January Downtime[CANCELED] - Moved to March 10-14th

In order to facilitate a smooth transition with our server room makeover, we have postponed the Blackboard hardware changeover until March 10-14th, the week of Spring Break. Part of this change will also allow for us to have Blackboard down for less time, so you won't be Blackboard-less for an entire week.

Keep in mind that we are already better off than we were for the bulk of last semester in that we have two application servers balancing the load of students, faculty and staff accessing Blackboard.

We appreciate your patience and understanding as we work toward providing the infrastructure that will make your computing experience at SHSU a pleasant one.

Spring Cleaning - Gearing up your Bb courses for Spring 2008

Wow! Just like that we are near the end of another great semester. Now is a great time to get a head start on your Blackboard spring cleaning. These are a few things that you can do to make for a smooth transition come next semester:

• Roll It Over Beethoven - if you are teaching the same class next semester, why not copy the course materials from your Fall course into the Spring course of the same name? Follow our instructions to learn how.
• Take a Trip to the Archives - You may not be teaching some of your Blackboard courses for another year or so. Save yourself hours of typing and searching for old course material by archiving your course to use at a later date. Follow our instructions to learn how.
  
• A Winning Combination - Tired of inputting data for three sections of the same course? Go ahead and have your courses combined into one section inside Blackboard. For those teaching a MTH/STA or MIS/MGT combo course you can even combine those sections. E-mail the Blackboard Team with your Spring 2008 course combination requests.
  
  NOTE: Be sure to get your courses combined before you start inputing material or recording grades.
  
  
• Do some Time Traveling - Make sure your copied courses have been date corrected. If your courses have assignments and exams that were only available during specific dates in the Fall semester be sure to modify them with the appropriate dates for the Spring semester.
• Expand your Horizons - Add a new wrinkle to your upcoming semester's courses. Haven't used the Wiki, Adaptive Release or Podcasting? Contact the Blackboard Team and we will show you how you can add a new feature to your course.
  

Blackboard Update

Blackboard is up and the good news is that you can go directly to the login page without that annoying SSL error. Thank you for your patience in dealing with the extra click when attempting to log into BB. Many thanks go to our Systems folks who worked tirelessly to ensure we fixed this problem.