We are currently finalising the date of the migration to accommodate exam boards, and minimise disruption. So more details to follow. However, the upgrade will be complete by the start of the new academic year.
At the moment, our advice to staff is to start to ensure your courses are up to date, and for you to look out for later updates about staff briefings, staff development sessions, online guides and FAQs. We will also be arranging session around themes and tools. For instance, Mastering the Blackboard Wiki, Managing multimedia in my course, or Getting to grips with the Blackboard Gradebook.
The new version and hosting arrangement offer many benefits to staff and students at UCS. In my opinion one of the most important is the new arrangements allow the Elevate Team to re-allocate its resources to better support of staff on using technology to enhance teaching, and less on maintaining the system. In terms of the software itself, there are significant enhancements, including,
- Modern, user friendly interface, keeping similar processes to previous versions for adding content, announcements etc.,
- Email Notifications
- Latest software and hardware, upgraded as required
- More robust gradebook with added anonymous marking and quick ‘Needs Marking’ option
- New Wiki and Blog tools built in, allowing direct grading from the tool itself
- New “Mashup” tool to allow quick and easy adding of multimedia from sites such as Youtube and Flickr
To stay informed about the status of the upgrade and the opportunities this software offers you and your teaching we will be making status updates in the Elevate Area (under Professional Services) in MyUCS.
If you have any questions, please email the Elevate Team (elevate@ucs.ac.uk)
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