The Intellectual Property Office, the official government body responsible for Intellectual Property (IP) rights in the United Kingdom, has just updated its Copyright Notice regarding digital images, photographs and the internet. This excellent new guidance document helps users to understand copyright basics regarding images. It covers topics such as who owns the copyright for an image, when you require permission to use an image and the issues you need to be aware of if you wish to use images in your teaching which you may have found on the internet, taken on your camera phone or been sent by a friend or colleague. It’s an invaluable resource to make sure you stay on the right side of the law when using images.
Category Archives: Succeed
Help Blackboard improve Succeed
Blackboard, the company that makes Succeed, is openly looking for suggestions to help it improve the product. It is encouraging users of Blackboard Learn (which is the product we call ‘Succeed’ here at the University of Stirling) to submit requests and suggestions for improvements via its ‘Product Enhancement Request’ page. At a recent meeting of the Scottish Blackboard Users’ Group (Scot-BUG) in Aberdeen, the regional Client Manager and Account Director were stressing the importance of suggestions from the user community and reiterating the influence such suggestions have had in the past in guiding the development of the product, so please don’t be shy in coming forward.
Product Enhancement Requests may be made by completing this online form:
http://www.blackboard.com/Contact-Us/Feedback/Suggest-Product-Enhancements/For-Learn.aspx
The sorts of requests which are being sought after here are specific suggestions, rather than vague notions. So a targeted suggestion such as, ‘allow the Grade Centre view to be boosted up to full screen to allow more working space whilst using the Grade Centre’ is probably going to have more currency than an amorphous proposition such as, ‘make the Grade Centre easier to use’.
When completing the form, please give as much detail as possible to the developers at Blackboard. You could, for example, take screen shots of the existing situation in the product to accompany your suggestion of how it could be improved, and save these screen shots into a Word document which you could then upload to accompany your request. The clearer you can be about the nature of your suggestion, the easier it will be for the developers to understand it and see it if it possible to implement.
When completing the form, if you are unsure what to select at the ‘What capability does this suggestion relate to?’ pull down menu, select ‘Course Delivery/Management’. At the ‘What product does this suggestion relate to?’ pull down menu you need to select ‘Blackboard Learn’ and our version number is ‘9.1’.
Important: This is a suggestions forum, not a fault-reporting mechanism! If you find things not working in Succeed, please contact your eLD representative or the Information Centre. This form is for suggestions to Blackboard of improvements or efficiencies in the Blackboard Learn (Succeed) product.
Teaching Bites
We have organised a series of 1 hour lunchtime sessions on various features of Succeed. The first three are:
12th March: 12.00-13.00: Module Design — Make Your Succeed a Better Place
Building a module in Succeed where the content is easy for the students to navigate is not as straight-forward as it might first appear. This session looks at some easy wins:
- Using Content Areas affectively
- Naming Content and the Description area
- Use of the Table of Content (left-hand menu/navigation)
- Consistency
19th March: 12.00-13.00: Blackboard Collaborate (Succeed Classroom)
This session will look at the peer-to-peer Conferencing tool Blackboard Collaborate (Succeed Classroom) and how you may use this in your teaching. Collaborate allows a meeting or teaching session to take place online, with audio, video and a working whiteboard area which can be used to share slides, work collaboratively on documents or conduct a web tour. The session will cover the equipment needed to run a Blackboard Collaborate session, how to set a session up, get started and some tips and tricks on its use.
26th March: 12.00-13.00: Quizzes/Surveys
The session will look at the Tests, Surveys and Pools area of Succeed. Users will be shown how to set up a test or a survey and how to add questions to it. An explanation of the available question types will be given. The session will also cover how to edit the settings for a test or survey so it is made available to the relevant users at the relevant time, including how to set up exceptions for AAA students who require more time to complete their assessments. An explanation will also be given of the question pool, and how to add questions to this pool, and how to select questions from the pool to add to tests and surveys.
To sign-up go into Succeed and then to Learning & Development – My Learning, IT & Information Skills, Succeed Training. Also don’t forget to bring along your sandwiches!
These sessions will be available to remote campuses. To register for remote access please email Simon Booth.
Respondus Lockdown Browser Demonstration
We are running a campus wide trial through to April 30 of a product called Respondus Lockdown Browser.
Lockdown browser is a custom browser that locks down the testing environment within Blackboard (Succeed). When students use Respondus LockDown Browser they are unable to print, copy, go to another URL, or access other applications. When an assessment is started, students are locked into it until they submit it for grading. Available for both Windows and Mac.
Demo movies are available on the Respondus website : https://www.respondus.com/products/lockdown-browser/demos.shtml
The software will be demonstrated in Cottrell : 2Y5 on Friday 7th March, from 12-12.45. The demonstration will include using Lockdown browser to access a test – if you wish to attend and participate then please email sarah.grayston@stir.ac.uk
Course Representatives
A new tool has been added to the Module Administration area in most spring Succeed modules. The tool allows students to volunteer to be ‘course reps’ and has been added at the request of the students’ union.
Staff can use the tool to see who has volunteered and, if need, to manage the volunteers (add/remove). Staff can go through the volunteering process; the difference from a student is that staff don’t actually get added to the list of reps.
The volunteering period for course reps is usually the first couple of weeks of semester. After this time the tool can only be used to see who the course reps are for staff and students. Staff can extend the volunteering by editing the Course Representatives link in the Module Administration area:
A member of the team teaching the module will be emailed if students withdraw as course reps after the volunteering period has ended. The appropriate email address can be set via the edit option on the link. By default, one of the instructors in Succeed will be randomly selected unless the tool is explicitly set.
If your Succeed space contains several modules (ITE, Nursing, etc) eLD will set up a link for each module within the space.
Any problems please contact Simon Booth.
eLearning Forum – Listen Again
Some presentations from the eLearning Forum on 23rd January 2014 are now available on the following Listen Again page:
http://listenagain.stir.ac.uk/media/2013/elearningforum/listenagain.php
This link and all the PDF versions of the presentations from the day are now also available in the ‘Learning and Development – My Learning’ course area in Succeed. You can find them all in the following folder:
> Course Content > IT & Information Skills > eLearning Forum > eLearning Forum Event – 23rd January 2014
eLearning Forum Presentations, Plagiarism Quiz and Turnitin Question
This blog posting follows up from the eLearning Forum on Thursday, 23rd January 2014.
Presentations
These are now available to view in PDF format:
- Kevin Brosnan – Electronic Marking using Microsoft Word
- Christine Taylor – Preventing Plagiarism
- Ruth Watkins – Electronic Marking using GradeMark
- Tim Whalley – Electronic Marking using GradeMark
- Sarah Grayston – Feedback using Succeed and Word
Plagiarism Quiz
The Plagiarism Quiz which Sarah Grayston has created is now available to view in the ‘My Learning’ course space in Succeed, to which all staff have access. You will find it in the ‘Assessments’ area of this course. If anyone would like a copy of this assessment added to their own module in Succeed then please contact Sarah sarah.grayston@stir.ac.uk to arrange this.
Turnitin Question
To clarify after the discussion relating to Turnitin: if the settings of a Turnitin Assignment are such that a student paper is not submitted to the repository, then Turnitin will still compare the submitted paper against student papers, web and electronic journal items in its database and generate an Originality Report. The only difference will be that Turnitin will not compare papers submitted under this assignment with other papers submitted to this same assignment. Therefore, plagiarism taking place within the module (one student copying off another) would not be spotted as the papers would not be in the repository.
Listen Again
Where staff have agreed to share their talks, we are working on making the presentations from the session available on the Listen Again service. We hope to have these ready for early next week and will do a further blog posting when they are available.
Java Update Issue for Succeed
Blackboard support have just notified an issue to do with the latest Java update, which is version 7, update 51. If you update the version of Java on your computer to this version then you will find that the following things will no longer work for you in Succeed:
- Uploading Multiple Files into the Files area
- Chat Tool
- Virtual Classroom Tool
The Virtual Classroom Tool is an online collaboration tool within Succeed. It is different from Blackboard Collaborate and is not used at the University of Stirling.
To avoid running into these issues we recommend not updating to the latest version of Java just yet. Blackboard are working on fixes for these problems which they hope to have in place by 21st January 2014. Even then, the update released by Blackboard may not instantly be applied on our systems, we will have to see what if any impact this may have on other items in Blackboard.
If you have already updated your Java version on your home PC to version 7, update 51 then you can work around the first issue by uploading files into the Files area individually (which will still work).
The version of Java currently available to staff through the ‘Run Advertised Programs’ area of the network is version 7, update 40. This will continue to work well with Succeed and is the version staff should be using on their work-based machines.
eLearning Forum: Electronic Marking
The eLearning Forum is back! The first meeting of 2014 will be from 13.00-14.30 on Thursday, 23rd January in the Enterprise Zone (in the Library). The theme of the first meeting is Electronic Marking and will have presentations from users of all three available solutions:
Word (Succeed) – Kevin Brosnan, School of Education
Succeed (Assignments) – Sarah Grayston, e-Learning Liaison and Development Team, Information Services
GradeMark (Turnitin) – Ruth Watkins, Student Learning Services, and Tim Whalley, School of Natural Sciences
There will also be a short presentation by Christine Taylor, School of Management, on the new plagiarism quiz developed by eLD and available for all staff to use within Succeed.
We’ll be starting at 12.30 with lunch. The presentations will start around 13.00. We’ll be aiming to finish by 14.00.
To register for the event please contact Kirsteen Young (ext 6876).
Setting the Start and End Dates of a Succeed Module
The following information will be useful to you regarding the Start Date of your Spring semester module in Succeed. Modules created in Succeed have default dates in them for when they open (become available to students to see) and close (stop being available to students to see). These Start and End Dates usually coincide with the start and end of semester, but if your module is running at all outwith these dates you may edit the dates accordingly. Anyone with instructor level access to the module may do this. Here’s a guide on what to do:
http://www.stir.ac.uk/media/schools/is/documents/succeeddocuments/set_module_start_end_dates.pdf