Camtasia now available via LIT Loaner Laptop Initiative

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TechSmith’s Camtasia Studio

LIT has updated our internal process of making available Camtasia licenses to Wentworth faculty and staff.

What is Camtasia?

For those not familiar with the product, Camtasia is a powerful, yet easy to use software application used for creating video tutorials & presentations directly via screen-cast.  It is available for both Windows & Mac users.

Why Use Camtasia?

Camtasia is easy to use and it looks professional.  It offers Picture in Picture (PiP).  I It offers multiple audio and video tracks.  It has many features in the interface that makes creating screen videos and processing them.  You can choose to record your entire screen or only a portion of it that you preset before recording begins .

When you finish recording your screen, you can utilize various tools included in the program to complete your video.  These contain multiple Transition Options , Voice Narration , a Zoom and Pan effect , Cursor Effects , Captions , Quizzing & more.  You can also use built-in tools to enhance and improve the audio quality of your voice recording . It can export in many different file types.  You can upload your final Camtasia product into Panopto and make it available for your students to view.

I’m interested.  Tell me more…

Instead of giving individuals licenses of software to install on their work computers indefinitely, we are now installing the software on university-owned laptops and loaning the laptops to faculty and staff needing to use Camtasia for institution projects.

This change allows us to make better use of the licenses that we purchase, so that we can accommodate a broader audience.  In addition, it allows us to purchase annual upgrades of the software, so that we support the most current version of the product.

With the loaner laptop, we recommend that you save all work (Camtasia project files, project asset files, etc) on Office 365 in a folder that you are able to access, so that you have copies of your work.  Please do not leave project files on the loaner equipment when you return the equipment.

The LIT loan policy is consistent with the policy already established by DTS Tech Spot in that we loan equipment for a two week time period.  However, if you need a laptop for a longer period of time while you are working on your project, we should be able to accommodate you.  Please keep in mind that we only have 10 loaner laptops available, and to be fair to everyone they are available for loan on a first come, first served basis.

We currently have 10 licenses of Camtasia 2019 installed on the university-owned laptops.

If you are interested in learning more about Camtasia or using it for a project, please contact us (lit@wit.edu) and we can make arrangements to demonstrate the software and check out a loaner laptop to you.

As always, we look forward to working with you.

LMS Review – RFP released and other news

As you know Wentworth is exploring replacing our LMS (currently Blackboard). This past academic year the LMS Taskforce explored how Blackboard was being used at Wentworth and what the community felt were benefits and short-comings of the system. We’ve prepared a report analyzing the results of surveys, focus groups (open forums) and data from Blackboard’s database. In addition, requirements gathering and use cases were developed over the course of the spring term in parallel with the preparation of a request for proposals (RFP).

The RFP was released to vendors on Friday, May 31, 2019. Vendors have until Friday, June 28 to respond with proposals. Over the summer the LMS Taskforce will meet hold preliminary meetings with each vendor to help them prepare for on-campus meetings in the fall. During the on-campus meetings, each vendor will make several presentations to various stakeholder groups and meet with technical staff to discuss how their solution will integrate with current and planned technologies used by Wentworth.

In addition to planning and releasing the RFP to vendors, the LMS Taskforce will be preparing a SharePoint site viewable by all members of the Wentworth Community. The site will be a repository for the RFP, reports, proposals and our evaluation rubric. We are asking that all vendor presentations be recorded and links to these session recordings will be available from this site. Look for this site in SharePoint later this summer.

In the fall, look for announcements of the vendor presentations and please participate. The feedback that the community provides is critical in selecting the best LMS for Wentworth.

Lynda Learning became LinkedIn Learning

If you use Lynda Learning through Wentworth you saw a change at the end of August when we upgraded Lynda Learning to LinkedIn Learning.

While the content remains the same or similar, the interface was updated. When you log in after the upgrade, you have the option to link to your LinkedIn account. If you link your account,  you will see course recommendations based on your LinkedIn Profile contents. In addition, when you complete courses you are able to share this information on your LinkedIn profile.

For instructors using Lynda Learning content in Blackboard courses, links must be updated. Although LinkedIn is planning on having content redirects in place through the end 2019, instructors who copy content from term to term must update to the new URLs.

If you need assistance, please contact Learning Innovation & Technology by stopping by Beatty 318, email lit@wit.edu, or call 617-989-5428.

Blackboard Upgrade

In August we will be upgrading Blackboard to the Q4 2018 release. This upgrade brings mostly administrative, security, and bug fixes to the system. Only two features of note will change or be introduced, the integration of cloud storage has been added and the Bb Instructor app will permit annotation of assignments in the inline grading workflow. Users will be able to select documents from cloud storage, Google docs and OneDrive, from the file selector to add files to content items and assignments. Both students and faculty will have this option available in the new version. With this upgrade, the ability to annotate documents submitted for assignments will be available in the in-line grading workflow in Bb Instructor. In the earlier version, instructors could assign a grade but not annotate.

Just as our move to SSO was not smooth sailing, our Blackboard upgrade in August is proving to be challenging as well. In the past, we have been able to skip versions of Blackboard during the upgrade cycle. Given that there is not a lot of change in the product (the company is focusing much of its development effort on their SaaS, Software as a Service, product to add features to equal those available with the hosted version), we were planning on skipping the Q4 2018 version and moving to the Q2 2019 version. As we planned for testing Blackboard informed us that in order to move to Q2 2019 we had to upgrade to Q4 2018 as a step in the process.

If the added step only added a small amount of time, we might have considered that path. Unfortunately, every Blackboard upgrade in our hosted environment takes a minimum of 12 hours. To do two back to back upgrades would mean a minimum of 24 hours downtime. Add to that the requirement that the servers on which our system is hosted need to have an operating system upgrade that will add 4 hours to the process and we have much more downtime than anticipated during a brief window between terms. We can’t do this to our community. Too many instructors need the period between terms to update content in their courses or to upload and organize materials for new courses. Taking the system down for 28 hours during this critical time was not an option. Instead, we will upgrade to the 4Q 2018 version in August and wait until winter break to upgrade to the 2Q 2019 version.

As we move forward to select a new LMS, selecting a SaaS product which will not require downtime for upgrades will be critical.

Blackboard now uses SSO – but not without a few hiccups!

On May 4th we changed the authentication for Blackboard to use Single Sign On (SSO) to improve the user experience. Initial testing did not reveal any problems but as sometimes happens with technology, we found some as soon as we went live. One issue, a missed configuration setting was quickly identified and corrected. A second issue took longer to identify and correct but will also require some action on the part of end users.

If you use the mobile apps, Blackboard and Bb Instructor, and you have selected the “stay logged in” feature, you will see a failed login attempt when you try to access Blackboard.

To clear the error and log into Blackboard, you need to reselect the institution and reselect Wentworth Institute of Technology. Reselecting the institution refreshes the settings for authentication and will correctly redirect the app for authentication. 

To fix error in mobile app, reselect Wentworth Institute of Technology as the institution.

The new authentication prompts users to click on the Web Login button. This action will open a browser window for Office365 authentication on you mobile device. Once you log in, you will be returned to the Blackboard app.

Although there were hiccups, we hope users find SSO for Blackboard to be an improvement in their overall experience.