Request your Fall and Winter Blackboard Courses
Fall Blackboard courses are available for request through SPIRE. Don’t forget that each semester you will need to request Blackboard for the courses you are teaching.
For detailed instructions, see:
Request your Fall and Winter Echo360 Courses
Echo360 course requests for Fall 2021 are available in SPIRE. Just like Blackboard, each semester you will need to request Echo360 for the courses you want to use it in. For step by step instructions, see Request Lecture Capture
Echo360 allows you to create recordings of your lectures to deliver to students. Students can access recordings to learn new content or review content to reinforce the information. The system also allows you to add interactive content and measure student engagement.
Echo360 Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) uses speech to text algorithms to create an interactive transcript for your recordings. After you do a little editing for accuracy, your students will be able to study for exams, find relevant information in recordings, and even turn on Closed Captioning for your media.
Once your Echo360 courses are ready, it’s easy to give students access to Echo360 recordings through Blackboard.
Automatically copy your Zoom cloud recordings to Echo360
You can connect your Zoom and Echo360 accounts, and have all cloud recordings copied into Echo360. If you enable this, you can even have a recurring Zoom meeting publish directly to an Echo360 course. Unlike Zoom recordings, which are kept for 120 days, Echo360 does not have a storage limit on your recordings.
Blackboard Tip of the Month: Poll or Survey Students with the Survey Tool
Did you know you can use the Blackboard Survey Tool to ask questions or have your students respond to prompts. Questionnaires can be used to poll students after a lecture, survey students to get to know them better, check on readiness for assessments, and more. All responses to survey questions are anonymous. Instructors can view whether a student has completed the survey, but responses cannot be linked to student names.
Planned Downtimes
There are no planned downtimes for Blackboard during September 2021.
You can check the status of Blackboard, Zoom, and other supported teaching technologies on the IT Services Status for Remote Teaching and Learning page.
Blackboard Help and Resources for Instructors
To learn more about Blackboard or to get help, you can:
- Review our Blackboard Support Articles.
- Contact the Instructional Media Lab (instruct@umass.edu) with a question, or to set up a time for a one-on-one consultation.
- Join our Instructor Support Zoom room Monday-Friday between 10am and 3pm to meet with a staff member. Please note that wait times depend on the volume of requests.
- Contact the 24/7 Blackboard Helpdesk. The helpdesk can also assist students directly.