Better Blackboard Help: Where your users need it, when they want it.Matthew Deeprose
It has never been more important to provide localised, central, relevant, and up to date support and messaging within our Blackboard environments. This presentation is a practical guide to how you can use freely available tools to provide contextual, just in time support sign-posting staff and students to local support resources from within Blackboard Learn (original experience).
As Blackboard administrators, learning designers, technologists, programme leads, and support staff, we often wish we could be alongside our users to say, “well in these circumstances we recommend using the feature in this way”, or “you could use that tool, but there’s a much more effective tool over there”, right when the intervention would be most relevant and timely. In current times we may also wish to highlight newly provisioned services and tools such as Blackboard Collaborate.
Blackboard allows us to customise the language pack, but have you noticed that most users will just skim past plain text and get straight into clicking and submitting? Even when a user follows a help link, they may reach a generic help page rather than the bespoke institution-specific guidance that has been carefully curated to provide the most appropriate help, contextualised for an institution's Managed Learning Environment?
In this session I will demonstrate a new approach for the Original Blackboard Learn Experience to provide proactive assistance to staff and students at the right time and in the right place. At the University of Southampton, this method resulted in significantly higher engagement with institutional support resources and has the potential to reduce support calls and encourage better Blackboard usage.
I will show you how you can recreate this approach using free and open-source software. By the end of the session you will be eager to get back to work and start implementing the techniques I will show you.
Blackboard Masterclass #1 for Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Southampton. In this presentation we cover some features of Blackboard that may not have been heavily used previously within the Faculy of Health Sciences.
The practical bluffer's guide to blackboard theme accessibilityMatthew Deeprose
Presented at Bb World 2020. With the rapid move to online teaching in the current climate of COVID-19, ensuring equitable access to our learning environment has never been more important.
When we customise the Blackboard theme (original experience) to align it with our institutional colours, we must consider accessibility. Based on my own experience at the University of Southampton (in the UK) I will share practical lessons and recommendations, of how to ensure your theme customisation complies with web content accessibility guidelines.
Making it simple to ensure the use of colour is both on brand and accessibleMatthew Deeprose
With more than two million people in the UK living with a visual impairment and many more having difficulties with their sight, it is crucial that, when we create content, we make accessible colour choices.
I will explain the importance of considering contrast when we use colour and share my own journey and lessons that resulted in the development of a method to make it simpler and easier to help my colleagues make accessible colour choices.
If time allows I will demonstrate further real-world examples and solutions that you can replicate at your own institution.
Web 2.0, also known as the Read & Write Web, contains a full menu of amazing applications that we can use in our libraries and classrooms. Come and dine on a smorgasbord of free resources available on the web.
Better Blackboard Help: Where your users need it, when they want it.Matthew Deeprose
It has never been more important to provide localised, central, relevant, and up to date support and messaging within our Blackboard environments. This presentation is a practical guide to how you can use freely available tools to provide contextual, just in time support sign-posting staff and students to local support resources from within Blackboard Learn (original experience).
As Blackboard administrators, learning designers, technologists, programme leads, and support staff, we often wish we could be alongside our users to say, “well in these circumstances we recommend using the feature in this way”, or “you could use that tool, but there’s a much more effective tool over there”, right when the intervention would be most relevant and timely. In current times we may also wish to highlight newly provisioned services and tools such as Blackboard Collaborate.
Blackboard allows us to customise the language pack, but have you noticed that most users will just skim past plain text and get straight into clicking and submitting? Even when a user follows a help link, they may reach a generic help page rather than the bespoke institution-specific guidance that has been carefully curated to provide the most appropriate help, contextualised for an institution's Managed Learning Environment?
In this session I will demonstrate a new approach for the Original Blackboard Learn Experience to provide proactive assistance to staff and students at the right time and in the right place. At the University of Southampton, this method resulted in significantly higher engagement with institutional support resources and has the potential to reduce support calls and encourage better Blackboard usage.
I will show you how you can recreate this approach using free and open-source software. By the end of the session you will be eager to get back to work and start implementing the techniques I will show you.
Blackboard Masterclass #1 for Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Southampton. In this presentation we cover some features of Blackboard that may not have been heavily used previously within the Faculy of Health Sciences.
The practical bluffer's guide to blackboard theme accessibilityMatthew Deeprose
Presented at Bb World 2020. With the rapid move to online teaching in the current climate of COVID-19, ensuring equitable access to our learning environment has never been more important.
When we customise the Blackboard theme (original experience) to align it with our institutional colours, we must consider accessibility. Based on my own experience at the University of Southampton (in the UK) I will share practical lessons and recommendations, of how to ensure your theme customisation complies with web content accessibility guidelines.
Making it simple to ensure the use of colour is both on brand and accessibleMatthew Deeprose
With more than two million people in the UK living with a visual impairment and many more having difficulties with their sight, it is crucial that, when we create content, we make accessible colour choices.
I will explain the importance of considering contrast when we use colour and share my own journey and lessons that resulted in the development of a method to make it simpler and easier to help my colleagues make accessible colour choices.
If time allows I will demonstrate further real-world examples and solutions that you can replicate at your own institution.
Web 2.0, also known as the Read & Write Web, contains a full menu of amazing applications that we can use in our libraries and classrooms. Come and dine on a smorgasbord of free resources available on the web.
How to ensure accessible use of color in learning resources and materials ali...Matthew Deeprose
Is it possible to be both on brand and accessible? WCAG guides us on making our color choices accessible. We will demonstrate a simple and repeatable solution to share with your colleagues. Our innovative matrix concept will help YOU to determine accessible color combinations within your institutional brand palette.
Many students, such as those who are color blind, may not self-identify as having a disability. Poor use of color in online courses can have a detrimental impact on certain groups of students, including those who are color blind or have a visual impairment. Likewise, most people find vibrating color combinations difficult to read. Appropriate use of color (especially when used to distinguish and organize your content) can benefit everyone and reduce the 'burden' of ‘reasonable adjustments’. However, we design our learning materials, we should ensure that when we use color we do so accessibly.
A constraint that many practitioners must work within is their education institution’s brand color palette, which may not have been chosen with accessibility in mind.
We will share a simple and easy to use approach that can help you use colors accessibly while remaining congruent and consistent with your institution's color scheme.
In our recent webinar hosted by Mike Current, a member of the Hyland Upgrade Council, and Mark Hamilton, DataBank's Infrastructure Engineer, we expanded on how upgrading OnBase offers the ability to not only gain enhancements and fixes, but also radically improve the security, stability and architecture of your entire OnBase environment.
In this presentation you will...
1. Learn the formula for upgrade success with actionable items to work through right away
2. Understand the team needed to get the job done and how DataBank can step in to help
3. The importance of establishing a test environment and more
You can also watch the full webinar here: http://info.databankimx.com/Upgrade-Webinar-RCD.html
Download the Hyland 3rd Part Compatibility Matrix from slide #25 here: http://info.databankimx.com/rs/167-SSD-475/images/Third%20Party%20Product%20Compatibility%20Matrix.pdf
How to ensure accessible use of color in learning resources and materials ali...Matthew Deeprose
Is it possible to be both on brand and accessible? WCAG guides us on making our color choices accessible. We will demonstrate a simple and repeatable solution to share with your colleagues. Our innovative matrix concept will help YOU to determine accessible color combinations within your institutional brand palette.
Many students, such as those who are color blind, may not self-identify as having a disability. Poor use of color in online courses can have a detrimental impact on certain groups of students, including those who are color blind or have a visual impairment. Likewise, most people find vibrating color combinations difficult to read. Appropriate use of color (especially when used to distinguish and organize your content) can benefit everyone and reduce the 'burden' of ‘reasonable adjustments’. However, we design our learning materials, we should ensure that when we use color we do so accessibly.
A constraint that many practitioners must work within is their education institution’s brand color palette, which may not have been chosen with accessibility in mind.
We will share a simple and easy to use approach that can help you use colors accessibly while remaining congruent and consistent with your institution's color scheme.
In our recent webinar hosted by Mike Current, a member of the Hyland Upgrade Council, and Mark Hamilton, DataBank's Infrastructure Engineer, we expanded on how upgrading OnBase offers the ability to not only gain enhancements and fixes, but also radically improve the security, stability and architecture of your entire OnBase environment.
In this presentation you will...
1. Learn the formula for upgrade success with actionable items to work through right away
2. Understand the team needed to get the job done and how DataBank can step in to help
3. The importance of establishing a test environment and more
You can also watch the full webinar here: http://info.databankimx.com/Upgrade-Webinar-RCD.html
Download the Hyland 3rd Part Compatibility Matrix from slide #25 here: http://info.databankimx.com/rs/167-SSD-475/images/Third%20Party%20Product%20Compatibility%20Matrix.pdf
SP Fest Denver - O365 Governance: One Area Cloud May Not Be SimplerStacy Deere
Random things we all typically hear when it comes to Governance…
• Not on top of the list right now
• Not in the budget
• We’ll get to it later
• Not really seeing the need…
I have yet to hear 1 valid reason as to why Governance should not be completed, maintained, or approved in budgets. Governance really is not an option in any organization if you want your processes and procedures followed by employees. Each time I have been involved in a project where governance was put on the back burner there have been issues with not knowing what other departments processes were, building themselves into a corner, not meeting service level agreements, and the list goes on and on. If there is no one source of truth in how all the functions of the business run, how are you ever going to build a solid foundation and keep it running at the level it needs to run so that your organization can be successful? In this session we will review what governance is, how it can be useful, how you can get started, maintain it, and most importantly how to get it approved!
Modernize Solutions with SharePoint & the Power PlatformJonathan Schultz
Modernize common HR, IT and other functional processes with SharePoint and the Power Platform (PowerApps, Flow and Power BI).
- Re-think SharePoint portals
- Migrate forms (static & InfoPath) to mobile apps
- Leverage interactive dashboards to make data-based decisions
As we all know, more and more organizations are starting to question “Do we or do we not implement Office 365?”. However, as these discussions are taking place; governance is rarely addressed or considered. The main reason is that the majority believe that once they have implemented governance that they are done; unless there is an update such as a server name change or an employee change (such as a departure or addition). During the initial planning around governance it is likely that there were discussions around auditing of the governance document and potential quarterly reviews to ensure that the document is up to date and still fits the business. However, it is common to forget that after that fact; even though it is documented “within the governance document”.
Governance becomes even more important with Office 365 just because its cloud based and ever changing with new and deprecated features on a pretty regular basis. This means all of the content, backup, recovery, etc. are all handled by Microsoft and you have virtually no control over it (Can you say MAJOR SLA impact?). In this session we will review the areas of concern and how they can be addressed within the governance document, the importance of reviewing the document frequently; and ways to make the information available to your internal SharePoint Community. In addition, we will review the features of Office 365 that will have a major impact on SharePoint and Office Apps. We will review each of these applications and the areas of importance that should be addressed in the governance document, as well as why each of them are important.
SPC.Org - Upgrading to SharePoint 2013Bert Johnson
“It will take too long.” “It will cost too much.” “Our users aren’t prepared for change.”
SharePoint upgrades seem scary, but there’s no need to panic. With the right planning, we can upgrade to the latest version more quickly, with less cost, and in a more user-friendly way than ever before. This session will provide practical steps for preparing, performing, troubleshooting, and evaluating your upgrade to SharePoint 2013. We’ll highlight common challenges and solutions for upgrades, both from an IT and business perspective.
Upgrade or Rebuild: The World Steel Associations Upgrade to Magnolia 4.5Magnolia
Remmer Stipdonk and Edgar Vonk showcase the success story of Worldsteel's Magnolia Integration, as well as their complex migration from Magnolia 4.3 to 4.5.
Reflections on a Year with Plone: Harvard School of Engineering and Applied S...Jazkarta, Inc.
Eliza Grinnell and Lesley Lam from Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences discussion their experiences with Plone at a university, including the planning, implementation and launch of a public site, intranet and faculty websites.
Industry expert Bob Aiello and DBmaestro’s CTO Yaniv Yehuda joined forces in this powerful webcast to explain what DevOps is all about, and why the database is such a critical component of it.
Case Study - LifeSource's New Pulse Using Yammer for Communication and Collab...Trevor Huinker
In 2014 LifeSource migrated their portal from SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint Online and Yammer. With the migration came the decision to make the switch to utilizing Yammer as the dedicated solution for enterprise social communication and collaboration to better engage a geographically dispersed team. Yammer provides a platform for engagement and connection so that team members can work together more effectively to fulfill the organization’s life-saving mission. In this presentation we explore the following:
• Challenges and issues faced with the previous portal
• Alignment of business needs to new solution
• Design, vision and plan for using Yammer alongside SharePoint Online
• Training, deployment, governance and user adoption
Altus Alliance 2016 - How to Plan a Pain-Free UpgradeSparkrock
Presentation by Diana Budreau on February 5th, 2016.
With the fast innovative pace of today’s technology, you are likely to upgrade you Altus Dynamics solution every 2 to 3 years. View this presentation to determine the right timing, the right plan for going forward, and what upgrade option will work best for your organization. Both the Evergreen upgrade plan and the traditional upgrade method will be covered.
Start with passing tests (tdd for bugs) v0.5 (22 sep 2016)Dinis Cruz
"Turning TDD upside down - For bugs, always start with a passing test" - Common workflow on TDD is to write failed tests. The problem with this approach is that it only works for a very specific scenario (when fixing bugs). This presentation will present a different workflow which will make the coding and testing of those tests much easier, faster, simpler, secure and thorough'
Presented at LSCC (London Software Craftsmanship Community) http://www.meetup.com/london-software-craftsmanship on sep 2016.
The impact that high quality mark-up can have on accessibility, performance, ...Matthew Deeprose
Video, files, transcript, and links available at: https://matthewdeeprose.github.io/high_quality-markup_impact.html
Synopsis
Going beyond accessibility checklists, you may quickly get bogged down with technical details and acronyms that you feel you may never understand. In this fast-paced 30-minute presentation I use worked examples, with screen reader demonstrations, to cover topics including:
-semantic landmarks
-using ARIA attributes to improve the screen reader experience
respecting motion and colour preference
-dark and light themes
-the new contrast measurement in WCAG 3
-and more.
My hope is that by the end of this presentation you feel more informed and ready to dive deeper into web accessibility.
Sustaining accessibility efforts through accessibility-related appraisal obje...Matthew Deeprose
Video, transcript, files, and links available at: https://matthewdeeprose.github.io/objectives.html
Synopsis
How can IT departments sustain their accessibility efforts? While there are vital procedural and technical answers we should also consider the importance of cultural change. In this presentation, Tamsyn Smith and Matthew Deeprose will discuss early work on embedding accessibility within appraisal objectives.
Video, transcript, files, and links at: https://matthewdeeprose.github.io/powerBI.html
Synopsis
What can we do to make our Power BI reports more accessible? In this 20 minute presentation I explain the four principles of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and how they relate to the creation of Power BI reports.
Recent experiences have demonstrated that University staff and students expect to use online resources with a variety of devices, making full use of accessibility features such as reflow, captions, and text-to-speech.
Such features benefit everyone, but especially the increasing proportion of university students who self-report a disability.
University Information Technology departments know they must commit to accessibility; indeed, they have a legal obligation to do so, but how can they take this ambition and embed accessibility within their policies and processes?
In this presentation, we will share:
approaches to building a digital accessibility policy for university IT departments.
techniques for embedding accessibility within IT development processes by ‘shifting left’.
examples from within the Higher Education and wider IT sectors.
Digital diligence: guidance on using 'unsupported' toolsMatthew Deeprose
Presented during the Future Teacher "Getting savvy with online tools" webinar. This covers our work on dealing with use of tools that are not centrally supported but that academic staff wish to use with their students.
Introduction to Keyboard Navigation and AccessibilityMatthew Deeprose
What are the accessibility principles of Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust? Why is keyboard navigation so important within accessibility?
The Bluffer’s Guide to Blackboard Theme AccessibilityMatthew Deeprose
With the rapid move to online teaching, ensuring equitable access to our learning environment has never been more important. Recent legislation has brought an accessibility requirement for public sector organisations such as Universities. How can we ensure that our Blackboard environment reflects our institutional brand whilst following accessibility guidelines?
Customising the Blackboard Responsive theme for the Learn Original Experience continues to be a hot topic on the Blackboard Community site. We customise the theme both to improve the user experience, and to brand our environment with our institutional colours.
In this session I will put recent legislative and regulatory changes that relate to accessibility into a global context and explain how they impact University platforms such as Blackboard.
Using examples and developments from my own experience at the University of Southampton, I will provide practical advice and tips on what we should be doing when we customise our Blackboard theme. We all want our Blackboard environments to look great and appear congruent when viewed alongside our other institutional platforms. We also want to ensure changes we make are inclusive to our whole user community.
I will demonstrate how you may check the accessibility of your own custom Blackboard theme and illustrate the application of a number of the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines to Blackboard theme customisation. I will also discuss how the work we do in this area can inform the accessibility statements we are required to create for our Virtual Learning Environment.
This presentation was used as part of the Digital Learning Connects webinar about Blackboard discussion boards. Half way through the presentation I went into a live demo, which you cannot of course see here. I'm sharing the slides more widely in case they are of use.
This presentation was to the Blackboard Mobile and Collaborate Usergroup at the Durham 2020 Blackboard Conference.
The presentation covers the recent UK accessibility regulations in their global context and provides some examples of customising Blackboard to meet those regulations whilst aligning to an institutional brand.
Blended Learning Features within the Blackboard VLEMatthew Deeprose
We were asked to give a presentation outlining tools that may help the delivery of a new blended learning programme. These are the slides that went with our presenation.
Blackboard, Printing, Lecture Consoles for Presessional InstructorsMatthew Deeprose
A presentation delivered to instructors of pre-sessional students at the University of Southampton. This presentation covers the Blackboard VLE, printing and scanning, and using the lecture bench consoles.
Blackboard Masterclass #2 for University of Southampton Faculty of Heath Scie...Matthew Deeprose
The slides from our presentation "Blackboard Masterclass #2" delivered on 17 July 2014 to the Faculty of Health Sciences. In this presentation we focussed on some of the key new features in the newly upgraded Blackboard VLE at the University of Southampton.
Synthetic Fiber Construction in lab .pptxPavel ( NSTU)
Synthetic fiber production is a fascinating and complex field that blends chemistry, engineering, and environmental science. By understanding these aspects, students can gain a comprehensive view of synthetic fiber production, its impact on society and the environment, and the potential for future innovations. Synthetic fibers play a crucial role in modern society, impacting various aspects of daily life, industry, and the environment. ynthetic fibers are integral to modern life, offering a range of benefits from cost-effectiveness and versatility to innovative applications and performance characteristics. While they pose environmental challenges, ongoing research and development aim to create more sustainable and eco-friendly alternatives. Understanding the importance of synthetic fibers helps in appreciating their role in the economy, industry, and daily life, while also emphasizing the need for sustainable practices and innovation.
A Strategic Approach: GenAI in EducationPeter Windle
Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies such as Generative AI, Image Generators and Large Language Models have had a dramatic impact on teaching, learning and assessment over the past 18 months. The most immediate threat AI posed was to Academic Integrity with Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) focusing their efforts on combating the use of GenAI in assessment. Guidelines were developed for staff and students, policies put in place too. Innovative educators have forged paths in the use of Generative AI for teaching, learning and assessments leading to pockets of transformation springing up across HEIs, often with little or no top-down guidance, support or direction.
This Gasta posits a strategic approach to integrating AI into HEIs to prepare staff, students and the curriculum for an evolving world and workplace. We will highlight the advantages of working with these technologies beyond the realm of teaching, learning and assessment by considering prompt engineering skills, industry impact, curriculum changes, and the need for staff upskilling. In contrast, not engaging strategically with Generative AI poses risks, including falling behind peers, missed opportunities and failing to ensure our graduates remain employable. The rapid evolution of AI technologies necessitates a proactive and strategic approach if we are to remain relevant.
Introduction to AI for Nonprofits with Tapp NetworkTechSoup
Dive into the world of AI! Experts Jon Hill and Tareq Monaur will guide you through AI's role in enhancing nonprofit websites and basic marketing strategies, making it easy to understand and apply.
Model Attribute Check Company Auto PropertyCeline George
In Odoo, the multi-company feature allows you to manage multiple companies within a single Odoo database instance. Each company can have its own configurations while still sharing common resources such as products, customers, and suppliers.
The French Revolution, which began in 1789, was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France. It marked the decline of absolute monarchies, the rise of secular and democratic republics, and the eventual rise of Napoleon Bonaparte. This revolutionary period is crucial in understanding the transition from feudalism to modernity in Europe.
For more information, visit-www.vavaclasses.com
2024.06.01 Introducing a competency framework for languag learning materials ...Sandy Millin
http://sandymillin.wordpress.com/iateflwebinar2024
Published classroom materials form the basis of syllabuses, drive teacher professional development, and have a potentially huge influence on learners, teachers and education systems. All teachers also create their own materials, whether a few sentences on a blackboard, a highly-structured fully-realised online course, or anything in between. Despite this, the knowledge and skills needed to create effective language learning materials are rarely part of teacher training, and are mostly learnt by trial and error.
Knowledge and skills frameworks, generally called competency frameworks, for ELT teachers, trainers and managers have existed for a few years now. However, until I created one for my MA dissertation, there wasn’t one drawing together what we need to know and do to be able to effectively produce language learning materials.
This webinar will introduce you to my framework, highlighting the key competencies I identified from my research. It will also show how anybody involved in language teaching (any language, not just English!), teacher training, managing schools or developing language learning materials can benefit from using the framework.
Francesca Gottschalk - How can education support child empowerment.pptxEduSkills OECD
Francesca Gottschalk from the OECD’s Centre for Educational Research and Innovation presents at the Ask an Expert Webinar: How can education support child empowerment?
Honest Reviews of Tim Han LMA Course Program.pptxtimhan337
Personal development courses are widely available today, with each one promising life-changing outcomes. Tim Han’s Life Mastery Achievers (LMA) Course has drawn a lot of interest. In addition to offering my frank assessment of Success Insider’s LMA Course, this piece examines the course’s effects via a variety of Tim Han LMA course reviews and Success Insider comments.
Macroeconomics- Movie Location
This will be used as part of your Personal Professional Portfolio once graded.
Objective:
Prepare a presentation or a paper using research, basic comparative analysis, data organization and application of economic information. You will make an informed assessment of an economic climate outside of the United States to accomplish an entertainment industry objective.
Normal Labour/ Stages of Labour/ Mechanism of LabourWasim Ak
Normal labor is also termed spontaneous labor, defined as the natural physiological process through which the fetus, placenta, and membranes are expelled from the uterus through the birth canal at term (37 to 42 weeks
2. Agenda
About upgrade club on the community site
Our practice and experiences at Southampton
Open discussion
3. Upgrade Club
• Started 2016 having been given 3 months to arrange an upgrade.
• 2016 thread had 193 replies
• 2017 thread had 349 replies
• 2018 thread has 56 replies so far
4. Upgrade Club
• Threads are full of useful tips, questions, groans of disappointment and exaltations of
success
• Members have a wide variety of backgrounds and skills
• Very positive, open, collaborative environment
5. Questions
• Have you posted in Upgrade Club?
• Are you upgrading Blackboard this year?
– To what version? 2016 Q4, 2017 Q2, 2017 Q4,
2018 Q2?
• Are you self-hosted / managed hosted / SAAS?
6. Southampton Upgrade History
• Started with Blackboard 5.0 in 2000
• 16 Major upgrades since then.
• Did you know?
– You can review your upgrade history by going to
• System admin 🡺 System configuration 🡺 System Information
7.
8.
9.
10. Southampton Bb Upgrades
• Working in a large IT department
• Prince 2, ITIL, Lean Six Sigma
• Very hierarchical and structured
• If you can imagine it - there is a board you have to go to discuss it
• Upgrades done out of hours = overtime = requires money = requires more project
documentation
12. Bb upgrade projects at Southampton
Project elements
• Project Brief
• Business Case
• Monthly Highlight
Reports and
Directorate Review
• Project Tasks for
almost every activity
(about 50 tasks for
an upgrade)
• Arrange downtime
Upgrade work
• Upgrades to new
release in devs and
preprod
• Testing
• Disaster Recovery
• Upgrades to latest
CU
• Documentation
(internal and end-
user)
Go live
• Change
Management
Approval
• Communications
• Weekend Upgrade
• Monitoring
Closure
• Lessons learned
• End project report
• Benefits realization
review
• Update service
roadmap
• Prepare for next
project
13. Questions
• Do you run Blackboard upgrades as projects / using
project management methodology?
• Do you do Blackboard upgrades out of hours?
• Is it simple to arrange budget for overtime / TOIL?
14. Working on Bb upgrades: lessons, recommendations, experiences
• A post giving an overview is at https://bit.ly/2HaDt1c (from Upgrade Cohort 2018 community area)
• Upgrade club blog: https://bit.ly/2qgL7MY
• The next slides are some of my “highlights”
15. Nothing here is “special”
• Every institution is different
• Nothing in this presentation is out of the
ordinary
• Make sure to see Jonathan Knight’s
presentation “Early Adoption and Minimal
Testing”
16. Building the business case
To get budget to pay for overtime, need a full project
business case.
This includes such items as:
Reasons to upgrade, benefits, resource requirements
and costs, risks, etc..
Business case for our 2018 Blackboard upgrade was 37
pages long
17. Business Case tips
• Reasons
• http://library.blackboard.com/docs/support/Blackboard_Learn_Support_Services_Guide.pdf
18. Business Case tips
• Benefits
• Screen grab roadmap webinars to use as evidence of benefits from new versions
19. Question
• Do you perform a benefits realisation analysis
following upgrades?
20. Implementation Plan
Start building as soon as you can.
I find using a wiki very useful. It’s quick to edit and can
be structured so that plans can be copied easily and
elements edited
Having a great plan that can be updated each year will
save time.
21. Structure of a typical upgrade plan
1. Prepare files (installer, installer properties, back up
files that installer deletes)
2. Oracle patching
3. Upgrade Blackboard
4. Review configuration changes
5. Make configuration changes
6. Pushconfigupdates
7. GUI based config and testing
8. Removal of temporary files (installer, backed up files
etc.)
22. Verification scripts
Installer will wipe your carefully set fixes,
workarounds, optimizations.
This year we started building verification scripts to
quickly identify whether settings needed to be reset
Repeat verification scripts after doing
pushconfigupdates
23. Protip – use VMware Snapshots
• We take a VMware “cold snapshot” of
our vApp after each upgrade stage.
• If something goes wrong we can restore
environment back to how it was within
15 minutes.
24. Keep up to date with issues / recommendations
From the community
• Mailing lists still have the
best info (e.g. ASU BB-
ADMIN-L)
• Community site has lots of
useful info and a good
place to ask questions
• BB World / BB TLC / User
groups / DevCon
From Blackboard
• Generate known issues
lists from support site
• Subscribe to all support
notifications
• Bb support will often give
extra help
• Build a good
relationship, complete
support surveys
From within
• Make your plans open
within your department
• Encourage feedback and
ideas
• Share lessons, build an
environment of
collaboration
26. Question
• Do you have any other tips on keeping up to date
with known issues?
27. Upgrade frustrations
• Installer will overwrite fixes Blackboard
support asked you to implement to resolve
known issues.
• Some are fixes are more than 4 years
old (e.g. 000039703, 000037634)
• So you have to implement them again.
• For settings within bb-config.properties you
can set most of these in the
installer.properties file.
28. Additional settings we are using in the installer.properties files
• bbconfig.jvm.options.extra.tomcat
• bbconfig.jvm.options.gc
• bbconfig.email.use.dmarc.from.override
• bbconfig.max.stacksize.tomcat
• bbconfig.appserver.http.compression
• bbconfig.jvm.options.codecache.reserved
• bbconfig.jvm.options.codecache.initial
• bbconfig.cs.database.maxpoolsize
• bbconfig.peer.discovery.timeout.inactive
• bbconfig.peer.discovery.timeout.dead
• bbconfig.server.backend.processor
• bbconfig.gradecenter.cache.grade_threshol
d
29. Document “fixes” separately
• Those key fixes and workarounds can get “lost”
in implementation plans.
• I found some fixes we implemented in 2014
had been lost in our 2016 upgrade because no
one was left who knew about them.
• Keeping a separate list of fixes that should be
re-applied until they are resolved centrally
should save time and ensure they are not
“lost”.
• Ours is now 17 pages long (22 fixes)
30. My “favourite” fixes so far
Installer failed for no apparent reason. Cause: random
number generator not random enough (Thanks to
Cherif Abbes /Bb for the fix)
SCORM disconnection fix (fix was to update click
jacking settings) (Thanks to Stuart Robinson and the
team at Leeds for the fix)
High CPU / Load caused by
MicrosoftDocumentParser.sh (Thanks to Chris Filkins
for the fix)
31. More Upgrade frustrations
• Upgrades that remove functionality without
replacing it
• E.g.
• Virtual classroom and chat
• Crocodoc functionality loss
• Upgrades that add functionality which is broken
• E.g. availability toggle in 2017 Q4
33. Testing
• We test core functionality and integrations.
• We accept we can’t test everything and rely on
– Bb support notifications
– Mailing List / Community site
– Amy Eyre from York for tipping us off about new
issues
• We also perform a disaster recovery exercise and
a load testing exercise.
35. Celebrating success
Celebratory fried breakfast paid out of project budget
(but not allowed to do this any longer ☹)
Ensure overtime payments / TOIL processed quickly
Arrange “thank you” email from University executive
36. Summary
Prepare
While onerous, building methodical project
documentation is helpful in the long-term and
often a requirement for funding.
Research
Get on the mailing lists, subscribe to Bb
notifications, use the community, contribute
to upgrade club ☺. Be nice to Bb support!
Upgrade
Careful documentation and verification
essential (before we do our live upgrade we
will have practiced it six times already).
Celebrate and learn
Celebrate success and note lessons and
recommendations for next time.