(Apologies for long answer - still don't think it covers all eventualities
- give me a call if you want to follow some of it up.)
Carol, I've shifted this every year so far, and not necessarily come up
with an ideal answer. My general line now is probably that if an
individual wants to work on a course, then they can have it (see caveats
below) or I create them new on mass when I do rollover in the summer. I've
gradually moved the start of rollover back from during August to the
beginning of August, tothe middle of July, to last year where I began
changes the week after exams finished, on the 7th of June. This wasfor
several reasons, to catch staff before they went on holiday, to give as
much time as possible to do everything, and to ensure staff are aware that
this doesn't happen by magic - they have to provide information
occasionally. Also that increasingly, staff now put pre-reading materials
on Bb during the summer, and the students look for it - it they're going
to be that keen, who am I to stop them?!
Things to be aware of:
Our 'live' modules are simply the module code, eg ANTH1011 - no year
identifier, this is to pick up data from Banner for enrollment. I add the
year tag for the year just finished in rollover. If you do the
opposite,and tag the courseID to start with, this isn't a problem, but I
can't create an empty ANTH1011 for someone if one is already in use.
Some courses don't have a code assigned until quite late on - this means
that if you want to start working on one, youmay need to remember to copy
it at a later date to give it a 'correct' ID
However, if you're working in basic and have no real worry about what and
why you identify your courseIDs, then I'd suggest you do a batch create
around Easter - or whenever you know what the courses will be, but don't
necessarily enrol academics until they ask or until a date towards/at the
end of the teaching period. Especially if the courses are created
unavailable, noone has to be confused by seeing two until necessary.
More things to think about (sorry)
What you are going to do about rollover - if you're talking about new new
courses, you can do a batch or create them for individulas when they ask.
But what are you going to do about existing courses? Are you going to keep
them as archives, are you going to copy them complete, or ar you going to
create all new and expect staff to copy in materials fromlast year's
courses themselves? Because if you start copying, you probably want to
leave it until teaching has finished, whereas the easy option for you is
to create blank courses and let staff worry about the content they want.
Then you can do it as early as you like.
Welcome to the world of rollover - there's no right answer, and I'm sure
others will offer their versions shortly. It doesn't get any easier eith
enterprise, despite the extra tools: I haven't begun to figure out how I'm
going to improve on the process here this year yet.
Kate
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kate Boardman
Learning Technologies Team ~ College Tutor (History)
Information Technology Service ~ Hatfield College
University of Durham DH1 3LE ~ North Bailey, Durham DH1 3RQ
Direct Tel: 0191 334 2778 ~
Email: [log in to unmask] ~ Post: SCR, Hatfield College
WWW: http://www.dur.ac.uk/k.l.boardman ~ Mobile: 07990 645 948
On Thu, 26 Feb 2004, Carol Baker wrote:
> Could I have some views on when is the best time to create the courses for
> the next academic year. We will be completing our first complete academic
> year this summer and as Blackboard is not part of a MLE I will be creating
> next year’s courses myself. At the moment I have had some requests for
> Easter but I am concerned that staff that have only just started using
> Blackboard will be thrown if they see next year’s courses appearing at this
> date. What do others think?
>
> Carol Baker
> VLE Administrator
> Nescot
>
>
|