ITTC Online Magazine

We would like to thank all who participated in the ITTC Summer Institutes for Summer 2009. We had a great turnout and are happy that you joined us in making this year’s Institute a huge success!

This short 2.5 minute video, developed by Google, will give you a short overview of how Google Sites works.

Please contact me when you are ready to get started!

There are several courses available at different levels of instruction for you to register to attend and most are 1.5 hours in length.   We also offer many “Open Lab” hours where you can come and receive a one-on-one training session if you wish.  

For more information, please go to our website at www2.astate.edu/ittc and at the bottom of the home page you can select to view our Scheduler where you will see all the class listings.   Many are repeated on different days of the week and different times of the day so as to make it easier for you to attend.   Instructions on how to register to reserve your seat are also available on the Scheduler.

We hope to see you soon at the ITTC.

Have a good start of the semester.

Henry Torres

Director, Interactive Teaching & Technology Center

Dean B. Ellis Library Suite 301

Arkansas State University

Ph: (870) 972-2334  

Below are the instructions (from ITS) to merge several sections of your Bb 8 course shells into one course shell:

Dear Colleagues,

You are receiving this message because we have identified a course or section in Banner that you teach as either dual/merged or cross-listed.

IT and ITTC have been actively engaged in making several improvements to the Blackboard Learning Management System (LMS).  As you are aware from recent communications, a new Blackboard LMS platform will roll out for the Spring of 2010.  This new platform is called “Blackboard Learn”.  Blackboard Learn will provide many new features and enhancements, as well as resolving many technical and functional issues of the current Blackboard environment.  One of the features will be the native capability to merge multiple course shells into a single shell.  In the interim period as we are preparing to move to the new platform, we have made a change in the enrollment process in which we need assistance from some of you.  Because we now auto-enroll students and faculty in courses/sections based on information in Banner, the capability to merge courses in the traditional method is no longer viable.  If you teach a course that is merged with multiple courses, this message applies to you. So for instance, if you teach ACCT4113001 and ACCT5113001, and you traditionally combine these courses and call the course Tax Accounting II, this message applies to you.  

Please follow the steps below in order to merge courses and/or sections into a single course shell in Blackboard.

• We have created a new course merge utility that can/will merge courses and/or sections.  Faculty wishing to merge their courses/sections in Blackboard into one course shell can use the utility at the following URL: https://apps.astate.edu/blackboard.
• Once you log into the site using your ASU email address, you will see all of the courses for which you are listed in Banner as the instructor of record.  If a course or section is not listed, then you need to contact your department chairperson to make the assignment in Banner.
• Select the courses that are to be merged into a single course shell, and click on the single arrow to move them to the selected courses box on the right.
• Once the courses are listed as desired in the selected course window, give the course shell a name in the “New BB shell” text box and click merge.  This is the name that the course will appear as in Blackboard.
• The page will update and display the courses that have been merged.
• Once this process is complete, the new merged course shell will be created in the next update window. (7AM, 12Noon, 5PM, 12Midnight)

Thank you for your assistance with this matter.  If you need any help with this process, please contact the IT Helpdesk at 870.972.3933 or by email at helpdesk@astate.edu.