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Brightspace Launched as Vanderbilt’s New Course Management System
Apr. 17, 2017—The Center for Teaching is excited to announce that Brightspace is now available for instructors planning their summer and fall courses. Brightspace will replace Blackboard as Vanderbilt’s course management system starting this summer. The new platform has a modern, responsive design and a number of features that faculty and students will find useful, including drag-and-drop...
New Course Availability and Deletion Policy To Be Implemented May 2016
Apr. 5, 2016—The Center for Teaching, as the administrative home for Blackboard, is announcing a new Course Availability and Deletion Policy for Blackboard. This policy, recommended by Vanderbilt’s Blackboard implementation team and approved by the Blackboard Faculty Advisory Committee, is intended to reduce the amount of storage space Vanderbilt purchases annually from Blackboard, while also allowing most...
Campus encouraged to participate in Blackboard feedback survey
Mar. 30, 2016—The CFT, as the administrative home for Blackboard, Vanderbilt’s primary course management system, is conducting an assessment in March to determine the extent to which Blackboard is meeting the needs of campus users. Results of this needs assessment will inform Vanderbilt’s decision to renew its contract with Blackboard, set to expire in 2017, or to...
Fall Blackboard News: New Features, New Support
Aug. 16, 2015—As the new administrative home for Blackboard, the Center for Teaching (CFT) is excited to announce a number of developments for Vanderbilt’s primary course management system, all part of Vanderbilt’s strategic investment in the use of technology to support student learning. New Features A number of platform upgrades were rolled out this summer providing new...
Profile Photos Now Available in Blackboard
Aug. 15, 2015—We’re happy to announce that Profile Photos (also known as “avatars”) are now available within Blackboard. Instructors and students can upload a photo to their Blackboard account by following the steps outlined in the Profile Photo guide. Photos will be visible in all of your Blackboard interactions across all of your courses. This tool is a...
Drop-In Support Sessions at the CFT
Aug. 14, 2015—The CFT has added a new way to access Blackboard support at Vanderbilt. During our drop-in hours, faculty and staff who have Blackboard-related questions can stop by the library area of the CFT (even without an appointment) and find a team of specialists ready to assist. We can get you up to speed with Blackboard’s...
Blackboard Downtime and Update, June 6-7
May. 29, 2015—On June 6-7, Blackboard will be updated to a more recent version of the system. This update will provide several feature enhancements, but the user interface will be largely unchanged. We are updating from the October 2012 Blackboard release to the April 2014 release. See below for a list of new and enhanced features. Please...
Rubrics Now Available in Blackboard
May. 1, 2015—We’re happy to announce that the Rubrics course tool is now available within Blackboard to instructors. The tool is available by default in new courses. For existing courses, instructors can turn on the tool from the Customization > Tool Availability menu. This tool has been requested by many instructors in recent years. Read on for...
Friday, March 13th Email Outage
Mar. 16, 2015—On Friday, March 13th, Blackboard experienced a problem sending emails. Due to an issue in the data center hosting Vanderbilt’s Blackboard installation, emails sent through Blackboard between 8:20 am and 12:10 pm were, unfortunately, not delivered. That includes emails sent to students during this time. The problem has been resolved and email functionality has been...
Guide to the Kaltura Streaming Media Tool
Feb. 5, 2015—During the recent migration from OAK to Blackboard managed hosting, we very intentionally maintained the version of Blackboard we were using. This summer, we’ll upgrade to a newer version, but over winter break, our goal was improved performance, not new features. However, we did add one new tool to Blackboard during the migration: Kaltura, a...