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Migration Update – January 16th

Posted by on Friday, January 16, 2015 in Migration 2014.

The migration from OAK to Blackboard managed hosting is nearly complete. Most courses from Fall 2013 to present are now available in Blackboard, as are all organizations. Following is a list of outstanding issues resulting from the migration:

  • Large Courses: OAK courses over 1GB in size are currently being migrated to Blackboard. This batch of courses is small in number (less than 500), but is our largest batch of courses to be migrated in terms of sheer size. Expect to see these courses available in Blackboard by the last week of January.
  • Grades-Only Courses: Some OAK courses contained no content other than student grades. These courses weren’t migrated in December, but they are being migrated now, as part of the “large courses” batch.
  • SafeAssign: Blackboard’s plagiarism detection tool, SafeAssign, is available to run new reports on student papers. Older reports generated by the tool in OAK are not yet available, but they should be in Blackboard by the end of January.
  • Turning Technologies: The Blackboard registration tool for Turning Technologies (the classroom response system used at Vanderbilt) is available, but isn’t completely functional. Specifically, using the tool to email students who haven’t registered their clickers does not work. We’re investigating this issue.
  • Blackboard Mobile: The mobile app Blackboard provides for iOS, Android, etc., does not currently connect to the new Vanderbilt Blackboard system. We’re investigating this issue.
  • Course Roles: When someone with a custom course role (a librarian, for instance) performs a course copy, an error results. We’re investigating this issue.
  • Course Statistics: There seems to be a discrepancy between course access statistics for some courses between OAK and Blackboard. We’re investigating this issue.

If you have questions about the migration from OAK to Blackboard or other questions about the use of Blackboard, please email blackboard@vanderbilt.edu. Staff from VUIT and EMOS (Enrollment Management) are monitoring this email account and typically respond within 24 hours.

With migration to Blackboard managed hosting nearly complete, we’re now turning our attention to the Summer 2015 upgrade. The plan is to upgrade to a more recent version of Blackboard, which will bring a new user interface and likely new features. Look for more information on this process, including requests for input, later in the spring semester.