Wentworth Blackboard Infohub

Faculty: your Summer 2013 courses are now available on Blackboard Learn. Students will gain access one day before the beginning of the semester.

Unlike past semesters, you will not need to request these sections. All Wentworth academic courses have a Blackboard section. If you wish to hide a section from students follow these instructions.

If you wish to copy content from another Blackboard section follow these instructions.

For questions, or to schedule a one-on-one consultation, please email us at ld@wit.edu

Respondus is now fully compatible with Wentworth’s Blackboard Learn system. Respondus lets you create online tests and quizzes quickly by uploading a simple text file. By modifying existing quizzes to follow a basic format, you can use materials you have right now.  Contact Learning and Development to learn more.

Happy New Year! Welcome back to the spring semester.

It’s official! Blackboard Learn is now up and running. Blackboard Vista has been retired.

Please review our previous post for more help on how to access the new system. Our schedule of upcoming training sessions is available from the Learning + Development website.

Your Spring 2013 course sections are now available on the new Blackboard Learn system at http://bb.wit.edu  (http://wit.umassonline.net).  Unlike past semesters, you will not need to request these sections.

• Your username is your full WIT email address, including the “@wit.edu” (example: smithj@wit.edu)
• Your initial password is WITBBxxxxxx where “xxxxxx” is the last 6 digits of your “W”  number (WIT ID)

Your previous content from Spring 2012 is also available for you to copy into your section.

Copying Content from Another Section in Blackboard Learn (PDF)

You can find our Blackboard Learn documentation at here.

Wentworth will be transitioning all courses and sections in Blackboard Vista to the new Blackboard Learn in spring of 2013.  This is a major upgrade from our former Blackboard Vista system.

Summary of Updates Below:

• Key Change for Course Requests and Availability
• Content from Past Courses
• “Sandbox” Development Course Sites
• Training Opportunities and Support
• How to Access Blackboard Learn

Key Change for Course Requests and Availability
Starting in spring of 2013, ALL official sections listed as a “lecture” in Banner (Wentworth’s course registration system) will have a site automatically created in Blackboard Learn. This means that you no longer need to submit a course request form. If you do not wish to use Blackboard Learn, you may leave your site blank, or make it unavailable following these directions.

Content from Past Courses
Past course content will be available for one year. Summer 2012 and spring 2012 courses have been imported into Blackboard Learn from Vista and  are now available as archived course sites. Fall 2012 courses from Blackboard Vista will be imported into Learn after the semester ends.

The process for copying course content has changed. You may now copy an entire course, or just parts of a course. Please follow these directions if you want to copy material from an archived course. If you need courses from further back, archive files are available in most cases and we can help you restore past content. Send a note to ld@wit.edu if you need more help.

“Sandbox” Development Course Sites
Based on feedback from our summer pilot and fall phase 1 faculty groups,  the new Learn system offers lots of helpful new features, but it does take some getting used to. To help you adjust to the new system, we have created a blank “sandbox” course for each faculty member during this transition phase. Faculty members who participated in the summer pilot or fall 2012 group should continue to use their existing sandbox sites.

Your sandbox course can be used to develop content starting now for your spring courses and to help you learn the new system. This sandbox course is visible only to you and to members of DTS when we are working with you (such as for training or troubleshooting). Students will not be able to see this course, so please feel free to use it as a safe place to experiment and try things out.

Training Opportunities and Support
A schedule of training sessions, an FAQ about access to Blackboard and our documentation is available from the L+D website available here.

Accessing Blackboard Learn
Blackboard Learn is available at bb.wit.edu, click on the “Log in to Bb Learn” link. If you’d like to bookmark the site directly, use http://wit.umassonline.net
To access Blackboard Learn, you can login starting now.

• Your username is your full WIT email address, including the “@wit.edu” (example: smithj@wit.edu)
• Your initial password is WITBBxxxxxx where “xxxxxx” is the last 6 digits of your WIT ID number (example: WITBB246802)
• You can find your “W” number by folowing these instructions.

We look forward to working with you and getting you up to speed on the new Blackboard. If you have further questions, please contact us at ld@wit.edu

Project Recap:

During the Summer  2012 term a group of faculty completed a pilot of the new Blackboard Learn platform. This system will eventually replace our Blackboard Vista system that Blackboard, Inc. is phasing out support for in 2013.  Many of you attended preview sessions in the spring where you were able to view the upgraded and completely redesigned interface.

Project Status: 

We are pleased to report that Bb Learn has received overall positive reviews from the pilot.  In addition to our work in the pilot, DTS and Learning + Development (L+D) worked with our hosting partner, UMass Online (UMOL) and Blackboard to refine the some of the capabilities of the system for the smoothest transition possible. From this work,  UMOL is focusing on improving some specific features  for optimal success and a seamless rollout.

Rollout Decision and Timeline 

From our discussions with UMOL,  we will be rolling out the new system in two phases to minimize disruption to teaching and learning activities.

Phase 1 Early Adopter Group  -Fall 2012 

Technology mentors, pilot participants, and heavy users of Bb Vista will  run their Fall 2012 courses in Bb Learn.  Learning + Development has already reached out to those faculty directly and will support them in their conversion efforts.

This group of faculty will attend training sessions, and participate in focus groups to prepare further for the full, campus-wide launch of Bb Learn in Spring 2013. . Learning + Development has already reached out to those faculty directly and will support them in their conversion efforts.

Please note: All other faculty will use Bb Vista for their Fall 2012 courses.
To request your Fall 2012 Vista site, please go to the Learning and Development channel on the Academic Resources tab in Blackboard.

Phase 2 – Spring 2013 Full, Campus-Wide Launch. 

By the Spring 2013 semester all faculty will offer their courses in Bb Learn. However,  during the Fall 2012 term faculty will be invited to begin their training and development on the new platform starting as early as October 2012.

Each faculty member will receive a test course to experiment with in the new platform, and  as well as will be able to see their migrated Vista course content.  Learning and Development will continue to offer training sessions office hours and one-on-one consulting throughout the Fall to prepare the entire campus community for the switch.

Any questions regarding the pilot can be directed to Learning and Development at ld@wit.edu.

Our pilot of the new Blackboard Learn system continues to proceed without any major challenges or issues. We are optimistic that WIT will indeed be launching the new Blackboard learning system in time for the September 2012 semester start.

We are grateful for our fabulous pilot group of faculty and students who have helped us refine some of the tools and pointed out areas for documentation and training support.  Thank you to Ali Moazed, Paloma Valverde, Doug Dow, Robert Cowherd, Cindy Stevens, and Joan Giblin for using Bb Learn with their students this summer!

So what’s next?  Below are the major July milestones that the project team is working on.

• Migration of Bb Vista Courses: Throughout the month of July DTS, Learning and Development, and UMass Online are working together to migrate a year’s worth of Bb Vista courses into the new Bb Learn site. By having your previous courses available to you, you will be able to copy and reuse your course content in the new Learn system, ideally helping with the transition.
• Creation of faculty and student accounts: Throughout July DTS is working on the creation of faculty and student accounts for the new system. Account access information will be mailed out the first full week of August.
• Creation of login page and branding of the site: Learning and Development, working with Web Services, is making sure the “front door” of our site is ready for students and faculty.
• Course Request Form updates: The DTS team is working to update the course request form to be synchronized with the new system.
• Documentation and Training Webinar Schedule: Learning and Development will be releasing a webinar schedule for July within the next week. These webinars are designed to show the new features and tools in Bb Learn. A face-to-face workshop and training schedule will be available beginning August 6th.

Our goal is to have the new Bb Learn available for faculty to begin work in no later than August 10th.

Hi Everyone -

Today we kick-off the summer pilot of Bb Learn with seven faculty and their students. A special thanks to Doug Dow, Ali Moazed, Paloma Valverde, Joan Giblin, Cindy Stevens and Rebecca Petersen for offering their summer WIT courses in the new Bb Learn site. This pilot will provide us invaluable feedback and information on how we can best support the entire campus community as we get closer to the full campus launch date on Sept 2012.

To get a sense of all of the elements involved of bringing Blackboard Learn live to the WIT community this fall, Click on the timeline and milestones provided below.

Project Timeline and Milestones

Learning and Development will be supporting a small pilot (5-7 courses) of Blackboard Learn this summer. Faculty interested in piloting a course section should contact Rebecca Petersen (petersenr1@wit.edu) no later than April 10th. We will be setting up the pilot courses and offering training to participants the weeks of April 23rd and April 30th.

If you haven’t participated in a preview of Blackboard Learn yet, the following video will give you an overview the major changes to the interface design and new feature sets.

The Gradebook in Bb Learn is now the Grade Center. Click the image to launch the video.

John and Rebecca, from the Learning and Development Team, spent the week at UMass Online in Shrewsbury, MA  learning the ins and outs of system administration of the new Bb platform. We were very pleased to see how nicely Bb Learn handles Bb Vista Learning Modules as well as preserving much of content that you may already have in your courses.

One feature set that presents a major change from  Bb Vista is Assessments. In the new Bb Learn, Assessments are now known as Tests, and provide a series of new features and functionality. At the same time, when we migrate your existing Bb Vista courses to the new Learn system, you will need to take some time to check your Tests (Assessments) to ensure they are configured correctly for the new system.

To help you with this, L & D will be working on creating our own series of Bb Learn Test videos and documentation for the WIT community, in addition to providing hands-on workshops during May-August.  Until these are available we invite you to view the following video from Barry University to get the basic overview of what to expect when setting up and deploying tests in the new system.

Overview of Creating and Deploying a Test (Assessment) in Bb Learn