Banner Grade Submit Anomalies

Posted on by cookel

1. Some courses may not initially load a list of students when entering the Midterm or Final Grades section of the Banner Grade Submit tool.

This situation occurs after clicking on the link to Banner Grade Submit link in the control panel and then clicking on the Midterm or Final Grades buttons. Instructors should see a list of students along with a display of the students’ current grades in the course based on the column chosen for the External Grade in the Grade Center. In affected courses, instructors see a no items to display.

To correct this situation, instructors can create a group in the course, add all students to the course and then use the visible groups selector to display the newly created group. A list of students will then display.

Detailed instructions on creating groups.

When creating a group for the purposes of activating the grading we recommend delesecting all group tools to avoid confusion for students around where to access course functions such as the discussion board, blogs, etc. The group must be visible for the group to be selectable in the grading tool.

2. If a letter schema is not selected for the External Grade column grades will not populate the Midterm or Final grades column.

We recommend setting the secondary display type for the column to one of the Wentworth Schemas. To do so, start by selecting Edit Column Information. Next, select the correct schema under secondary display (WIT Undergraduate Letter or WIT Graduate Letter).

Alternatively, you can enter letter grades in the column directly without populating the column from the Grade Center.

Full instructions for using the Banner Grade Submit tool are on the LIT website.

LIT Faculty Drop-In Sessions: How to Submit Midterm Grades Directly from Bb

Posted on by zakrzewskit

Now you can simplify your workflow and submit grades directly from Blackboard to Banner. Learn How.

To see a demo and get hands-on assistance, visit LIT in one of the drop-in sessions across campus:

  • Friday June 17th – 10am-3pm — Beatty 033
  • Monday June 20th – 9am-2pm – Beatty 014 behind WIT Wire
  • Tuesday June 21st – 9am-4pm – Beatty 103
  • Wednesday June 22nd — 9am-4pm – 610 Huntington — 14-106 Technology Services Conference Room near Helpdesk
  • Thursday June 23rd – 9am-4pm – Beatty 033
  • Friday June 24th – 9am-4pm – Beatty 103
  • Monday June 27th – 11am-4pm – Beatty 033
  • Tuesday June 28th – 9am-noon – Beatty 103

Also drop into Annex 205 for assistance!

LIT@WIT.edu      WWW.WIT.EDU/LIT

UPDATE: Banner to Blackboard Integration

Posted on by cookel

There is a new integration between Banner and Blackboard.  We undertook changing the integration to improve the experience for faculty and students by providing real-time updates to enrollments and faculty assignments as well as providing a means to send grades directly from Blackboard to Banner.

For faculty using Blackboard’s Grade Center this means a much simplified workflow eliminating the need to enter grades into Banner individually. For faculty not using Blackboard’s Grade Center, you can still avoid manually re-entering individual grades in Banner by uploading a file to Blackboard and using the new workflow to populate midterm and final grades with a few clicks sending an entire classes grades to Banner.

LIT will be holding drop-in sessions to assist faculty with setting up the Grade Center to send grades to Banner. As always, we will also meet with faculty individually for assistance with using Blackboard and visit any department meetings that are scheduled. For those that want to get a head start, we’ve prepared documentation to help you either set up your Grade Center or to use the Banner Grade submit tool. In addition, we’ve created a video to step you through the process.

UPDATE: We’ve discovered that the letter grades pulled into the Banner Grade submit tool are based on the schema assigned to the column. Make sure that WIT Undergrad or WIT Graduate letter schema is selected for either primary or secondary grade display for the external grade column. If no schema is selected, the system seems to default to the Letter schema which does not reflect the schemas used here at Wentworth.

A few bumps in the road…As many users noted, drops from courses at the beginning of the summer semester did not occur as rapidly as they were processed in the old system. Our hope, base on experience in a test system, was that real-time processing would catch all the adds and drops once we added all the courses to the system and keep the enrollments up to date as changes were made. Unfortunately this wasn’t the case. DTS staff from the Enterprise Applications group worked with technical staff from our vendor, Ellucian, to troubleshoot and correct the problem. We now believe that all enrollments should be up to date.

IF you have any students not in Blackboard who should be or have students in Blackboard who have dropped, please open a ticket with the helpdesk so we can track down the cause and correct it.

 

Browsers and instructional technology – how to manage their love-hate relationships

Posted on by zakrzewskit · 1 Comment

What is a browser?

A browser is a program that allows users to navigate the internet. A choice of a browser can depend not only on user preferences but also on types of devices used and their operating systems (e.g. PC vs. MAC or iPhone vs. Android). The most commonly used browsers include Internet Explorer/Edge, Firefox, Chrome and Safari. Although most browsers will perform relatively well in most cases, some websites may be optimized for some browsers and not others.

What does instructional technology have to do with this?

Many of the tools we have at Wentworth are web-based and depend on good Internet performance, such as connectivity and browser. These include but are not limited to:

  • Blackboard
  • Echo360 ALP
  • GoToMeeting
  • NuVu

Ongoing maintenance, such as security updates, is often done without our knowledge to both the instructional tools and the browsers used to access these tools. And, while such maintenance is crucial, it sometimes causes (usually temporary) glitches and interruptions in tool performance.

What browsers are recommended?

There is no single right answer and much will depend on user preferences and technology used. However, considering our toolkit here at Wentworth, we tend to recommend Firefox and Chrome as the most stable. Internet Explorer and Edge seem to be more problematic. That being said, occasional issues are common when using instructional technology in any browser.

What can be done?

If experiencing unexpected behavior when using otherwise stable online tools, the following actions usually resolve many if not most browser-related issues.

Clear Browser History and Cache

To speed up website loading time, your browser keeps track of your navigation history and saves information from your previous visits locally on your computer. However, this occasionally causes issues when using Blackboard and other online tools. Clearing History and Cache often resolves many issues.

Update your browser

Switch to a different browser

For any other questions related to instructional technology or browser issues, please contact LIT@WIT.EDU or HELPDESK@WIT.EDU.

 

 

 

New Banner to Blackboard Integration

Posted on by cookel

What this change means for you: Blackboard course sites can be created earlier, enrollment changes are updated in real-time,  and grades can be submitted to Banner from Blackboard.

This spring DTS has been working on a project to re-integrate Blackboard and Banner. Our old system permitted us to feed only one term’s worth of data at a time from Banner to Blackboard. That single term feed meant delays in seeing courses appear in Blackboard. In addition, there was no communication back to Banner from Blackboard so that if you used the Blackboard Grade Center to track and calculate grades, you still had to manually enter student grades in Banner.

Using the new Intelligent Learning Platform integration from our Banner vendor we can now feed information from Banner in real-time. So, if a student drops one course and adds another, the change is seen immediately. If instructors are changed, as soon as the information is entered in Banner, the change will be sent to Blackboard. In addition, instructors will be able to submit midterm and final grades to Banner from Blackboard with ease. If you use the Blackboard Grade Center to track and calculate grades, you can submit grades for an entire course with a few  mouse clicks. No rekeying of individual grades needed.

We’ll be sharing more details about this change during Wentworth Opening Week for Summer term.