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News | OIT-ELN Bi-Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 5

e-Learning Snippets, Tips and Workshops

  • SAVING THE COURSE THAT IS YOUR OWN. Faculty members who teach online courses in Blackboard-CE6 are reminded to save any courses or course materials they may wish to reuse during the intersession, over the summer, or during the 2009-2010 academic year. There are three ways to save:

    1) You may back up your courses to a master copy, which is as easy to do as filling out this online form: http://eln.deltastate.edu/forms/course_copy.htm. Master copies are never archived and deleted from the server; they provide you with continuous access to your course content so that you may refine and improve upon your work.
    2) Or, you may copy your 2008-2009 courses forward to the appropriate course shells available for this summer and fall. If you're not sure how to copy a course, watch this short and not unpleasant screencast: http://eln.deltastate.edu/media/scast-copy/.
    3) The third way to save is recommended to faculty who wish to keep their own, archived versions of the course content in addition to all of the interactions (tests, emails, discussions, assignments, etc.) associated with the course. Just select the Build tab in your Blackboard-CE6 course, select Manage Course, then click on the Backup link. To conserve precious space on the server, we encourage you to download the backup file to your office computer, then delete the file from the My Files area of the File Manager.

    OIT archives courses annually (every August) for administrative purposes, including grade challenges and academic integrity disputes; then, we delete the archived files from the server to free up space. If you wish to rebuild a course from a backup file, you will need to contact the Blackboard-CE6 Specialist, Kelly Kirkland (kkirkland@deltastate.edu).
  • DON'T FORGET THE GRADE BOOKS! If you're not really a "saver," we recommend that you save at the very least a copy of your grade books--for each and every term. If you use the grade book tool in Blackboard-CE6, you can download the class grades in a spreadsheet-ready file. Just go to the Teach tab in your course, select Grade Book on the menu, then click the Export to Spreadsheet button on the bottom of the page.

  • SUMMER AVAILIBILITY. OIT-ELN staffers are available for course-development consultations and one-on-one training throughout the summer months. The OIT Lab (Bailey Hall 114) will remain open and available for use every day from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm. For more information on the Lab, visit: http://eln.deltastate.edu/lab.htm.

  • E-LEARNING SITE OF THE MONTH: GOODREADS. It's social networking for the bookworm set! Goodreads (http://www.goodreads.com) provides users with an easy way to keep up with what your peers are reading. It's free to join, and Goodreads provides ample ways to review books as well as disseminate those reviews via several outlets, including Facebook and Amazon.

Volume 3, Issue 5. The OIT-ELN Bi-Monthly is published by the Office of Instructional Technology's Electronic Learning Network. For additional information contact Dr. Susan Hines, Director of Instructional Technology (shines@deltastate.edu or x4038). Find the "blogged" back issues at http://eln.deltastate.edu/wordpress.