Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Blackboard Upgrade: January 2, 2014

Information Technology will be upgrading Blackboard Learn to 9.1 SP13.  This will result in Blackboard being unavailable starting at 4pm CST on January 2nd, 2014.

We anticipate the major upgrades to be complete by January 3rd, but work may still be in progress during the day on January 4th. A final announcement will be posted when work is complete.


The resources on this website are being upgraded for the new version and features.

Blackboard and Tegrity deletions scheduled for January 10, 2014

To continue to be good stewards of university resources and preserve the performance of Blackboard and Tegrity, we will be performing our end of the semester Blackboard courses and Tegrity recordings purge process. Per our “Course Retention Policy”. The removal process will begin January 10, 2014.

What you can expect:
 
Blackboard courses that have a course ID starting with
2010M3, 2010W3, 2011M1 or 2011W1 will be be removed from the Blackboard system.
All Organizations and courses that do not match the criteria above will remain on Blackboard.
Tegrity recordings from the semesters of Spring 2013 (2012W2 or 2012M2)or prior will be deleted.

If courses or recordings need to be saved:
To keep content from Blackboard courses that meet the criteria mentioned above you can do one of the following:

2) Send a request to the HelpDesk with the course id’s that you would like to keep     (helpdesk@smumn.edu, 507-457-7800, or Submit a HelpDesk Request Online)
3) Make an Archive of the course and save the resulting file.

To keep Tegrity recordings:
2) Send a request to the HelpDesk with the course id’s that you would like to keep (helpdesk@smumn.edu, 507-457-7800, or Submit a HelpDesk Request Online)

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Regarding smumn.edu website loading issues...

From Marketing Department:

Many users are reporting that pages on the site, smumn.edu, are appearing blank or jumbled. This problem is caused by web servers or local workstations 'caching' or storing locally a copy of all or parts of the website assets. This issue is not surprising, and not everyone is experiencing this problem.

Time will fix this issue, but users can possibly fix the problem quicker by emptying (refreshing) the cache on their browsers. This can be done in a couple ways depending on the platform/browser. Windows PC users can hit CTRL + F5, regardless of the browser. Mac users browsing with Chrome or Firefox can hit APPLE (Command) + R.

Again, for most (external) visitors this should not be an issue, and will fix itself in time. Thank you all for the feedback on the updated look. Many are also using this as an opportunity to send additional comments, changes or fixes to the site in general. I'd like to just remind you that you can submit a request at anytime via the Marketing and Communication online request form.