Brightspace Blog
Migration Update – January 30th
Jan. 30, 2015—The migration from OAK to Blackboard managed hosting is now complete. Most courses from Fall 2013 to present are now available in Blackboard, as are all organizations. We have only a few remaining issues to resolve: Very Large Courses: OAK courses over 4GB in size cannot be automatically migrated to Blackboard. If you are an...
Migration Update – January 16th
Jan. 16, 2015—The migration from OAK to Blackboard managed hosting is nearly complete. Most courses from Fall 2013 to present are now available in Blackboard, as are all organizations. Following is a list of outstanding issues resulting from the migration: Large Courses: OAK courses over 1GB in size are currently being migrated to Blackboard. This batch of...
Welcome to Blackboard – January 2nd Update
Jan. 2, 2015—Faculty, students, and staff will notice a few changes when they log in to OAK. Vanderbilt has migrated its course management system, powered by Blackboard but known locally as OAK (Online Access to Knowledge), from Vanderbilt servers to Blackboard servers as part of an effort to improve performance and reliability. Important Changes: We are retiring...
Welcome to Blackboard
Dec. 23, 2014—Starting today, faculty, students, and staff will notice a few changes when they log in to OAK. Vanderbilt has migrated its course management system, powered by Blackboard but known locally as OAK (Online Access to Knowledge), from Vanderbilt servers to Blackboard servers as part of an effort to improve performance and reliability. Important Changes: We...
The Center for Teaching’s New Role with Blackboard
Dec. 17, 2014—by Derek Bruff, Director, Vanderbilt Center for Teaching The Center for Teaching is taking on a significant new role in the educational technology landscape at Vanderbilt. Starting this spring, the CFT will coordinate and provide technical and pedagogical support for Blackboard, Vanderbilt’s course management system, known locally as OAK. Also, in conjunction with Vice Provost...
Blackboard unavailable Dec. 21-22 as courses are migrated to new environment
Dec. 16, 2014—As part of an effort to improve performance and reliability, Vanderbilt’s OAK course management system, powered by Blackboard, is in the process of migrating from Vanderbilt servers to Blackboard servers. The system will be unavailable Dec. 21-22 as part of this migration, and access to some courses will be limited in December. Many courses have...
OAK’s Transition to Blackboard – Letter to Faculty
Nov. 21, 2014—Dear faculty colleagues: As we migrate OAK course materials from their current (still-problematic) on-campus existence to the new hosted Blackboard environment, there will be periods of black-out where you will not be able to access your course materials. We have staggered this work to minimize down time. Schedule November 10 – Migration began for Fall...
Scheduled Maintenance – Sunday, November 9, 6-11am
Nov. 7, 2014—OAK will be unavailable Sunday, November 9th, between 6am and 11am for scheduled maintenance. (Many Vanderbilt systems will be unavailable during this window because of necessary database updates by VUIT.)
Managed Hosting Transition Schedule
Oct. 31, 2014—Over the next two months, Vanderbilt’s OAK course management system, powered by Blackboard, will move from Vanderbilt servers to Blackboard servers. This transition to what’s called “managed hosting” will improve performance and reliability and make available new tools for instructors. These tools include Kaltura, a tool for sharing and managing multimedia files, and a content...
Course Size Strategy
Oct. 28, 2014—Earlier this year, the OAK Steering Committee approved a decision to transition OAK to what’s called “managed hosting.” OAK is powered by the course management system Blackboard. We have run Blackboard on Vanderbilt web servers since the system was adopted about a decade ago. This winter, OAK will be moving to Blackboard servers, a move...
Course Reactivation Requests
Oct. 17, 2014—Earlier this month, most courses prior to Fall 2013 (over 40,000 courses in all), were made inactive as part of an effort to improve OAK’s performance. Faculty who need access to an old course can email oak@vanderbilt.edu and provide the following details: subject area and course number, semester, and instructor name. You can consolidate requests...
New Guide to Course Management Tools
Sep. 29, 2014—by Derek Bruff, Director, Center for Teaching, cross-posted from the CFT blog As Vanderbilt faculty, staff, and students have learned this fall, Vanderbilt’s course management system, OAK (powered by Blackboard), is currently experiencing significant delays. While the OAK team at VUIT continues working to fix these problems, instructors who find OAK’s slow performance to be...
Regularly Scheduled Down Time: Sunday, Nov 17 6AM-10AM
Oct. 24, 2013—OAK will be down Sunday, November 17 from 6AM to 10AM for maintenance. We do not expect the outage to last the entire four hours. Please visit the main OAK website for maintenance updates, OAK availability, and regularly scheduled maintenance dates. Note about Regularly Scheduled Maintenance: Though we like to have our servers up 24/7,...
October Maintenance Date Moved Forward to Sunday, Oct 13 6AM – 10AM
Oct. 11, 2013—OAK will be down Sunday, October 13 between the hours 6AM and 10AM for routine maintenance. We do not expect the outage to last the entire four hours. Please visit the main OAK website for maintenance updates, OAK availability, and regularly scheduled maintenance dates. Students will notice that all their courses (both available and unavailable)...
Course Instructors: Have you tried the new Inline Assignment Grading feature?
Jun. 14, 2013—With the recent OAK upgrade, course instructors can now grade student assignments “inline.” What does that mean? Instead of downloading files, editing them in MS Word and uploading them back in OAK, or printing them out and grading them manually, you can now view and grade the assignments instead your browser. The available tools are...