When students return from the holiday break, they may find that their Blackboard dashboard looks a little different. Binghamton University recently announced that at the beginning of next semester, professors and students will be switching over to myCourses, an online platform externally hosted by Blackboard.
While Blackboard will remain the learning management system for the University, the name and functions of the system at BU will be changing to myCourses. According to Logan Robinson, BU Information Technology Services (ITS) communications manager, myCourses allows students to add and drop classes directly from Blackboard. This way, students will not have to wait for Blackboard to update their courses, and will allow faculty to directly create courses in Blackboard. MyCourses also automatically uploads Blackboard grades to Banner, the student information system used by University faculty, a feature not accessible through the current Blackboard system.
“The enhancements will mostly effect faculty, but the feature that allows automatic add and drop will impact students,” Robinson wrote in an email. “Overall, it will help our faculty work more efficiently.”
The layout of the program is also undergoing slight changes, as it lays out courses by semester to make navigation easier. Sharon Pitt, associate vice president and chief information officer of BU, hopes that these changes will help both faculty and students.
“Moving forward, students should have a very similar experience using Blackboard as in the past,” Pitt wrote in an email. “For faculty, these changes should offer an improved teaching experience.”
The catalyst for the change to myCourses came at the start of this semester, when a software bug caused issues for students and professors across the University. Because the current system of Blackboard is locally hosted, it is up to ITS to solve any problems with the application, and the lack of stability and performance from Blackboard made it difficult for ITS to offer support and solve issues quickly. Thus, the decision was made to switch from the current platform to myCourses. MyCourses is hosted by Blackboard, and the company will make sure the application runs smoothly. Before, Blackboard was being hosted by BU’s ITS, which left them to deal with any problems that arose.
“The hosted environment [of myCourses] should improve reliability and enhance performance,” Robinson wrote. “Tools such as Turn-It-In and Panopto will be available in the cloud hosted service and function as in the current service.”
Now, coordinators are focused on making the change as smooth as possible for both faculty and students. Eric Howd, director of instructional design at the Center for Learning and Teaching, says that the key to a successful transition is communication.
“The Blackboard team has been pushing out communication to faculty in various ways,” Howd wrote in an email. “We have a website for the transition that outlines dates, steps, and support. In addition, the University is holding face-to-face sessions to support faculty in their transition, and providing a few online resources for support.”
Faculty gained access to myCourses on Nov. 17, but students will not be able to access it until Jan. 14. Any students who have spring semester classes starting earlier than this date should communicate directly with their professors about gaining access. The remainder of the fall semester and the winter term will remain on Blackboard, and the University will fully transition to myCourses at the beginning of the spring semester. The new program will be hosted at mycourses.binghamton.edu.