MELA Meeting Minutes 2003 - 2017

c. Christian said that part of the reason we need to have the discussion with the deans is due to turnover with the DLCs, turnover with the academic deans, etc. Don’t know how clearly we are communicating. Feel that this is more of an educational session. Doesn’t anticipate any major changes. He feels that you have a right to look at courses. d. Presidium came down and spoke with Presidents before blackboard. They are rolling out some new features. They are going to add a wait/cue so that students can leave a call back number if they are unable to hold for the next available person. When we first began using Presidium the call wait time was approximately 80 seconds, it is now 40 seconds. They are certainly making steps in the right direction. We will need continuous feedback to determine if they are making turnarounds. e. The SSN tool is active in Blackboard. Christian will be attending a WebEx next week to receive training. f. Email override should be ready by the end of next month. Christian will let us know as soon as this is finalized. He had very open communication with Bb on Community/Content. Webdav has been outsourced to external sources. He asked that if there are projects that you are interested in with community/content, let him know so that he can communicate these needs with Blackboard. g. Audra Leverton wanted an update on outcomes. Bb provided a series of matrix for 10 phase 1 and phase 2 schools. We have to write a survey for the outcome schools for feedback. Looking at negotiations for future outcomes. We need to clearly communicate what is/what is not working with Outcomes. It was a concept offered by Bb that they did not fully understand and we thought would do things that it may not. Phase III schools have not received any feedback. Those are to begin in June 2009. One of the reasons that it hasn’t begun is because Christian had to talk with Jim and Chad on how to approach the campuses. They will ask what we would like out of their systems. ECCC has chosen not to use Blackboard Outcomes and has moved to an external software option. h. Phyllis asked if we would be moving to Bb 9 anytime soon. Christian said that few clients have moved up to 9. 8.5 is available, which corrects code deficiencies, but no facial changes. There will be a possible 8.5 upgrade in May and moving to 9 sometime in May 2010. We have requested 9 on our non-rac staging server. Bb 9 is very different in the way that it looks. We would like to get adequate training out to our faculty before we move forward with that upgrade. Audra asked if there is any indication of downtime for the 8.5 upgrade. They estimate that it will take approximately two full days of downtime, but they will contact Phil for specifics. The group recommended a downtime of May 22 nd – 23 rd . Future email communication will occur. i. Encourage students taking Blackboard exams to download Mozilla Firefox or Safari. There have been lots of problems with students accessing tests using Internet Explorer and those tests being locked up. We also do not recommend that students download IE 8, as this does not work well with online courses!

XII.

Future Meetings a. Thursday, April 16 th – HINDS CC b. Thursday, May 7th

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