Blackboard Outage Planned for May 12-15 for Upgrade

In order to upgrade to version 8.0, Blackboard will be unavailable from 6:00 pm on Tuesday, May 12 to 6:00 am on Friday, May 15.*

Significant improvements in this new version of the Blackboard Learning Management System are to be found in the new “Grade Center”. Previously known as the Gradebook, the Grade Center offers a variety of new functions through a redesigned tool bar:

• Faculty will be able to enter grades directly through a spreadsheet, create and print reports such as a final grade report, and use a variety of new grade calculations such as average, minimum/maximum, and improved weighted and total scores.

• Smart Views will allow faculty to customize the Grade Center to display a subset of students based on selected criteria. These customized displays can be saved and used again. Students can be sorted based on course, group, performance measurements, or other criteria. Once built and saved, Smart Views become a selectable list item on the Current View drop-down menu in the Grade Center page, enabling easy navigation from one view to another.

• Instructors will be able to create a Grading Schema — a diagram based on percentage ranges that match scores to specific grade displays — and then use it in grading. The instructor can choose how grades display to students, for example, as letter grades, percentages or raw numbers.

During the outage, users will be unable to access content in the myMiami/Blackboard system. Most non-Blackboard services normally accessed via myMiami, including e-mail, BannerWeb, Kronos and others, will be available during the outage via links on a web page that will display when users attempt to access myMiami. As soon as the upgrade is completed, all content will be fully available.

For the most current updates on the planning for the Blackboard upgrade, please refer to the Blackboard Support Tab on myMiami under the “Current Blackboard Issues” module or contact Advanced Learning Technologies at 513-529-6068 or alt@muohio.edu.

*As indicated above, upgrading myMiami/Blackboard will require a system-wide outage beginning at 6:00 pm on Tuesday, May 12. The upgrade should be complete and the system restored by 6:00 am on Friday, May 15. However, should the upgrade not complete as planned, the outage could be extended through Sunday, May 17. Throughout the outage, progress updates will be posted to the Blackboard Instructors LISTSERV.