Friday, August 31, 2007

Grade Rosters Unavailable

The server, where the grade rosters sit (outside of Vista), will be down this morning for maintenance. It should be back up early this afternoon. We apologize for any inconvenience this causes. This is NOT the Vista grade book and is not related to the recent Bb troubles and it will not impact Vista.

Thanks!
John

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Vista Update 082907


Hey Everyone- This note is going up on Blackboard Vista today:

Attention Students and Faculty: Temporary Service Outages

The Vista System will be taken down and brought back up daily at 2 PM, 8 PM and 4 AM for approximately ten minutes.

BlackBoard has identified the core issues with the recent latency in the performance. The reboot will be scheduled as a part of a short-term solution until we can schedule a software upgrade.

We apologize for this inconvenience. Please schedule your online activities around these daily system outages.
The splash page will be up during the brief downtimes and will include information about the duration of the down time.


What the cluster reboot does is reset all of the connections between the application servers (we have 8) and the database. Each server has 100 (rising to 125 later today) connections available. Apparently these are not being released properly once the current request has been processed. Re-booting the entire cluster (all 8 application servers and the database) resets these connections (releases them really) and allows performance to return to normal levels.


The root cause of the bottleneck is problems with the way Web Logic is communicating with the database server. The upgrade to application pack 2 includes an upgrade from Web Logic version 8 to version 9, which does include general fixes for this sort of problem. We will probably try to push that upgrade forward from the currently scheduled weekend (September 22-26), but have to complete some additional testing first. As soon as I have more solid information I will pass it on to you.


Thanks for all of the hard work! Students seem to be in their classes and happy with them. We are receiving very few support calls at this time and the support desk (Deb Michel) has been able to keep up with the calls and emails all week.


Lisa

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Vista Update

We wanted to give you another update on Blackboard performance this afternoon. We are continuing to see some slow response times on and off throughout the day. This is a different problem from yesterday, and does appear to be application related as a result of very heavy use. We are working with Blackboard on possible solutions, one of which is to upgrade to AP2 sooner than our planned Sep 22 upgrade date. AP2 improves database performance, garbage collection, and also fixes a stubborn issue with Web-logic. We have authorized ASP to perform the upgrade on our QA server immediately so we will have an accurate estimate of the time needed for the upgrade. We have not discussed this with LTC yet, and will wait until we have a conference call with ASP at 6:30 this evening.
We realize (and have communicated to BB) that this is directly affecting courses system-wide, and will do whatever it takes to stabilize the system.

Lisa and Rhonda

Faculty Conference - Call for Presenters

Hi Everyone-

Our English Program Chair is looking for presenters for a panel on plagiarism for the faculty conference:

Subject: Plagiarism and Authorship at Faculty Conference

Hello everyone,
In planning this year's CCCOnline faculty conference, we thought it important to offer a session on the issues surrounding plagiarism. As most instructors are aware, the problems with plagiarism and academic integrity are somewhat amplified in the online world, where information is more readily available and where copyright becomes extremely confusing to students. In this session, we hope to explore some methods for teaching about plagiarism, for teaching about authorship, and for coming at plagiarism with a positive, constructive, trusting approach.

As the chair for this session, I am planning a panel presentation to allow for several different perspectives on the issues at hand. I am looking for two instructors from any discipline who have insights and/or stories to share on the topic of plagiarism. Each presenter on the panel will have 5-7 minutes to present their initial thoughts, followed by a general discussion with the audience aimed at building a constructive response to plagiarism.

If you are interested, please contact me before the end of the day on Friday (August 31) at olddogpaw@mac.com.

Thank you!

Best,
Sean

Sean Michael Law
Chair, English Department
Colorado Community Colleges Online
303-408-9730

"The highest justification of liberal education is that, by forming free and well-furnished minds, it prepares students to fashion for themselves a good life." - J.S. Mill

Thanks-
Lisa

Monday, August 27, 2007

Vista

Hi Everyone-

BB has made some configuration changes to their firewall that have speeded access to Vista up significantly. They are also planning some hardware changes around midnight our time that shouldn't cause us to be offline, but that may cause some slower response times for an hour or so. Once those are in place BB's expectations are that network response times should be back to normal for tomorrow.

That said, tomorrow is still the second day of classes for us and for many of the colleges, so don't expect to see incredible jet-like speeds tomorrow. We had emailed all of our students and suggested they wait until tomorrow to log in if they were experiencing lengthy delays today. That will of course increase the load tomorrow.

We will update you on the results of this evening's configuration changes and tonight's hardware changes tomorrow. FWIW though, I was in doing some grading this evening and things are looking up just now.

best,
Lisa

Today's slowdowns on Vista

Hi Everyone-

I just talked with Jay Robertson, the VP for ASP hosting for Blackboard. He tells me that the network problem at the hosting center has been isolated to a problem with the firewall in the VA2 data center. Blackboard has escalated to the highest possible level with the firewall vendor.

BB will call me with any update and I will pass it on to you. Until then ..... don't make yourself crazy trying to get on today. Tomorrow is fine.

And note that the good news is -- this isn't a problem with Vista itself or our hardware. :^)

Lisa

Friday, August 24, 2007

Rosters, etc.

Hi Everyone!

The new term begins Monday. Enrollment is up. Vista has been stable for at least three days now. The student load went well this afternoon. All's right with the world. :^)

Frank Vazquez tells me he has the website set up for you to grab your student rosters and he students' external email addresses. You can access those at https://www.cccodevelopment.cccs.edu/roster/login.php using your S# and password (same as Vista). It would be great if you all happened to send your students a welcome email this weekend reminding them that they will be able to access the class beginning at noon on Monday.

Right now it looks like everything is lined up far a great start to the fall term on Monday! Have a great weekend!

best,
Lisa
(Photo is American Basin above Lake City, CO)

Thursday, August 23, 2007

Late Registration Policy

Hi Everyone-

Here's the note that went out to college registrars from John Schmahl:

From CCCOnline Director, John Schmahl.

We are going to try a little experiment this semester. Students who want to register late, after Thursday, August 23, will need to complete an Late Add agreement form, https://www.ccconline.org/students/late_registration/, acknowledging the potential risks of registering late. Once they submit this form, it will come to John and Roxanne, who will then add the student into the appropriate course in INB. Basically, we have found in looking over figures from the last couple of years that students who register late are at a slightly higher risk of being unsuccessful. However, the risk was not as great as we had thought. Therefore, we are trying this change to see if we can better accommodate those students who need to register but are unable to within the regular registration timeline. We will see what the impact of this at the end of the semester and decide whether to continue it or change it for Spring.

Again, students will still not be able to register via SSB after Thursday, August 23, but by completing the Late Add form, https://www.ccconline.org/students/late_registration/, we will add them through INB until Thursday, August 30.

Please contact me if you have any questions.

Thanks!

John H Schmahl
Director, Student Services
CCCOnline
john.schmahl@cccs.edu
1.800.801.5040
http://ccconline.org

We will also poll all of you at the end of the term to find out whether or not the form sets expectations appropriately. :^)

Overall fall 1 enrollment is up about 10% over this day last year. Fall 2 enrollment is up about 30% over this day last year. There are some oddities -- enrollment increases in some areas and decreases in others, so it's not consistent with our past growth trends. We are very happy to see growth again though! Last year was traumatic for all of us!

Thanks!
Lisa

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Thank you to Blackboard Hosting

Hi Everyone-

Last night we were down for about ten minutes. As long as Blackboard hosting services had to re-boot the cluster anyway they decided it was an appropriate moment to add two more application servers (brings us to 8). This morning we appear to be running much more quickly, so that seems to have helped.

I think you can expect some slowness Monday and Tuesday next week as the remaining 8 colleges start classes, but once those days pass we should be past the really tight spots.

We are still planning on upgrading to application pack 2 September 22nd, so please don't set due dates for Sept 22-24.

Thanks!

Lisa

Hybrid or Blended Class Teaching Tips


I Know a lot of you also teach on campus in face-to-face courses or in blended or hybrid courses. The Learning Technology Council put together a list of teaching tips for those classes that I have included below: Tips for Using Blackboard Effectively in Hybrid and Web-Enhanced Courses

  • Give your students an orientation to your course site on the first day of class and show them how to use all the tools they will need.
  • If your class meets online before they meet in class, try to communicate with students ahead of time by email or phone. You can also refer students to orientations available online and/or at local campuses.
  • Think about the outcomes you want and then think carefully about what activities should be online vs. face-to-face. How students accomplish the outcomes will guide your design. For example, activities that require hands-on involvement or require that students see each others' facial expressions need to be conducted during classroom hours, but you could help students prepare for and review those activities online. The online discussion board is a great place to have reflective discussions throughout the week, without the time constraints of the classroom.
  • Tie in face-to-face sessions with online discussions by collecting a list of topics that you want to cover next in the face-to-face session and vice versa.
  • Help students understand how the online and face-to-face components work together
Technology Tips for Improving Performance Accessing PowerPoints and Videos uses a lot of bandwidth, which can be a big drain on the system if a whole class tries to view them at the same time. If you plan to show a PowerPoint or Video in your classroom session, show them to the class from a CD or file downloaded to your computer. Do not have everyone in the class login and look at them in Blackboard at the same time.

Lisa

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Solution for Slowness

Hi Everyone-

Here's an update from David:

We had a phone call with BB today and covered several short and long term issues and goals. First, there is a team of DBA’s reviewing the behavior and performance of the Vista server. We should have their recommendations later today. Another action in regard to the current performance is to add another node with in the next 24hrs with a possibility of an additional one if needed.

Long term, we all know and agree to try to move to AP2 in the window we discussed, September 22. This is greatly needed to fix many of the issues that are affecting the performance of our bulging database.

Short term, we could get some improved performance if we could run garbage collection on Production. They have written a script and need to test this on the QA server first, then if that looks good, run it after hours on the Production server. Our concern is that we have our archives safe from previous terms. Toward this end, BB is setting up a third server and will clone Production there. Let me summarize the use and process of these three ASP servers:

  1. QA server: this will be cloned from Production;
    1. old terms (at least FA2006) will be deleted and garbage collection (GC) run here to test the script. This will probably occur on Monday.
    2. After GC is run, the AP2 upgrade will be run and evaluated, some time later next week.
  2. 3rd ASP server: this will contain a copy of all of our data on Production.
    1. If anything is lost at anytime over the next several weeks or months in making these adjustments, we will have a copy.
    2. We also have a copy on the Test server, but it is not available as yet, due to some technical problems that we work on in our spare time.
    3. In summary, we will have Fall 2006 and Spring 2007 in two places.
  3. Production
    1. If the GC script runs as expected on the QA server, they will do this after hours for several evenings on Production to remove deleted sections
    2. LTC needs to determine what Terms we can live without on the Production server, so that we can enhance our performance

i. Can we delete Fall 2006?

ii. Can we delete Spring 2007?

One point that one of the ASP managers made is that the first week of online school for all of their customers is the busiest time of the term, but many students either drop or become less active after the first week. He thought that we had some advantage in not having all the colleges start on the same day but rather staggering them.

In summary, we are working with the ASP on resolving the current issue by adding an application node, possibly making some adjustments to the database operations, per the DBA’s recommendations. We are also taking an extra measure to previous term data, and initiating a series of tests and processes that will – we believe – provide better performance and a more stable software in a few weeks.

David


Just to update you on college start dates: we are slow this week because 6 colleges started classes yesterday. 8 others, including us, start this coming Monday. Vista will certainly be slow Monday and Tuesday of next week just because of that, although the additional node will help. Please be patient and don't plan on a lot of heavy class work until after mid-week next week.

Thanks-
Lisa

Monday, August 20, 2007

Yes we were down

Hey Everyone-

We (Vista) were indeed down for an emergency re-boot at 5:00 pm today. We were back up again in about 20 minutes. 6 colleges started classes today, so that may account for the slow response times we were seeing from the system. More news as I have it.

Lisa

Oh the Places You'll Go!


Oh, the place you’ll go. . .and we hope you will go to your calendar right now and save September 28 so you can attend the CCCOnline Fall Faculty Conference: Oh, the Places You’ll Go!

The conference will run from 8:00 until 4:00 at Arapahoe Community College.
Tentative session topics include Web 2.0 (blogs, wikis, social networking, podcasting); Vista tips, tricks, tools, and questions; open source content/NROC; plagiarism prevention; and more. SMARTHINKING will join us for a session on tutoring services.

In addition, we’d like some feedback from you about your interest in a multi-session presentation on the Quality Matters project.
Quality Matters is a continuous improvement model for assessing and assuring the quality of online courses. For more information you can check out the QM website at http://www.qualitymatters.org/. If enough of you are interested, we will invite Ed Bowen to present a series of sessions on the QM model. Please email donna.welschmeyer@cccs.edu by Friday, August 25 if you would like to participate in this exciting workshop.

Monday, August 13, 2007

Blackboard Vista Scheduled Downtime - Sept. 22-Sept 24

Hi Everyone-

We (David and the Learning technology Council) have spent the past couple of months talking about when/how to schedule the upgrade to application pack 2.

We felt we needed to do quite a lot of testing before beginning the upgrade because it may take some time and we need to know we can roll back if necessary (as you may recall, we rolled back once after starting the last upgrade to application pack 1).
We have several steps scheduled now, but not completed. Because the fall term is beginning soon and many of you are working on your schedules we wanted to let you know of any impacts this may have on your schedules.

The upgrade is currently scheduled for Saturday September 22nd beginning at 1:00 pm. The window we have in place goes through Monday, September 24th at 1:00 pm. Please don't schedule any due dates for students within those days and times.


The decision to upgrade during that window is not final -- the final decision won't be made until Sept. 15th when testing is complete. I will let you know as soon as I know, but meanwhile please plan around those dates.


Thanks!
Lisa

Thursday, August 09, 2007

Last Day to Add a Class


Hi Everyone-

For years CCCOnline's last day for student's to add classes was the Friday before classes began. Last year we were forced to back that up to the Thursday before classes began (data loading issue).

While we have always said we never let in late students, in practice that hasn't been accurate. Some students did get to add a course the first day or three of the semester and some didn't -- it depended on their story and who they told it to.


So.... this year John Schmahl did some research around the success rates of students in relation to when they registered. It turned out that the students who register the last week of classes don't have a lower success rate than the students who register earlier. And when you look at the students who we allowed to add during the first week of classes --- no significant difference there either. (Success was defined as A,B, or C grade).


Given those results, we thought it was time to revise the late registration policy. Self-registration will still end on the Thursday before classes begin. Students who want to add after that will have to contact CCCOnline staff. We will go ahead and add those students through the first Thursday of classes, but we will also have them sign a late add acknowledgment form.


The form includes a few critical disclaimers. Among those: students need to order their required textbooks right away with overnight shipping. They need to pay their tuition bill within 24 hours. Students will need to catch up with the rest of the class immediately. And the all important "Faculty are not required or expected to allow late submission of assignments."


We will try this new version of our policy for a term and see if if causes complications. I don't really expect a sudden wave of late registrations as we will still try to talk students out of that. It should improve the consistency of treatment of students across staff member though and it makes sure students understand that they are responsible for catching up with a class they have started late.


best,

Lisa

(Picture is Elevenmile Reservoir, west of Colorado Springs)

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

Entering Summer Grades

Dear Faculty;

It’s that time of year again, the end of the semester and time to enter grades. Please follow the directions below to enter grades for your courses. If you have any questions regarding grades, please contact me (john.schmahl@cccs.edu)

All grades are due no later than Thursday, August 16, 2007.

Once you have submitted your grades, we will pull a daily report listing the grades and they will be manually entered into Banner for the students. Grades will not be viewable by the students until the day after they are manually entered.

If you have any students needing their grades earlier, please contact John Schmahl, john.schmahl@cccs.edu or Roxanne Manske, roxanne.manske@cccs.edu.

To submit final grades:

go to the online Grade Book here, https://at.ccconline.org/gradebook/input

Login using your Blackboard Vista login credentials

Select the appropriate section

If you are missing any section(s) or have extra section(s) listed, please contact Frank Vazquez, frank.vazquez@cccs.edu

Enter the appropriate grade for each student, accepted grades are listed below

Remember, developmental courses (those with course numbers under 100) must use the developmental grades, see below

**All students must be given a grade, even if they have not participated in the section**

Enter a Last Date of Attendance for any students receiving a grade of “F” or “W”

Click “Update” and return to the menu to select the next section if needed

Approved grades

Standard courses (course numbers 100 and above, e.g., PSY 101)
A
B
C
D
F (must include last day of attendance)
I (must include incomplete contract)
W (must include last day of attendance)

Developmental courses (course number less than 100, e.g., MAT 060)
S/A
S/B
S/C
U/D
U/F (must include last day of attendance)
I (must include incomplete contract)
W (must include last day of attendance)

Tuesday, August 07, 2007

Grades due Aug 16!

Dear Faculty;

Grades for Summer semester will be due no later than Thursday, August 16, 2007. We will be sending out directions for entering grades shortly (including the URL), we just want to make sure the site is set up and operating correctly first. In the meantime, below are some reminders regarding grade entry.

Enter the appropriate grade for each student, accepted grades are listed below

Remember, developmental courses (those with course numbers under 100) must use the developmental grades, see below

**All students must be given a grade, even if they have not participated in the course**

Enter a Last Date of Attendance for any students receiving a grade of “F” or “W”

Approved grades

Standard courses (course numbers 100 and above, e.g., PSY 101)

A
B
C
D
F (must include last day of attendance)
I (must include incomplete contract)
W (must include last day of attendance)

Developmental courses (course number less than 100, e.g., MAT 060)

S/A
S/B
S/C
U/D
U/F (must include last day of attendance)
I (must include incomplete contract)
W (must include last day of attendance)

Sunday, August 05, 2007

Chuck Sherrill

Dear CCCOnline Faculty,

It is with great sadness that I write to let you know that our colleague and friend, Chuck Sherrill, passed away this morning. Chuck and his family are such an important part of CCCOnline, and I know his loss will be felt by all.

The family has requested privacy at this time, but as soon as I know more about where to send condolences, I will let you know.

Our deepest sympathy especially goes to Jan Butler and Jon Sherrill.

Sincerely,

Rhonda