CIT Events

Customized Professional Development

One-on-One consultations are available to all faculty by appointment. These customized, one-on-one professional development sessions can be the answer to your faculty technology development and instructional support needs.

• all areas of Blackboard explored
• apply technologies to meet your course learning objectives
• Instructional Design Services
• getting started with Kaltura and Kaltura Capture

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Accessibility Made Easy: Blackboard Ally and Microsoft's Accessibility Checker

This workshop introduces Blackboard Ally, a built-in accessibility tool and Microsoft's Accessibility Checker to assist you in making your course and course content accessible for all students.

• see accessibility scores – clear indicators will show you how accessible each file in your course is
• receive step-by-step guidance – how to fix common accessibility issues directly within Blackboard
• learn best practices – for creating and sharing content that supports all learners, including those using screen readers or other assistive technologies
• alternative formats

Setting Up Your Overall Grade

Setting up the overall grade in Blackboard Ultra is a straightforward process that helps you provide students with a clear view of their academic progress. Customize the display options to ensure the overall grade is presented in a way that aligns with your grading policy. Once configured, the overall grade column will automatically update as you enter grades, giving students real-time insights into their performance. Topics include:

• Creating/Applying custom categories to gradable items
• Setting up the Overall Grade
• Setting up the Final Grade Round-up gradable item
• Setting up the Final Grade Letter calculation gradable item

Kaltura Media Gallery - Creating a Playlist

Discover how to add your Kaltura videos to a playlist and place it in your Blackboard course. Topics include:

• Finding the Media Gallery
• Making a Playlist
• Adding video to the Playlist
• Reordering the videos in the Playlist
• Embedding the Playlist in your course
• Deleting Content from the Media Gallery

Ways to Pull Questions From a Question Bank

Learn how to efficiently create tests by reusing questions from question banks or using question pools that randomly select a specific number of questions from the question bank. Topics covered include:

• Creating Question Banks
• Ways to add questions to question banks
• Creating a test
• Using the Reuse question option to select specific questions from the question bank to be added to the test
• Using the Question pool option to randomly display a pre-determined number of questions from a question bank

Ways to Leverage the Release Conditions

Discover how to effectively utilize the release conditions feature to distribute course content and assessments to students. Topics include:

• Releasing information/assessments based on Date/Time
• Releasing information/assessments based on Groups
• Releasing information/assessments based on an attempt from a specific assignment or test
• Releasing information/assessments based on performance on a specific assignment or test 

Utilizing AI Design Assistant to Reduce Workload

Discover ways to utilize the AI Design Assistant to help you reduce your workload when building your Blackboard course. Topics include:

• Utilizing AI to generate learning modules
• Utilizing AI to create assignments
• Utilizing AI to generate rubrics for your assessments
• Utilizing AI to create questions within a test
• Utilizing AI to create discussions
• Utilizing AI to create journals
• Utilizing the AI Conversation tool to assist students preparing for a topic or scenario

Getting Started with Blackboard Ultra

New to Blackboard and need to get your course up and running or do you need to learn the Ultra Course View? These professional learning webinars will be made up of demonstrations, lectures and live Q&A to begin building your Fall 2024 course(s) in Bb Ultra course view… topics that will be covered include:

• Navigate the Ultra course view
• Course Design methods based upon your teaching style and consistent with your syllabus
• Organizing, building, and managing course content based on pedagogical best practices:
  • Ways to bring in content
  • Upload a Syllabus file
  • Add a link to the syllabus
  • Use the New Document page
  • Folders vs Learning Module
• Going over Student Preview mode
• Communicating with students:
  • Announcements
  • Messages
  • Course Schedule

Assignments, Inline Grading & Rubrics

Learn how to use the Assignments tool to efficiently create assignments that assess students in a variety of meaningful ways and decide on the best way to present the assignments you create. This webinar will include the following topics:

• Create/Deploy Assignment
• Attaching Blackboard Rubric to the Assignment
• Enable SafeAssign
• See how students submit to an assignment
• Accessing Students 1st and 2nd Submissions
• Insert Inline annotation
• Audio/Video Feedback for students
• Post Grades
• See how students access Grade and Feedback

Creating Online Tests/Respondus LockDown Browser

Learn how to use the Test tool to efficiently create online tests that assess students in a variety of meaningful ways and decide on the best way to present the tests you create. Respondus LockDown Browser is a custom browser that locks down the testing environment within Blackboard. When LockDown Browser is required for an online exam, students are unable to print, copy, visit other websites, or access other applications. Topics will include:

• Create and deploy a Test
• Go through the Test Options
• Modify an existing question and add image to a question
• Modify the question points
• Setting up Student Accommodations and Exceptions
• Using Question Banks and Question Pools
• Providing Feedback and Grading Test Questions
• Enable Repondus Lockdown Browser
• Brief discussion on using Response test generator to create tests and import into your Blackboard course

Mastering the Gradebook

This webinar provides a comprehensive introduction to the gradebook. Use this valuable tool to assist you in understanding student progress and to make informed decisions on how to improve educational performance. This workshop assumes you are already familiar with Assignments, Tests, and other Blackboard tools. This webinar will cover the following topics:

• Navigating the Grade Center
• Go over some housekeeping items
• Viewing Grade History and Attempt Logs
• Configuring the Gradebook Settings
• Configuring your Letter Schema
• Creating and using categories to group related columns together and organize the data
• Adding an Average Calculation
• Adding in Manual Items (Columns)
• Entering in Manual Grades
• Ways to Grade/Posting Grades
• Configuring the Overall Grade Calculations by Weight
• Modifying the Overall Grade Setting
• Adding in the Final Grade Letter Total Calculation
• Setting up the Grade Notations

Communicating with Students

This webinar will show you different ways to communicate and interact with your students. Topics will include:

• Ultra Base Navigation - Activity
• Announcements
• Messages
• Discussions
• Conversation
• AI Conversation
• Journal
• Course Schedule

Organizing Content into Manageable Sections

Does your current course menu have a lot components and is very long? Are you looking to consolidate your course menu and rethink how to organize your course material in the best interest of your students? Then this would be a good session to attend. Topics that will be covered include:

• ways to store your course content - folders vs learning modules
• ways to organize (chunk) your course material in more manageable sections
• how to place your manageable sections in sequential order

Kaltura - Upload and Use Media Content in Blackboard

Kaltura is RIC's media streaming server. This webinar will show you how to upload media to your Kaltura account and link said videos within your Blackboard course. Topics will include:

• Uploading media to your Kaltura My Media
• Adding a YouTube video to your Kaltura My Media
• Recording video with Express Capture (webcam in a browser) in Kaltura My Media
• Recording video with Kaltura Capture in Kaltura My Media
• Request Professional Closed Captions for your video
• Embed your video in your Blackboard course
• Learn how to create playlists
• Review updates to the media player
• Learn how to use Analytics in Kaltura My Media

Respondus LockDown Browser

Respondus LockDown Browser is a custom browser that locks down the testing environment within Blackboard. When LockDown Browser is required for an online exam, students are unable to print, copy, visit other websites, or access other applications. This workshop will cover the following topics:

• Enabling LockDown Browser on specific tests in a Bb course
• Setting up LockDown Browser's advanced settings
• Student experience when taking a test with Lockdown Browser

Ally and Accessibility in Blackboard

Learn how to make your Blackboard courses accessible with Bb's Ally tool. See accessibility scores for uploaded files within your courses and learn how to make your files more accessible with simple, step-by-step instructions from within your course. Also, learn about the alternative formats Ally automatically creates when you upload files to your courses. Ally checks the following file types:

• Microsoft Office (Word and PowerPoint)
• PDF's
• images
• uploaded HTML files

RIC Fix Your Content Day

This will be a great opportunity to get a jumpstart on making sure your Blackboard courses are meeting the new accessibility regulations starting on April 24th. Together we'll aim to fix as many accessibility issues as possible in Blackboard using Anthology Ally. Every fix, big or small helps create a more inclusive learning environment for all RIC students.