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"NILE Upgrades"
LearnTech are archiving some of the older NILE sites which are no longer being actively used. This keeps our server storage low, so the University remains under quota and avoids unnecessary subscription charges. This year, all of the sites from the academic year 2012/2013 have been selected for archiving. These sites have been disabled on the system and are no longer available for general use.
The full list of affected NILE sites can be found here: 12/13 NILE sites for archive. The file should open with Acrobat reader, which is installed on all PCs. You should should use ‘Ctrl-F’ and search for the sites that interest you by module code, or module name.
If you do wish for a 12/13 site to be re-enabled, please contact LearnTech via email (learntech@northampton.ac.uk) before 14th October with the module codes and titles of any sites you need to remain live and exclude from the archive process.
We would like to emphasize that we are archiving, not deleting, so sites and files can be recovered at a later date if necessary.
This week I have been having a look at making the grade centre easier to read and navigate by applying colours. The grade centre can be a rather complicated beast, particularly when you have large numbers of students and various assignment points within a module. Searching and finding students work can be tricky, students who do not submit can be missed and those students at risk may fall through the net. By applying colour coding to the grade centre columns you can highlight various stages in the grading process including, ‘Needs Grading’, G grades and assessments that have not yet been attempted and let’s face it- a little bit of colour can go a long way!
Colour coding your grade centre can be useful for:
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Quickly highlighting at risk students
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A traffic light system to highlight various grades in the grade centre
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Quickly see students who have not submitted any work and those pieces that need grading
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Highlighting marks within a specific range, for example A grade students
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Spotting students work ‘In Progress’ (usually online tests or online submissions)
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Quickly being able to see student development (when traffic light system is employed)
To apply colour coding to the grade centre you can follow these quick instructions:
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Go to ‘Full Grade Centre’.
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Click ‘Manage’ and choose ‘Grading Colour Codes’.
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You will now see the Grading Colour Codes page. Select the box to allow you to add ‘Grading Colour Codes’.
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If you want to colour code items that are In Progress, Needs Marking or Exempt, click to change the Background Colour to your chosen colour (keep in mind accessibility issues).
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If you want to colour code ranges of marks, click the ‘Add Criteria’ button. Select the criteria for highlighting:
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‘Between’ two grades, ‘More than’ a grade or ‘Less than’ a grade.
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Choose a Background Colour and a colour for the Text.
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If you want to add more criteria, click ‘Add Criteria’ again.
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Click ‘Submit’ to apply the colour coding to the Grade Centre.
This will apply all of these settings across the entire module for all assessments (which means you only need to set up your criteria once). You can copy over these settings to other sites when you do a site copy highlighting the ‘Grade centre columns and settings’ option.
For a short video on how to do this follow this link: http://ondemand.blackboard.com/r91/movies/bb91_grade_center_color_code.htm
Go on give it a whirl- and let me know what you think: geraldine.murphy@northampton.ac.uk
There will be some minor updates to Blackboard Learn on the 18th of July 2016. These security updates will involve a slight change to the Turnitin interface. Under Site Tools>Turnitin Assignments, each assignment will be listed with a Delete Assignment link beside it (please see fig1 below).
Clicking this link will delete the entire submission point, all submitted papers and all grading. Please do not use this delete link unless you are absolutely sure you wish to remove the submission point. If you do click this link by mistake, a confirmation box will appear. Click on cancel to retract the request.
Fig1 - Turnitin delete link
This summer, we’re moving away from using the Panopto system to expand and extend the use of our Kaltura MediaSpace platform.
We have enjoyed an excellent service from Panopto, but based on a number of factors, including lots of feedback from staff, we’ve decided to move away from Panopto and instead use our MediaSpace platform to support all our video capture, storage and streaming needs going forward to Waterside. This means we’re going to migrate your content out of Panopto and onto MediaSpace over this summer. So, if you use currently Panopto, can we ask that you do not create any new materials from now on, and instead start using MediaSpace instead.
If you’re new to MediaSpace then there are some useful Help videos at video.northampton.ac.uk, like this video and we are happy to run training sessions and 1:1’s on request, or you can email learntech@northampton.ac.uk if you have specific questions.
Please note, you will not be able to access Panopto beyond 8th July 2016. The videos in NILE will still be viewable by students, but staff will not be able to record any new videos.
There will be more communication from us, to ensure your content is transferred smoothly and that you are confident using the MediaSpace platform but if you have any questions, then please get in touch.
NILE will be upgraded between 6:00pm BST, Saturday 13th August and 6:00am BST, Sunday 14th August.
Northampton University is currently using the Blackboard 9.1 October 2014 release which will be upgraded to the 2015 Q4 release. The new features of this release can be viewed on the Blackboard Website. Please ensure that your browsers are sufficiently updated to keep within the supported levels of this new release.
While security fixes are applied to NILE throughout the academic year, the annual update ensures that we are providing the most stable release and latest features for both our staff and student users. The University’s hosting provider requires us to keep our version of Blackboard up to date in order to meet the 99.9% availability agreement over the rest of the year.
If you have any questions about the upgrade process, please contact Vicky.Brown@northampton.ac.uk
