Update to Service Pack 10 & 11

We are currently on track to update MyHCC to service packs 10 and 11 on May 9th - May 11th.

Several existing features have been improved and some exciting new features added to make your day more efficient. Here is an overview of tools that you can expect to be using soon:

•  New Content Editor: The new Content Editor vastly improves the user experience for formatting text, pasting content from Microsoft Word, and adding content to all areas of Learn. Blackboard has also replaced the old     math editor with a new mathML equation editor.

•  Assessment Item Analysis: Now you can easily refine your assessments by evaluating the quality of each question and that question’s ability to discriminate between students who understand the material and those who do not.  Ineffective questions can easily be identified and then quickly corrected with the Automatic Regrade feature.

• My Blackboard: This feature introduces a new, modern user experience in Blackboard Learn that consolidates critical information from all your Courses and Organizations as well as your school-wide academic network.  The new tools in My Blackboard – Profile, Posts, Updates, My Grades, and People – were developed to meet the needs of today’s active learner and enhance student engagement. My Blackboard allows you to easily monitor activity across your courses. You can be confident that your students are up-to-date and engaged in the online learning experience. 

• New Global Navigation Menu: Always present in the top right corner, the new navigation menu is the entry point to My Blackboard and also provides one-click access to your Courses, Settings, and Blackboard Help.  Additionally, the new menu will tell you how many items in My Blackboard are new or need your attention, so you never miss a thing.

Test Server Upgrade and SP7

We have updated our Test server to Service Pack 7. I look forward to testing the new features from SP6 and confirming bug fixes from SP7.

Production will be upgraded over the December break beginning on December 17. The rubrics function alone will save faculty an incredible amount of time grading discussions.


It is increasingly obvious that there is no easy way to determine if a known issue has a resolution for our system through Blackboard. It's incredibly frustrating and time consuming to research and then wait to receive confirmation from the Manged Hosting team. I am relying on multiple sources of information including the Blackboard Admin Users list-serv.

Account issues

Since HCC will be implementing a single authentication scheme in the Fall for all users (one user name and one password) we've discovered a mess of issues with email data. Primarily we have a bunch of people without an @hccfl.edu account or they have the email account but are missing a designator identifying that email address as an HR type.

Thus far its about 1,200 people.

Thankfully we are getting a handle on this with the help of the HR department and Alice Scott in the OIT department.

I've got a pretty good idea of what may be causing a student, staff or faculty member to receive an error when logging into MyHCC. I have to check six different things but at least I know what to check and who to contact when we need to resolve this issue.

About this Blog

I will be using this blog to communicate the quasi-daily updates on what progress we are making in rolling out our Blackboard Learn and Community system to Hillsborough Community College at the start of the Fall semester 2011.