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September 2, 2004

Scheduled Downtime

Blackboard will be unavailable Friday, September 3, 2004, from 5:30 to 7 AM for installation of important Oracle security patches, to double the server's processing and memory capacity, and to update the operating system patches to the latest revisions.

Blackboard Usage

During the first week of the Fall 2004 semester, 36,233 students, faculty and staff logged into Blackboard. Nearly 16,000 people logged in on Monday, August 30, 2004. On that one day, approximately 25 GB of data (Word and PowerPoint documents, PDFs, etc.) were downloaded from Blackboard, a substantial increase from previous records. A daily system usage chart will be available in the near future.

System Status

Beginning at 5:30 pm Thursday, August 26, 2004, Blackboard began experiencing problems. Additional front-end servers were added to the system to improve performance as quickly as possible, but on Tuesday evening, August 31, 2004, the back-end database system experienced problems. The service was restored by 8 pm that evening with additional improvements to be added Friday morning. Information Technology Services (ITS) staff members are working closely with Blackboard, Inc. to diagnose problems.

Preparations for Fall 2004

ITS and Division of Instructional Innovation and Assessment (DIIA) staff began testing the new version of Blackboard (version 6) in Spring 2004. Summer courses were offered on the new version. Some problems were revealed during this time, and they have been addressed. New servers were ordered for Fall 2004 to provide 2-3 times more capacity than the prior year. As soon as it became apparent that Blackboard 6 needed more capacity to could handle even greater loads than initially calculated, ITS began the process of acquiring additional hardware and reallocating staff resources to support the demands of this semester. More information is available at
http://www.utexas.edu/its/blackboard/progress.html .

ITS/DIIA Commitment

ITS regrets any service inconvenience that you have experienced and both DIIA and ITS are committed to providing a fast, reliable, stable and productive system for your use. We also appreciate your feedback. We can do an even better job of predicting performance needs when we understand how you are using the system or how you wish to use it.

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File Storage Options

You can back up files and documents that you use in Blackboard in WebSpace. (ITS recommends backing up all important files as a matter of course.) WebSpace is a file storage system provided by ITS to students, faculty and staff at no additional cost and is accessible through the Web. The system provides 75 megabytes of disk space that allows each person to store copies of important documents (such as homework, notes, papers, theses, dissertations, graphics, etc.) More information is available at
http://www.utexas.edu/its/webspace/

Communication Options

Instructors and authorized assistants can use CLIPs to communicate with students if Blackboard is not available. The class photo roster, the official roster, and group e-mail is available at:
https://utdirect.utexas.edu/nrport/clips_menu.WBX

Training Workshops

The following workshops are available this fall: Intro to Blackboard, Upgrade to Blackboard 6, Teaching with PowerPoint, Teaching with Video and Graphics, eGradebook, Console Training, Classroom Performance System (CPS).
http://www.utexas.edu/academic/cit/services/training/workshops/index.php

Frequently Asked Questions

More information on improvements in version 6, copying course materials, combining courses, and adding teaching assistants is available at:
http://www.utexas.edu/academic/blackboard/about/atut/version6.html
http://www.utexas.edu/academic/blackboard/answers/copycourse.html
http://www.utexas.edu/academic/blackboard/answers/meetswith.html
http://www.utexas.edu/academic/blackboard/answers/ta-access.html

...carolyn
--
Carolyn Thomas
MAI 2201:: 512.232.1770
DIIA
University of Texas at Austin
http://www.utexas.edu/academic/diia/

The University of Texas at Austin
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