The following Policies and Procedures provide information on how Blackboard is supported at Cal Poly Pomona:

Course Procedures	Course Site Creation (NEW)
	Course Archive and Deletion (NEW)
	Copy Course (NEW)
	Course Restore (NEW)
	Recycle Course
	Course Quota (NEW)
User Policies	Bronco Accounts
	Course Enrollment
	Manual Enrollment
	Guest and Affiliate Accounts
	Open University Students
	Remove Users
Browser	Browser and Time Out Issues

 

 

Course Procedures

Course Site Creation (NEW)

All new courses offered in BroncoDirect will be provided with a new course site in Blackboard automatically every quarter. Faculty will not need to fill out a “Course Request Form” to request new course anymore.

However, faculty will still need to fill out the “Course Request Form” to:

• Copy course content from previous quarters
  Faculty should indicate “Copy Course” for the request type.

The process will take up to two business days.

 

Course Archive and Deletion NEW

All active current courses archived at the end of every quarter (generally right after grades are due). The archive, that includes data like grade records, students’ assignment files, discussion board messages, and other class online activity data, is available to be restored at anytime.
Courses will remain on the Blackboard server for 12 months from the conclusion of the quarter and then be removed (e.g. Spring 2006 will be deleted in June 2007), Please note that the courses in Blackboard version 6 were not be moved to Blackboard version 7 automatically. Please see course restore for information on how to request moving courses from Blackboard version 6 to Blackboard version 7.
The 12 month time frame is for three reasons:

1. Easy access to course material that are being taught again,
2. Allow for easy access to Blackboard grades for grade appeals,
3. Allow students to complete courses with incomplete grade at the faculty members discretion..

LMS Support will notify faculty before the scheduled quarterly maintenance. If faculty wish to keep old courses, please contact LMS Support. It is recommended that faculty create a personal backup or archive of each course from 12 months or older. The tutorial of how to create a personal course backup or archive can be found here..

 

Copy Course (NEW)

Faculty can copy material from prior courses. To copy course materials from a prior course, that has not been archived, to a new course site, there are two options:

• Faculty do the course copy process from the Control Panel page.
  In Blackboard, after a new course site has been set up, faculty should go into the OLD course and use the "Copy Course" feature in the Control Panel. The tutorial of how to copy some contents from one course site into another is available here.
• Faculty ask us to do the course copy.
  If faculty would like us to copy their previous course materials, faculty should use the course request form and indicate “Copy Course” for the request type. The process will take up to two business days.

To copy course materials from a prior course that has been archived and deleted, faculty will use the course restore form to restore the deleted course, and perform one of the two options above.

 

Course Restore (NEW)

There are two ways to restore old courses that have been deleted during quarterly maintenance. LMS administrators can restore the course archive from our system that is kept on a backup tape or from faculty's personal backup or archive file.

1. Course request from our system that is kept on a backup tape at anytime, the faculty can request through a course restore form. The form should indicate "System" for archive type. The process will take up to two business days.

Course request from faculty personal backup or archive file at anytime, faculty can request through a course restore form. The form should indicate "Personal" for archive type. Once the form submission has been submitted, the faculty must bring or email the zip archive file to LMS Support immediately. The LMS support will open the archive zip file through an administrative access. It will take up to 24 hours after the zip archive file has been received.

 

Recycle Course

Recycle Course is prohibited by the LMS Administrator. If faculty wish to use the same contents and settings from a prior course, please follow the Course Site Creation procedure or Copy Course procedure.

 

Course Quota (NEW)

Each course will receive 50 MB course quota by default. This course quota is used to accommodate students’ assignments, test, and files. Each faculty member has an addition 20 MB in the Content Collection. To make best use of space, we recommend faculty to use the space in the Content Collection to store the course files. From a Blackboard course, faculty will use the option of “Link to Content Collection” instead of “Attach Local File”. Depend on individual faculty’s need, LMS Support can increase the quota in Content Collection. The LMS Support team already developed brief tutorials on how to use Content Collection and how to create a link to Content Collection.

Also, for download speed, it's recommended to upload large media files, such as audio and video files, into a different server such as streaming server or Connect server. In Blackboard, faculty can create an external link directed to the server side.

 

User Policies

Bronco Accounts

All Cal Poly Pomona faculty, staff and students have accounts to Blackboard with their BroncoName and BroncoPassword. This is the same username and password that individuals use for BroncoDirect and CPP email.  
Users login to Blackboard through https://blackboard.csupomona.edu/.

Only those who have Cal Poly valid username (and Bronco account in the system) can access LMS, however see "Guest accounts" for more information.

 

Course Enrollment

On the first day after quarterly maintenance has been completed, all students who have enrolled through BroncoDirect will be added into Blackboard courses for the upcoming quarter. Enrollment is synchronized daily between 7:00 am to 8:00 am for the remainder of the quarter. 

 

Manual Enrollment

Faculty will manually enroll users who are not registered through BroncoDirect, such as, teacher assistant(s), open university student(s), guest consultant(s), guest lecturer(s) that should be added with a teacher assistant role, and guest student(s). If the person already has a Bronco username, faculty can directly add him/her from control panel access. The faculty can follow the instructions on how to manually enroll a user.
By default, the user that has been added manually will receive a student role. The LMS Support team already developed a tutorial on how to modify a user’s role.

If the person does not have Cal Poly valid username, please see "Guest Accounts."
Also, for more information on open university students, please see “Open University Students”

 

Guest and Affiliate Accounts

Affiliates are those who do not have Bronco ID number, such as guest lecturer(s) from other universities, guest consultant(s) from related companies, and guest student(s). The guest or affiliate must have a valid reason for having an account and follow these procedures:

1. A faculty member or organization leader who needs a Guest Account will prompt the guest to go to the website containing detailed policies procedures regarding Blackboard guest account.
2. They will be presented with an intro and a Usage policy.
3. They must fill out a form with their correct information and accept the usage policy.
4. Upon the form submission, the guest will receive an immediate email confirmation and the sponsor will receive an immediate email to authorize the guest account creation.
5. Once it's authorized, the guest account will be created in the Blackboard system within an hour.
6. The user will receive another email with an instruction how to login to Blackboard.
7. The sponsor will be informed via email that the guest be manually added into the course or organization.

Please visit the website that contains the detailed policy regarding Blackboard guest account to find the form.

 

Open University Students

Once an open university student receive a Bronco username and ID, they need to claim the account. The Help Desk provided instructions on how to claim a Bronco account.

After the Bronco account has been claimed or activated, the student will be in Blackboard's user global database in 24 to 48 hours. The faculty member needs to add or enroll the student manually to the Blackboard course.

 

Remove Users

A Remove Users tool is available to user with an instructor role and a leader role. When a user is removed from a course all of the information associated with the user (such as, Gradebook information, Drop Box files) is removed.  Therefore, be sure to remove the proper user you wish.  

 

Browser

Browser and Time Out Issues

Blackboard system is set to have a browser time out at TWO Hour, which means, that activities that take longer than two hour to complete need to be broken into multiple sections to ensure that users submit something to the system within an hour. For example, a test that has more than 50 multiple choice (or other type) of questions and is designed to be taken more than 90 minutes, must have more than one section. If all questions are on one page and the student is working on it, after two hour if the student submits the test, they may experience an error and be unable to submit the test. Having the users to log out and log in back before starting the test may also reduce the error.