just one question: please submit the document you have written.

After that, less obvious, you need to create the criteria that the assignment will be evaluated on. 

 You can have either all or nothing for points, or partial credit (how many stars?)

When evaluating, students have access to download any submitted text (or view it if it's typed into the assignment field), and go through each criteria. The elevator can also add typed feedback.

Export Import Blackboard

Sadly Course Copy has been replaced by Export/ Import (at least until we can find all the ballooning nested folder sites and fix them). Here's how to do it:

Want a pdf step-by-step?

Posting links to Films on Demand link in Blackboard

Films on Demand is a video site that the MRU library has subscribed to. You can link to videos (or portions of videos) in your Blackboard site. Here's a video on how to do it:

Updating Backboard Announcements

When you first post a Blackboard announcement, it states the date and time it was posted, and goes to the top of the announcements, immediately below the "New announcements appear below this line" bar.

If you edit the announcement and re-post it, the new re-posting date and time will replace the old one (which is now gone forever). If you had checked email students, then it will email again. If you don't want to email students again (because maybe you just edited it to remove a misspelling) then uncheck the email checkbox. HOWEVER, the re-posted announcement will not automatically move to the top. You can manually drag it there though.

If you drag an announcement above the "New announcements appear below this line" bar, it will stay up there. Instructor often use this to make a static welcome message.