Monday, April 28, 2008

Vista Maintenance Tonight

Attention Faculty: There will be Vista Maintenance Tonight - 1 a.m. Tues. 4/29/08
You will not be able to access Vista tonight after 1 a.m. Be sure that you finish your activities before this maintenance or risk losing data. Do not start work that you cannot finish before 1 a.m. MDT. The server will not be available for approximately two hours.

Thanks,

Rhonda

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

24x7 Student Technical Support Now Available

We have just launched a new 24x7 technical support service for students in Vista courses. All students can now get technical support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for their Vista course. The announcement below has been sent to all Spring students. The phone number is 1-888-800-9198.

This support service is also available to faculty for after-hours emergencies and access questions, however, Amy will continue to provide technical support for all of our faculty at profhelp@ccconline.org.

Please let your students know about this great new service.

Thanks once again, for all you do for our students!
John H Schmahl
CCCOnline
Student Services

GET HELP ANY TIME!

CCCOnline now offers 24x7 Technical Support for students and faculty who use Blackboard Vista. Students can get support via:

The specialists at the 24x7 Technical Support help desk are trained to assist users on a variety of topics including:

  • Configuring your computer to use Blackboard Vista
  • Logging into Blackboard Vista
  • Troubleshooting problems using your online course
  • Setting up your browser to support Blackboard Vista
  • Questions about how to use features in Blackboard Vista
  • Uploading and downloading assignments/email attachments.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Student Survey Pop-up Window

Hi Everyone-

I am sure you've noticed by now that the student survey is open. If you type your S# into the pop-up about the survey you will stop getting it each time you log in. (Although if you use multiple computers and/or multiple browsers you will have to enter your S# multiple times - the survey uses cookies for tracking purposes, so has to set one for each browser.)

Please encourage your students to take the survey. Some of you use extra credit successfully for that (you have to let students tell you when they have completed the survey). I think that's a good technique that helps up get valid data, but even reminders help!

Thank you!

Lisa

Friday, April 11, 2008

Student Survey Open

Hi Everyone-

The student survey is open now and will remain available for students through the end of the semester. They will see the pop-up window reminding them to take the survey each time they login until they have completed the survey.

Please remind your students to take the survey - we'd like to see good participation this year and that only happens with a lot of faculty encouragement.

Thanks-
Lisa

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Memorial Service for Kevin Stever

Kevin's friends have planned a memorial service for him:

Kevin's memorial is scheduled from 4:30 pm - 7:30 pm on Saturday, May 17, at Strings Restaurant in Denver.

www.stringsrestaurant.com


1700 Humboldt St
Denver, CO 80218 (303) 831-7310

Please let everyone at CCCS (students, staff, other faculty) that it is an open invitation and we'd love for anyone to attend who wishes to join us in remembering Kevin.

We are also encouraging donations to "The Center" in Kevin's name. That address is P.O. Box 9798, Denver, CO 80209-0798.


At the celebration, we will be collecting messages of condolence to send to the family as well.

Thanks, and please let me know if you have any questions.

Lisa

Reading for A Good Cause

From Sean Law, ENG chair:

Subject: FW: Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic
(RFB&D)
Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 07:47:20 -0600

Hello! I'm Betsy Boudreau, Executive Director or RFB&D/Rocky Mountain Unit.

I would like to invite you to donate an hour of your time to help record a textbook for a student who is blind, dyslexic or physically struggling.

Our 13th Annual Recordathon will be held the week of April 28-May 2, a time when our volunteers record more hours of textbooks than any week during the year, invite friends and family to donate to RFB&D, and when we invite the Mayor, First Lady and other local celebrities to come in and read for an hour.

If you have the time, please let me know. We are offering times from 9am to 7pm, at the top of the hour, for one hour of reading.

Thank you!

Help us help students in need of audio textbooks to succeed in school and life! Volunteer and/or donate to RFB&D. Thank you!

Sincerely,
Betsy Boudreau, Executive Director
Rocky Mountain Unit/Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic

1355 S. Colorado Blvd., Ste. C-406, Denver, CO, 80222
303-692-9213/ www.rfbd.org

If there is enough interest we could pick a CCCOnline day and all go down together. :^)

Lisa

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Faculty Questions re Maintenance and Thumbtacks

Hi Everyone-

We've gotten the same questions from several of you, so bear with me as I answer them in this forum for everyone.

First that irritating little thumbtack. Unfortunately that is in Blackboard development, so it won't be corrected until the next release. Think fall.

Then there is maintenance. Back in the olden days we ran the learning management system for CCCOnline only. Now we run the system for all of the colleges plus CCCOnline. Everyone has a different schedule, some colleges have intercession courses, some colleges have training that has to occur between terms, everyone is frantically duping and developing courses between terms... and really, when you look at everyone's schedules there is no "between terms" other than the long Christmas break and even that is shorter than you would think.

Given all that, the Learning Technology Council (that is the group of college representatives that provides oversight for Vista) has decided we just need to schedule some planned downtime for upgrades and maintenance during each term. The only alternative is to save everything for Christmas break - but that is a little dangerous and means we'd only have one shot a year at correcting problems like the irritating green thumbtack.

So I understand that everyone is busy and that it is a hassle to have to schedule around a planned downtime each semester. However, I think as long as the downtime is scheduled before the semester begins it is a reasonable solution. Many of us want to install fixes the first moment we can - we have to balance that with downtime schedules.

On the other hand, I can take your concerns back to LTC if you want me to.

Thanks-
Lisa

Friday, April 04, 2008

Kevin Stever


Today I bring sad news. Kevin Stever, a long time CSC instructor for CCCOnline, passed away last weekend. He had been ill, but didn't think it was serious.

His friends are planning a memorial service in the next week or two. I will let you know when I have more information.

Lisa

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

Weekend Downtime

Hi Everyone-

Please don't forget this weekend's downtime for Blackboard Vista. We will be going down at 1:00 pm on Saturday, April 5th and coming back up again by 1:00 pm on Sunday the 6th. This downtime will be used to install SP3 and a hot fix. I don't think you will notice much on your side, but there are significant changes on the back-end.

Thank you-
Lisa