Information Technology Services

by Curt Price

Cascade is the website content management system that SIUE has been using since 2013.

The move to Cascade from our previous system, Luminis, was a huge upgrade in terms of features, functionality, & stability.

If you are an end user who has access to Cascade, you can obviously update your department web pages using Cascade, but did you also know...

• On the Cascade dashboard, end users can customize the data on that page by adding or removing widgets using the "Add Widget" butt...

by Curt Price

We all use PDF's at work and at home. But besides opening a pdf in Reader or Acrobat to read a pdf, or to save/print a word doc as a PDF, most people aren't Acrobat acrobats and aren't sure how to do other things.

To make things somewhat easier in terms of working with a pdf file, the website https://www.pdftool.org has a number of free tools that will allow you to do some very useful things. Such as Encrypting PDF's to protect secure documents, Decrypting PDF's, optimzing (...

By IDLT

Scheduling meetings can be a time-consuming and frustrating process, especially when you're trying to find a time that works for multiple people with busy schedules. Many of us have utilized Doodle or When2Meet to help with this tedious task, but they aren’t the most efficient options.

by IDLT

Occasionally, YuJa, your internet, or your computer can have a hiccup which can cause a video not to upload to your media library. Luckily, the file is stored locally on your device. Once the file is found, you can run it through a program called Handbrake and then upload the video manually. Follow the steps in this ITS KnowledgeBase article on how to recover the video file, run it through Handbrake, and upload it to YuJa.

by IDLT

Blackboard Offers Testing Pool Options to Increase your Online Test Integrity

Summer can be an opportunity to revamp assessments for courses, but no matter what time of year you dedicate to reviewing your assessment strategy, objective tests and test integrity are always in need of our attention.

by Curt Price

SIUE currently provides access to Adobe Creative Cloud applications to all faculty and staff members. (for instructions on how to install Adobe Creative Cloud apps, please see here: https://www.siue.edu/its/fac_staff/adobe-creative-cloud.shtml)

For students enrolled in a course that requires the use of Adobe Creative Cloud, ITS is providing home use licenses. Please follow the instructions here:  https://www.siue.edu/its/labsclassrooms/vlab/creative-cloud.shtml to enabl...

by IDLT

On May 8, ITS updated Blackboard to Ultra Base Navigation . The upgrade affects only the Blackboard landing page. No changes have been made to existing course shells or tools used by faculty and students.

All users logging into Blackboard will see the Institution Page, containing resources for faculty and students, important updates, and information about SIUE’s learning technologies. Courses are accessible from the Courses module in the navigation menu.

Additional information...

by IDLT

Recording a Lecture? What is the best software to use?

Several software capture tools are available on campus for faculty, staff, and students to record lectures, audio/video announcements, projects, etc. But which one is the best to use? Well, it depends…

YuJa Software Capture Tool

The YuJa Software Capture Tool is an app installed directly on your work or home computer. The recording is automatically uploaded to your YuJa account. This may not be the best option if you are us...

by IDLT

ITS will update Blackboard to Ultra Base Navigation on May 8, 2023. The Ultra Base Navigation upgrade will not update or change existing course shells or tools used by faculty and students.

The Institution Page is the area that opens when users log into Ultra Base Navigation. The modules on the Institution Page contain links to important teaching and learning systems and services. A user’s role as faculty/staff or student will determine what modules can be seen. While the main fa...

by IDLT

Looking for a way to spend less time grading and providing students with feedback? Finding students are unclear on the expectations for an assignment? Rubrics might be just what your course needs to provide students with clear expectations and a more efficient way to provide consistent grading and feedback. Rubrics can be created in Blackboard for assignments, discussion forums, and assessments. Turnitin also has the option to attach a rubric for writing assignments to allow stude...

by IDLT

In the second half of the semester, students are often preparing presentations as final projects but collecting large video files of those submissions is a hassle. Adding specific expectations for your students to share a link of their video recordings rather than accepting attached files will streamline your workflow. It’s also beneficial if you ask students to share their work in a discussion forum and interact with their peers’ presentations. YuJa ensures that you won&#82...

by IDLT

Everyone learns differently and by adding transcripts along with course videos, faculty can create more inclusive and engaging learning environments. The Multiple Means of Representation guideline from the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework encourages faculty to provide course content in a variety of formats to meet the diverse students in their courses. CAST, the organization that developed and maintains the UDL framework, describes the principle of multimodal representati...

by IDLT

ITS will update Blackboard to Ultra Base Navigation on May 8, 2023. The Ultra Base Navigation upgrade will not update or change existing course shells or tools used by faculty and students.

Blackboard’s Ultra Base Navigation is a modern, intuitive navigation menu that lives outside of courses, providing quick access to the most critical information consolidated from the institution and users’ courses. An overview of the features of Ultra Base Navigation is available in the...

by IDLT

This is our final article in the series on Blackboard Ally. We’ve discussed how Blackboard Ally makes your course more inclusive , running the course accessibility report and interpreting it , how to make a PowerPoint presentation accessible , how to increase the accessibility of a PDF, and l etting your students know Ally is their ally .

In this article, we’re going to explain how to make the text in your Blackboard course accessible. When we refer to text in B...

by IDLT

ITS will update SIUE’s Blackboard LMS to Ultra Base Navigation on May 8, 2023. This is part of an overall and long-term upgrade to Bb Learn Ultra, the newest version of Blackboard’s learning management system. The Ultra Base Navigation upgrade will not update or change existing course shells or tools used by faculty and students. 

ITS will provide regular updates to the campus community about the scheduled Bb Ultra Base Navigation upgrade. Imag...

by IDLT

If you are still using Zoom to record your lectures, you and your students are missing some notable features that YuJa offers. The YuJa Software Capture (PC and Mac) records your webcam and your screen share as separate streams. This allows you to edit each video separately in case you need to plug in a new slide or screen share. The separate streams also allow students to change which picture they see larger, the scr...

by IDLT

In our ITSpotlight series on Blackboard Ally, we’ve discussed how Blackboard Ally makes your course more inclusive, how to run the course accessibility report and interpret it, how to make a PowerPoint presentation accessible, and how to increase the accessibility of a PDF.  

Everything we’ve covered thus far is the background work that takes place to make your course accessible. Now it’s time ...

by IDLT

As a reminder, SIUE has adopted a Blackboard (Bb) retention practice. In the 5 + 1 model, course shells from the previous 5 semesters plus the current semester will be retained in Bb. Course shells outside of the 5 + 1 frame will be removed from Bb, stored locally by ITS, and then permanently deleted after one year. Additional information is available at:  https://www.siue.edu/its/bb/5-plus-1.shtml  

Contact the ITS Help Desk at (618) 650-5500 or...

by IDLT

As a new semester approaches, the following tips may be useful for faculty.  

Blackboard and Course Management:   

1. If you are teaching multiple sections of the same course and want them to be in one Blackboard shell, please request that your sections be merged prior to starting work in your Blackboard courses.   

2. If you want to copy a course from the previous semester, please follow these export/import instructions.  ...

by IDLT

As a reminder, the Office of Online Services and Educational Outreach provides a service for caption editing with a 3-5 business day turnaround. Through this service, student workers will edit the speech-to-text captions on videos that are stored in YuJa.  

Video captions are a necessity for accessibility, and they support multi-modal learning for improved retention of information. Also, closed captions allow students to view video material without sound if they are watc...

Share a Single Video 

What does it mean to share a video? Sharing a video allows other to see a video in your YuJa library. Sharing does not give them a copy of the video; however, users may have to option to create a copy your video depending upon the access level you choose.   

There are four access levels to share a video: 

• Full access – users can see, ...

by IDLT

If you are someone who exports and imports your Blackboard course each term, does it feel like it takes longer each time to manage this? That’s because it does. Your course grows with files and links each time you teach it. Here are some tips to help speed up your next export/import and how to have a left navigation you and your students will appreciate. 

• Clean up left navigation. When importing an old course, it will also bri...