ITSpotlight is designed to keep the campus up to date on ITS activities and services.
Announcements - Teaching with Tech
Add Transcripts with Videos for a More Inclusive Course
Posted March 08, 2023
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 representa...
Blackboard Ultra Base Navigation Features
Posted March 08, 2023
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 t...
Increasing accessibility using Blackboard's text editor
Posted March 08, 2023
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 tex...
Blackboard Upgrade AnnouncementÂ
Posted February 08, 2023
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...
Still Using Zoom to Record Your Lectures?
Posted February 08, 2023
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...
Let Students Know Blackboard Ally is Their Ally
Posted February 08, 2023
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...
Blackboard 5 + 1 Retention Practice
Posted January 17, 2023
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) 650-5...
Complete These Start-of-Semester Activities for Course Management
Posted January 17, 2023
by IDLT
As a new semester approaches, the following tips may be useful for faculty.
Blackboard and Course Management:
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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.
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If you want to copy a course from the previous semester, please follow these export/import inst...
Digital Content Captioning Service
Posted January 17, 2023
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 ar...
Share a Video in YuJa
Posted January 17, 2023
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:
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Full access – use...
Spring Cleaning in Blackboard
Posted January 17, 2023
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.
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Clean up left navigation. When importing an old course, it will ...
Check YuJa Videos and Other Course Material Before Start of Winter Session and Spring 2023
Posted December 14, 2022
by IDLT
Winter Session at SIUE begins Monday, December 19, 2022. While select schools will begin spring courses on Tuesday, January 3, 2023, most courses scheduled for the start of the spring 2023 (SP23) semester will begin on Monday, January 9, 2023.
If you are teaching a Winter Session or SP23 course and plan to import your course content from a previous semester, all faculty are encouraged to check the content of...
Complete These End-of-Semester Activities for Course Management
Posted December 14, 2022
by IDLT
As the term nears completion, the following tips will be useful for faculty in wrapping up their courses.
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Check your Grade Center Total and/or Weighted Total column(s) to be sure they are set up to calculate correctly. The Mercer University Online Weighted Average Grade Calculator is a useful tool for checking your Weighted Total calculations. If you find errors, contact ITS at 618-650-5500 or at bbhelp@siue.edu for assistance.&#...
Increasing the Accessibility of a Word Document and PowerPoint Presentation
Posted December 14, 2022
by IDLT
Our past ITSpotlight articles on accessibility discussed running the course accessibility report to identify files that need improvement and how to increase the accessibility of a PDF. In this article, we’ll focus on how to increase the accessibility of Word documents and PowerPoint presentations.
Microsoft has a built-in accessibility checker to help you identify and correct any issues in Word, PowerPoint, and Excel files. Uploading...
Tracking Student Attendance: Blackboard vs Starfish
Posted December 14, 2022
Tracking student attendance in college-level courses can be a topic of debate. Some courses require participation and class or activity attendance within the evaluation methods of the course and some do not. Regardless, tracking student attendance can help you as an educator to see patterns in student behavior, both individually and as a class. Attendance is also a factor in student retention. We have two methods of attendance tracking available at SIUE:...
