Campus Closures
Wednesday, February 24, 2016
Kokomo region (all sites and campuses) - closing Weds. 2/24 at noon
Lafayette region (all sites and campuses) - closing Weds. 2/24 at 12:30 pm
Gary, East Chicago, Michigan City and Valparaiso - closing Weds. 2/24 at 11:00 am
North Central region - closing Weds. 2/24 at noon
Thursday, February 25, 2016
Monticello site only- Closed all day 2/25
Logansport and Rochester sites - Closed all day 2/25
Elkhart County, South Bend, Warsaw (North Central Region) - Closed all day 2/25
Gary, East Chicago, Michigan City and Valparaiso - Closed all day 2/25
Blackboard Maintenance Update
The following message is posted in Blackboard under the My Blackboard 9.1 tab:
"Recently a bug was discovered inside of Blackboard that causes our environment stability issues. To help stabilize our environment we will be taking down the Crocodoc feature within the Assignments feature in Blackboard. We will be doing this on Sundays from 11:00am - Mondays at 12:15am."
During this time you may notice that assignments submitted may look a little different. The following link details what this looks like: Assignment Submission
Tip of the Week!
Interested in teaching online classes? The certification process has changed!
If you have taken IVYC101 in the past, you are still certified to teach online. If you have not yet been certified there are now four steps in the process:
- Successfully complete BBRD101 (must pass all activities with a 90% or better)
- Sign up for IVYC110-SP, four self-paced modules (must pass all activities with a 90% or better)
- After successfully completing IVYC110-SP you'll be placed into IVYC110-IL, two instructor-led modules (must pass all activities with a 90% or better)
- Finally, after successfully completing the first three steps you'll be placed into IVYC112, Online Faculty Mentoring, the next semester during which you teach
Successful completion of the four step above will certify you to teach online at Ivy Tech.
Contact us at laf-distance-ed@lists.ivytech.edu to sign up for IVYC110-SP!
Systems Information
Blackboard was down on Sunday evening beginning approximately 9:30 pm ET and coming back online at 10:20 pm ET. The system was down again between 11:45 pm ET Sunday, Feb. 14th and 12:20 am ET Monday, Feb. 15th.
Blackboard was down for maintenance Sunday, Feb. 21st from 2 am - 6 am. The goal of this maintenance is to fix code issues thought to be responsible for the outage on Sunday, Feb. 14th.
Training Opportunity
GoToMeeting: Look and Sound Good. Useful tips for setting up audio and webcam for a successful presentation
Tuesday, Feb. 23rd 1 pm EST
Click here to register
Campus Closures
Several Ivy Tech campuses and sites were closed this week, if you had a student scheduled to take a proctored exam at those sites during this time frame, please work with them to reschedule as needed.
Sellersburg campus (including Perkins Technology Center)- delayed open until 10 am on Mon. Feb. 15th
Scottsburg site- delayed until noon on Mon. Feb. 15th
Tip of the Week
Sam Houston State University Instructional Designer Jacob Spradlin hosts "Best Practice Monday" on Twitter. Jacob has an M.Ed. in Instructional Technology from Sam Houston State University and is currently their Assistant Director of Training and Development.
To check out his posts, follow @jspradlin on Twitter or search for #bestpracticemonday.
Some past tips include:
- Ways to foster student success online
- Personalizing your online course
- How to handle technical problems
- Personalizing student feedback
- Strategies for your first week of an online course
- And much more!
IncludED Course Note
In order for students to access the Pearson content in an IncludED course, students must click on the link inside the Class Sessions. If students try to access the Pearson content through Communication and Tools they will be prompted to log in and asked for an access code. Students who call Pearson's tech support for assistance will be prompted to purchase a code, which is something they have already paid for in their course fees. Please remind your students to access IncludED content through Class Sessions and let them know that the purchase of any additional materials is unnecessary. You may hide the Pearson link on the Communication and Tools page in order to help avoid confusion.
Systems Information
The Certification & Assessment Scheduling System will be unavailable between 7 am and 8 am on Friday, Feb. 12th.
Banner will be unavailable on Sunday, Feb. 14th from 5 am until 11:30 am.
Tip of the Week!
Having problems accessing Blackboard or one of the Blackboard tools? Have students reporting Blackboard problems? A quick way to tell whether there are issues with Blackboard is to check the Blackboard Services Status page:
http://status.blackboard.com/
This page shows the current status of many systems, including Blackboard Collaborate and Blackboard IM. Ivy Tech's Blackboard System is listed as Learn - Managed Hosting.
Clicking on the title of the service brings up a list of current and past issues going back one year or more.
Tutor.com Update
During the month of January, the Lafayette region saw 249 students use the Tutor.com service through Blackboard, once again the second highest usage numbers in the state. Kokomo saw an additional 58 students using the service.
Thank you to all faculty who are continuing to share this valuable service with your students! Please note that students are now being limited to 15 hours of tutoring per semester.
Systems Information
Last Friday's internet outage at the Lafayette and Monticello campuses was resolved by approximately 10:15 pm, Friday, January 29th.
Blackboard Instant Messenger (BbIM) was down system wide on Monday, Feb. 1st.
