Brightspace Blog
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...
OAK Element: TurningPoint Upgrade to TurningPoint 5
May. 16, 2013—TurningPoint, the student response system (clickers) used at Vanderbilt, will be upgraded Thursday, May 16 at 6:00 AM. NO OUTAGE IS REQUIRED. However, instructors will need to download the new TurningPoint client (instructions below). The new version, TurningPoint 5.2.0, is compatible with Office 2013. Students may need to verify that their devices are registered in...
May Outage Scheduled to include Maintenance and Upgrade
May. 6, 2013— OAK will be down Sunday and Monday, May 12-13 (available again by 8AM Tuesday, May 14) for routine maintenance and a software upgrade. The upgrade from Blackboard 9.1 Service Pack 8 to Blackboard 9.1 Service Pack 11 will consist of several new features and bug fixes, including copy/paste from Word, a new interactive Calendar tool, and...
CANCELLED: Regularly Scheduled Down Time Sunday, April 21
Apr. 1, 2013—04.01.13 OAK will NOT be down Sunday, April 21 for maintenance. 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, there are times when we need to take them down to perform regular maintenance....
Regularly Scheduled Down Time: Sunday, January 20, 6AM-10AM
Jan. 15, 2013—OAK will be down Sunday, January 20 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,...
Unused/Empty Courses to be Removed from OAK (Spring 2007 – Spring 2012 ONLY)
Dec. 4, 2012—In our ongoing effort to improve the OAK user experience, OAK Support is removing all courses setup prior to May 2012 that have NO CONTENT OF ANY KIND in them and NO ENTRIES in the Grade Center. This includes courses for Spring 2007 through Spring 2012 that were never used. (Courses for Summer 2012 and...