{"id":497,"date":"2014-11-21T07:23:36","date_gmt":"2014-11-21T12:23:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/oak\/?p=497"},"modified":"2014-11-21T07:23:36","modified_gmt":"2014-11-21T12:23:36","slug":"blackboard-faculty-letter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/brightspace\/2014\/11\/21\/blackboard-faculty-letter\/","title":{"rendered":"OAK&#8217;s Transition to Blackboard &#8211; Letter to Faculty"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cdn.vanderbilt.edu\/vu-wpfsx\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/133\/2011\/05\/announcement.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-170 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.vanderbilt.edu\/vu-wpfsx\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/133\/2011\/05\/announcement.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a>Dear faculty colleagues:<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>We have staggered this work to minimize down time.<\/p>\n<p><em>Schedule<\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>November 10 \u2013 Migration began for Fall 2013 courses.<\/li>\n<li>November 17 \u2013 Migration began for Spring 2014 courses.<\/li>\n<li>December 1 \u2013 Migration begins for Summer 2014 courses, as well as \u201corganizations\u201d and other non-courses on OAK.<\/li>\n<li>December 15 \u2013 Migration begins for Spring 2015 courses.<\/li>\n<li>December 21 \u2013 Migration begins for Fall 2014 courses and for any course that has been \u201creactivated\u201d by faculty member request.<\/li>\n<li><strong>December 21-22 \u2013 OAK\/Blackboard completely unavailable.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>December 23 \u2013 Spring 2015 courses available on Blackboard managed hosting, along with older (pre-Fall 2014) courses.<\/li>\n<li>December 29 \u2013 Fall 2014 courses available on Blackboard managed hosting.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This is, as you can see, a complex process, and there are several ways in which this may impact your work.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">Spring 2015 courses<\/span>: this is relatively good news.\u00a0 Any work you do now (and up through Dec 14<sup>th<\/sup>) on your Spring 2015 courses will be ported over into the new system and ready to work with on Dec 23<sup>th<\/sup>.\u00a0 Alternatively, you can wait and build your courses in the new hosted environment starting on Dec 23<sup>th<\/sup>.\u00a0 Either way, the only days that these courses should be unavailable are Dec 15-22.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">Fall 2014 courses<\/span>: this has some red flags.\u00a0 Everything you do up until Dec 20<sup>th<\/sup> will carry over and be available on or before Dec 29th.\u00a0 However, during the transition for these courses (Dec 21-28), all materials, including the OAK gradebook, will be unavailable.\u00a0 This will affect those faculty whose grades are due in January.\u00a0 This will also affect students with incompletes, or other students who have study needs.\u00a0 (Also, given the impact of course size on the transition process, some e-reserves are being removed a bit early this year so they don\u2019t get ported over \u2013 if that is a problem for you, please contact your e-reserve coordinator.)<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">Reactivated courses<\/span> \u2013 ones that you had to request earlier this semester \u2013 these will be bundled in with Fall 2014 courses.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">Fall 2013, Spring 2014, and Summer 2014 courses, plus organizations and non-traditional courses<\/span>: Some notable constraints.\u00a0 These are being migrated in batches during November and early December as noted above.\u00a0 Once they have been shifted to the new environment, they will be in a kind of limbo.\u00a0 You may, if needed, request reactivation (through <a href=\"mailto:oak@vanderbilt.edu\">oak@vanderbilt.edu<\/a>) in order to copy the content, but <strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">any work you do directly within these earlier courses will not be reflected in the January copy of the course<\/span><\/strong>.\u00a0 This makes these courses different from those of the current academic year!\u00a0 (You can, however, reactivate an older course and copy its materials into a Spring 2015 course prior to Dec 15 \u2013 and the Spring 2015 copy would migrate over into the new environment.)<\/p>\n<p>For those of you overseeing incompletes, there are several challenges.\u00a0 Once a course has been inactivated to migrate it to the hosted Blackboard environment, students will not have access to the course materials unless you make it live.\u00a0 If you do make it live and the students submit things through OAK, those copies would only be temporary and would drop away in December.\u00a0 Similarly, if you make a change to an older gradebook in a course that has been reactivated, you will need to keep a paper copy because those grades won\u2019t roll forward.<\/p>\n<p>For those with non-traditional course schedules in which students might need to consult things during Dec 21-22, we recommend a conversation with the Center for Teaching or with your local DTS guru, who can help you find alternatives for hosting materials.<\/p>\n<p>If you have any questions about this process, please email <a href=\"mailto:oak@vanderbilt.edu\">oak@vanderbilt.edu<\/a>.\u00a0 You are also welcome to read the minutes of meetings of the faculty advisory council that is helping to guide this transitional process; they are found at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/oak\/oak-fac.php\">http:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/oak\/oak-fac.php<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Thank you for your patience and understanding.\u00a0 Our goal is a stable and functional Blackboard environment, and our experience with Nursing earlier this semester suggests strongly that this transition will benefit campus in the long run.<\/p>\n<p>Yours,<\/p>\n<p>Derek Bruff, Director, Center for Teaching<\/p>\n<p>Cynthia Cyrus, Vice Provost for Learning and Residential Affairs<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 \u2013 Migration began for Fall [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10847,"featured_media":170,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","ACF":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/brightspace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/brightspace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/brightspace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/brightspace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10847"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/brightspace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/brightspace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/brightspace\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/brightspace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/brightspace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/brightspace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}