Fall 2009 Faculty News

Welcome Back to the Fall 2009 Semester!

Faculty,
Greetings to you all!  We in OLAT are excited for the new semester to begin and have a few helpful tips for you to get the new semester off to a great start:

Updating Courses in BlueLine!

• BlueLine Upgrade
  • BlueLine was upgraded early this summer.  The new site is https://blueline.creighton.edu  
  • You must be using IE7 or Firefox 2.X in order to have full functionality of BlueLine.  IE8 does not function correctly; if you have installed IE8, please plan on using Firefox as a browser, or contact the OLAT service desk to have IE8 uninstalled.
  • Along with the upgrade, cookies and cache must be cleared out of your preferred browser to prevent any errors from occurring.  Please contact the OLAT Service Desk for assistance.
• Editing Courses for Fall
  • The current site is the 200970_C section. 
  • Please make all changes in this site as necessary. 
  • If you need assistance, please contact Alynne, Bette or Leandrea.
• Rosters 
  • Course are now cross listed if applicable.  What does this mean for faculty?
  • Eliminates the need to merge and copy courses, as was done previously.
  • All students are being taught in one site, meaning faculty only maintain one site!
  • Rosters are updated nightly, eliminating the need to manually enroll late registered students 
  • Teams will still remain the same, designating who is a campus and who is a distance student. 
• Learning Object Repository (LOR) 
  • Remember to update your content in the repository if necessary.
  • To update content in the LOR:
    • Go to the course LOR 
    • Locate the document 
    • Mouse over the document and click on Utilities 
    • Click on Re-upload File 
    • Browse to the updated file on your computer (Note: please change the name of the updated file before uploading – i.e. change Introduction_8_08 to Instroduction_8_09.  This is more effective in assuring the re-upload process)
    • Leave the title the same and the file type on AutoDetect 
    • Click on Upload file 
    • The updated file will override the previous version in all its locations in the sit. 
    • To verify that the file has been overwritten, go to the course Lesson folder and click on the file.  You will see the new file name if the file re-uploaded correctly. 
  • Please contact Alynne, Bette, or Leandrea for assistance. 
• Enabling Courses 
  • Courses for second and third year students being August 19th.  Please enable your course no later than this date, no sooner than August 17th. 
• Echo Lecture Capture Schedule (if applicable) 
  • The Echo schedule is set to capture every session of your course. 
  • When scheduling lectures/exams/no meetings, please send any exceptions to the schedule to Alynne or Bette so the classroom capture can be set accordingly! 
  • Remember, if you change rooms or times, we will still need to be notified to ensure the class is captured.

 What’s New in Technology?

• Apreso becomes ECHO360
  • Over the summer all Apreso systems were upgraded to new ECHO 360 technology. This upgrade moved from an older computer based system to an appliance “pizza box” system with server side processing. The look and feel of the software side of the system is maintained with a few extra bells and whistles that allow for ease of use and editing. Please look for updates in the near future regarding the editing capabilities from the Division of eLearning.
• New Technology Tools
  • The new Tablet computers from Fujitsu shipped with a 1.3MP WebCAM and a larger screen than previous models. The Tablets will be distributed to first year Rx, POTD, OT and PT students. Third year Rx students will receive new DELL E6400 systems along with an 8GB (2nd Generation) iPOD Touch during their refresh sessions in July and August.

What’s New in Courses?

• Schedule page 
  • Based on feedback from students this summer, we are very excited to announce a schedule page has been incorporated in to the course site. 
  • This is a replacement for the Table of Contents in FrontPage courses.  This page will be linked from the course home page and will give the students a general overview of the course, with links to topics and assignments allow for easy editing by faculty. 
• Mentors (if applicable) 
  • We heard from students this summer some were unclear about the role of the mentors in their courses. 
  • We have implemented a “Mentor Nugget” on the Resources page that will include the name, contact information, faculty expectations of the mentor and brief biography. 
  • If you would like to know how to edit this information, please contact Alynne or Bette. 
• Reporting Grades 
  • As easy and simple as 1-2-3!  
  • OLAT will send out more information as reporting for mid-term and final grades comes closer 
• Web Conferencing 
  • The incorporation of Wimba into your BlueLine course site allows for conferencing to be done within a course site, creating an environment for both faculty and students to collaborate in without having to set up individual sessions. 
  • Wimba is an intuitive interface that is easy to transition in to and is able to include video of the participants. 
  • Please contact Anne for an individual tutorial on this exciting too

Alynne, Anne, Bette and Leandrea will be here gearing up for a smooth start to the fall semester.  Please do let us know if you have any questions!

 Contact Information: