As you may or may not know by now there has been a change in the way classes are handled by Blackboard. Over the past year Middlesex Interactive and Information Technologies have worked together to find a way to make the enrollment of students easier. We are having our first run with our process for the Fall semester.
This integration of Blackboard with the colleges Identity Management system will have the following benefits:
- Provide students with more timely and accurate access to their courses in Blackboard
- Remove out-of-date enrollment information from Blackboard
- Include students real names in email addresses(e.g. "Joe Student a12345@middlesex.mass.edu")
Changes to Process
- All sections created in Banner will have a Blackboard course site (the sections pulled from Banner are the ones that will be managed by this process).
- Course titles are now managed by the system. If you change the couse title, it will revert back to the Banner course title.
- Because access to Blackboard courses is now managed through identity management (IDM), students not registered in Banner will not have access to managed courses in Blackboard.
- Students will be automatically added to, or dropped from, corresponding Blackboard course rosters in less than 24 hours from the information being entered into Banner. If a student informs you that he or she does not have access to his or her Blackboard course, please check the class roster in Middlenet before placing a call to the helpdesk.
- Instructors who wish to combine more than one section of students into a single Blackboard couse, upon request Middlesex Interactive can create a "Master" course site that will not be managed by IDM and can serve as a location for course material development and a repository for content.
- In courses with multiple instructors, only one may be enrolled using the Blackboard designation, "Instructor" since there is only one instructor for each course listed in Banner. Additional instructors can be added using the newly created role of "Co-instructor".
This project was discussed at the FSA Technology Committee. The chair of the committee made any announcement about this project at a Spring FSA meeting.
An announcement of the changes was sent to the college community via newscaster and sent to all Blackboard instructors via Blackboard email blast.
Any questions or request for course master can be submitted to distance_ed@middlesex.mass.edu
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