The Centre for Academic Excellence is piloting the release of a quarterly digest to share updates or changes to core technologies used for teaching and learning at Niagara College. The digest was created to provide faculty with information and resources to support their use of educational technologies.
Blackboard Updates
Upcoming Blackboard Course Site and Collaborate Ultra recording archiving dates
As part of the College’s course archiving policy, Blackboard courses and associated Collaborate Ultra recordings with a term end date greater than 395 days old (one year plus 30 days) will be archived on the following dates.
- Courses from term Spring 2021 will be disabled and archived on Sept 19th, 2022.
- Courses from term Fall 2021 will be disabled and archived on Jan 16th, 2023.
The change is needed to ensure that the College complies with the storage space limits defined in its agreement with Blackboard. Future archiving dates can be found on the ITS website along with support resources to help you preserve course information and course recordings.
Added option to Blackboard Annotate “undo” and “redo” capability
Many instructors enjoy the efficiency and effectiveness of using Blackboard Annotate when grading assignments with file submissions. With the addition of an “undo” and “redo” option, any instructor may undo a change and then if inclined, redo it. These added options can be found on the Blackboard annotate bar (see below). Please note, “undo” and “redo” will not apply to comments. All other annotations are included for this capability.
Unified Blackboard App
In the past Blackboard offered two separate mobile apps for engaging with courses: the Blackboard App (designed for student use) and the Blackboard Instructor App. This two-app system sometimes caused confusion for users. Blackboard has recently consolidated the two apps into a single app for both instructors and students. The user experience will change based on the user’s role within a course.
Support for the Blackboard Instructor iOS and Android apps ends in September 2022. If you currently use the Blackboard Instructor app, you should download the new Blackboard app for iOS or Android.
File Upload Indicator
Blackboard has added a file upload indicator to the following pages: Assignment Submission, Content Item, Discussion Board Thread or Reply, and SCORM. This indicator (three blinking dots) is meant to provide feedback to a user that the upload process is underway. You may, for example, see three blinking dots at the bottom of the page when uploading a file to a content area. Once the upload is complete, Blackboard will automatically open a new page and indicate whether the upload was successful or unsuccessful.
Blackboard Collaborate Ultra
Live data insights on engagement during the session
While teaching a session, it can be challenging for instructors to deliver the content, facilitate conversations, and be on top of the interest the attendees are showing.
The Engagement Insights Panel is a tool companion for moderators that shows, with data, how the audience is engaging while the session is occurring. This tool can help moderators reflect on actions that may help keep or improve the engagement of a session. Faculty can see at-a-glance the most representative student interactions, such as the number of hands raised and the number of chat messages sent. To learn more about the types of data collected and displayed, please review this Blackboard Help webpage that describes Session Engagement Insights.
Insights on recording usage
Data analytics from student interactions in Blackboard courses can inform faculty decisions around course delivery.
With the new Recording Usage tab, faculty will get a sense of how their students are engaging with Collaborate Ultra recordings. The recording usage tab allows instructors to see how many students have watched and downloaded recordings, as well as the last time a recording was viewed or downloaded.
The Recording usage tab is only available to course instructors and is conveniently located on the same Collaborate Ultra page where you can access saved recordings (See below).
Microsoft 365
Faculty invited to explore early access preview of new version of Microsoft Stream
A new version of Microsoft Stream is now available for early preview with added functionalities for video. The current version of Stream will now be known as Microsoft Stream or Stream (Classic) and the new version will be known as Microsoft Stream Preview or Stream (on SharePoint).
To learn more about specific features that are currently available and what updates are expected from Microsoft, please view the Stream Preview information on the ITS website.
We invite you to evaluate Stream Preview to determine if the current feature set meets your needs. Microsoft is building a migration tool and once it is ready, a retirement date will be set for the current Stream service. Further information on the migration of existing videos to the new platform and the retirement of Stream will be coming in future. For additional support on working with Stream Preview, please contact the Centre for Academic Excellence at [email protected].
Teams Meetings: Co-organizer Meeting Role
After you’ve invited people to your Teams meeting, you can add up to 10 co-organizers to help manage your meeting. Co-organizers are displayed as additional organizers in the meeting participant list and have most of the capabilities of the meeting organizer. Please see the chart below for more detailed specifics around the capabilities of co-organizers in Teams meetings.
| Co-organizers can: | Co-organizers can’t: |
| Access and change meeting options | Manage the meeting recording |
| Become a breakout room manager | Remove or change the meeting organizer’s role |
| Bypass the lobby | Change meeting options during channel meetings. |
| Admit people from the lobby during a meeting | |
| Lock the meeting | |
| Present content | |
| Change another participant’s meeting role | |
| End the meeting for all |
To learn more about adding co-organizers to your Teams meetings, please view this Teams co-organizer support page. Note, co-organizers can also be added to Teams meetings created through the Outlook calendar.
Presenter Modes
With the addition of presenter modes for the downloaded Teams app, faculty and staff can choose to appear alongside screensharing visuals. By using a presenter mode such as Standout, Side-by-side, or Reporter in a Teams meeting, you become a more engaging and integral part of your presentation. In this scenario, you can choose to guide an audience along with visual cues or increase student engaged through the presence of your video. To learn more about utilizing presenter modes while screen sharing in your Teams meetings, please review this Microsoft presenter modes support page.
Adjust Brightness video filter
Enhance the quality of your video feed when lighting is poor by turning on the Adjust Brightness filter in Device Settings before joining, or during a Teams meeting. The user’s images will be seen in more detail and with greater contrast during “video-on” classroom lessons, even in low-light environments.
New Browser support for Modern Meetings and Calling
Teams is excited to announce that their Modern Meeting and Calling experiences will now be available in Chrome and Edge web browsers, including improved pre-join, dynamic view, and an updated control bar. Please review the bullet points below for more details around service improvements for Chrome and Edge browsers.
- Dynamic View: Incorporate modern meeting experiences in the Teams browser client.
- Meeting and Call Control toolbars: The toolbar is now positioned at the top of the window, just as it is in the desktop client.
- Switch views during a meeting: Choose between Large Gallery, Together Mode, and Gallery at Top.
- 2×2 Video: View 4 participants at a time in the Teams web client by default (up to 49 if in Large Gallery).
- Share sound from your computer audio: Share sound while you’re sharing content in a meeting. This can be especially helpful if you’re playing a video as part of a presentation, for example.
- Live Captions: Teams can detect what’s being said in a meeting and presents captions in real time.
- Transcription: Text appears alongside the meeting video or audio in real time.
- Background Scene Customization: Choose from a set of pre-defined professional, scenic, or fun backgrounds to place behind you in video chats.
- Apps for Meetings: Create more interactive, engaging, and productive meetings by incorporating your favorite apps.
Accessibility Updates
Newly launched NC Accessibility Hub!
The NC Accessibility Hub is a new resource that empowers you with the information you need to improve the accessibility of your communications, course materials, and learning experiences. With over 55 articles, checklists, and videos that were developed for Niagara staff and faculty by Niagara staff and faculty, the Hub helps to simplify an essential aspect of effective teaching – creating learning opportunities that are fully accessible to the broadest possible group of people. If you have any questions about integrating this resource into your course site, feel free to email [email protected].
Quality and accessibility improvements for math formulas (Blackboard)
Faculty often use math formulas in science, technology, and math courses. In the past, formulas might render slowly or lose quality when zoomed. Now, Blackboard will render math formulas as images in Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format. This allows users to zoom in or enlarge formula images without losing quality. This change also improves accessibility for users with low vision.
Questions and Feedback
If you have any questions about how these updates may affect your Fall course, do not hesitate to reach out to the Centre for Academic Excellence. Email us at [email protected] or book an online consultation. As always, we are very interested in hearing your feedback. Please share any recommendations for the digest through this survey link.