Author Archives: Kris McElroy

Add Office Mix Presentations to Your myLesley Course

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Office Mix is a new add-in for Powerpoint that allows users to create interactive online videos that include images, video, voice, digital annotations, and quizzes. Watch the Mix below and see how to get started. Then check out the Office Mix Gallery to see how others are using Office Mix.

 

How Can I Get Office Mix?

Office Mix is a free add-in for PowerPoint, but it is PC only. Sorry Mac folks. It also requires Powerpoint 2013 or later.

Download the installer to get started. 

 

How Do I Add a Mix to My Course?
AddMixToolAdding a Mix to your myLesley course is an easy two-step process.

Start by navigating to an area of your course. Click on the Tools menu and select Office Mix.

Enter a Name for your Mix and an optional Description. Then click Submit

 

Next, navigate to the Mix at the bottom of the window. Click on the title as if you were going to view it.
MyOfficeMix

Enter the URL for the Mix you want to add and click Find.AddMixURL

 

 

 

 

Click Yes to confirm this is the Mix you want to add.ConfirmMix

 

 

 

 

Learn More…

Learn more about creating Office Mix videos with these tutorials: https://mix.office.com/gallery/category/how-to?lcid=1033

 

 

Getting Ready for the Fall

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It’s that time of year again. Summer is winding down and the first day of Fall classes is approaching… too fast. We’ve gathered together some past posts and links to tutorials to make your prep easier and your myLesley course awesome.

Getting Your Content into Your Fall Course
The first step is to get your content into your upcoming myLesley course site. If you’ve taught the course before using myLesley, there’s no reason to recreate all that content from scratch. Just copy it. Review the directions for copying myLesley courses or request a course copy from eLIS.  

Once your content has been copied over, you will need to make a few updates for the current semester, such as updating your syllabus and updating all those dates. You can easily update your syllabus and all the links to it throughout the course in one easy step. Review Updating Your Syllabus in myLesley to learn how.

Did you use the calendar tool, release dates, or due dates in your myLesley course? Think going through and manually updating them all is going to be a major task? Think again. Use the Date Management tool and update them all on one page.

Check out Adding Content to Your myLesley Course to update or create new content items.

 

Communicating with Your Students
Now that your course content is ready go, it’s time to welcome your students. If you use Announcements or the Send Email tool in myLesley, you don’t even need to know their email addresses. Communicate with everyone in the course at once.

Take the normal text announcement or email up a notch and post a video announcement to introduce yourself and the course. Kaltura Media is built right into the text editor and will allow you to quickly and easily record a video message to your students using your webcam.

 

A Few Tips
To help you get ready for the upcoming semester, we have a few tips from our instructional designers on what to do before your course begins, the first week of your online course, and how to manage those busy online discussions.

Don’t forget about our support site at support.lesley.edu. We have a slew of tutorials and information from both eLIS and IT. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, submit a ticket and someone will follow up to help.

Have a great semester.

Blackboard Mobile Maintenance – Saturday July 23

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Blackboard will be migrating its mobile services to a new server this weekend. As a result there will be no access to Blackboard content via mobile apps during this time.

When: Saturday, July 23, 2016, 12:01am EDT to Sunday, July 24, 2:00am, EDT

Workaround: Use a desktop computer or the web browser on your phone (Safari, Chrome, Internet, etc) to access Blackboard.

Goodbye Voice Tools

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Blackboard has announced that it will be discontinuing the Voice Authoring tools in myLesley. This set of tools include Voice Authoring, Voice Board, Voice Podcaster, and Voice Email.
Record audio

Why the Change?

The Voice Authoring tools are built using Java, a programming language that allows for the creation of interactive applications that can run within your web browser. Unfortunately, Java applications can also be a vehicle for malicious software and viruses. Web browsers therefore ask you if you want to allow the application run before it will do so, especially if you are in a password-protected site such as myLesley. The allow option in your web browser can often be very hidden or located in a different place in different browsers. Most people won’t even notice the allow option and will simply think the content or tool is broken.
blocked java

The end result is java applications such as Voice Authoring are technically quirky, confusing, frustrating and often just not worth the effort. Rather than redesign the tools, Blackboard has decided to discontinue them and partner with VoiceThread to allow the use of audio with images.

While not a direct replacement for Voice Authoring, VoiceThread does provide a new feature set to allow you to do more with your audio. To ease the transition, VoiceThread has put together a nice guide, How Does VoiceThread Compare to Voice Authoring, to help you conceptualize using VoiceThread in place of Voice Authoring.

 

When is This Happening?

Blackboard will officially discontinue access to the Voice Authoring tools on August 31, 2016. However, Lesley will lose access to these tools on June 30, 2016 when our license ends.

 

How can I save my Voice Authoring content?

You can export most of your voice content to your computer. This tutorial will guide you through the process: Exporting and Importing Voice Authoring Content. We recommend that you archive your content no later than June 15, 2016.

If you would like to reuse your voice content, you may import the audio files into VoiceThread or Kaltura.

 

Need Assistance?

If you need assistance transitioning your content to other tools or archiving your Voice Authoring content, please email elis@lesley.edu

News from Blackboard

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On Friday, April 8, 2016, our Blackboard Customer Success Representative joined several of our faculty to provide a tour of new features in Blackboard and a sneak peek at upcoming products.

SaaS and What That Means to Us

Software as a Service (SaaS) is a method of distributing software via the internet. There is nothing for the software user to install or update on their own computer. The software company handles all the updates and fixes to the software on their end and the next time you log in to the site, you see the new changes. If you use Google apps, OneDrive or VoiceThread, you are already using SaaS software.  

Lesley University is interested moving to Blackboard’s SaaS model for several reasons. It would eliminate the need to make Blackboard unavailable every August for two or three days to perform upgrades and required maintenance. We would also be able to get fixes and updates faster without having to schedule downtime with Blackboard. myLesley should also perform better and faster, especially at high usage times such as the beginning and end of semesters.

Blackboard Mobile Apps

Bb Student allows students to submit assignments, take tests, and view content from their mobile phones and tablets. Assignment files can be attached from Google Drive, Dropbox and OneDrive. The ability to participate in discussions is coming soon. Bb Student is available for iOS and Android devices.

Bb Grader is an instructor app for grading student work submitted via the Assignments tool. Faculty can view, sort, annotate, and provide audio and video feedback. Graded work can be returned to students one at a time or all at once. Bb Grader is currently for iPad only.

Get them now. They’re free!

Upcoming Attractions for Blackboard Learn

Blackboard has several new products and features that are available now or coming soon. We are particularly excited about the OneDrive integration. This would allow faculty and students to add content or submit assignments directly from OneDrive. No more downloading documents from OneDrive and having to upload them into myLesley. OneDrive integration is currently only available for SaaS.

Blackboard has developed Blackboard Ultra, a whole new version of its learning management system (LMS). Blackboard Ultra is designed to be more streamlined, more intuitive, less complex, and focused on the student experience.

blackboard ultra course view

This new version of Blackboard is still under development and doesn’t yet have all the tools we would want to see in an LMS. However, if you are interested you may preview Ultra now. Go to preview.blackboard.com and register. You will get two Ultra courses and two original courses to compare.

Questions from the Audience

There were several Lesley faculty members in attendance at the demo, both in person and online… and they brought their questions. Here are a few highlights.

How are changes implemented if we are on SaaS?
Maintenance updates and fixes are implemented continuously behind the scenes rather than waiting for a scheduled maintenance window and downtime. New features and changes to existing tools roll out with these maintenance updates, but are turned off initially. This allows Lesley to pick the best time to release them to our faculty and students. Don’t worry. You won’t get a new gradebook in the middle of finals.

What is the list of features for Blackboard Ultra that will be coming in the future?
Blackboard Ultra looks very interesting, but it’s still missing a few key elements. Tests should be available sometime this summer, but there’s still no blog or journal tool. Below is a roadmap of features that are currently available, currently in development, and still on the to-do list. Check out Blackboard’s roadmap webinars for all the latest information on what’s to come.

Blackboard Ultra roadmap

Are you planning to move to Blackboard Ultra soon?
No. There is currently no plan to move to Blackboard Ultra. It simply isn’t ready. Instead, we are looking at moving our current version of Blackboard/myLesley into the SaaS cloud in order to get better performance and faster updates and fixes.

What about accessibility?
Blackboard takes accessibility very seriously. Get all the information on all their products at blackboard.com/accessibility

 

Learn more about the LMS Review and check out the info sheets on all the options we reviewed. Please share your thoughts and questions with us by emailing elis@lesley.edu.