UMKC Blackboard Policies

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Purpose and permitted use

While the primary purpose of Blackboard is to support student instruction, anyone with UMKC-affiliation may request the use of a Blackboard site for other purposes that will serve or benefit the campus community.

Examples of permitted non-instructional uses include sites used for departmental communication, for student organizations, for staff training, for collaborative work on special projects, and for administrative purposes.

Users of UMKC’s Blackboard server should be guided by all applicable rules and policies, including the UM and MOREnet Acceptable Use Policies and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Links to these and other pertinent policies can be found at http://www.umkc.edu/is/cio.asp.

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Account creation

UMKC users: primary accounts: All faculty, staff, and students have Blackboard accounts created for them automatically when they are first hired or enrolled. 

UMKC users: secondary accounts: Secondary accounts will be created at the request of instructors who need to have an ancillary account for course design or testing purposes. Secondary accounts will use the format SSOID-s1, for the username., e.g. smithjan-s1.

Non-UMKC users: UMKC's site license limits the number of non-UMKC users to whom we are allowed to grant Blackboard access without paying extra licensing fees. Because of these restrictions, accounts for non-UMKC users are created only under the following conditions:

• Accounts cannot be created for an indefinite period, but must have a duration date specified. The account's sponsor may request an extension of access prior to the end date.
   

• Accounts are created for access to specific sites; non-UMKC users should not be enrolled in other course sites without prior permission from ITS.
   

• All requests for Blackboard accounts for non-UMKC users must come from an organization site leader or a designated UMKC faculty or staff member. The following procedure must be followed to have the accounts created:

  • The person requesting the accounts needs to fill out the Temporary Account Request Excel spreadsheet located at http://www.umkc.edu/is/conferences/SCForm.xls and mail the completed form to the Call Center at callcenter@umkc.edu. A MoCode must be provided, and will be charged $30 per week for each account, or $90 for each account per semester. Contact the Call Center at 816-235-2000 if you have questions about this process.
     

  • Upon receiving the list of the new users’ SSOs from the Call Center, the requestor can contact ITS (235-6700 or its@umkc.edu) to have the users enrolled in the Blackboard course or organization site.
     

• Fees for enrolling non-UMKC users into Blackboard courses or organization sites are as follows:

  • $50 set up fee for first 50 users. $10 set-up fee for each additional 50 users.
     

  • $25 maintenance/access fee per user per semester.
     

• Technical services include the following items:

  • Temporary student/participant access to the designated Blackboard site.
     

  • Availability to the UMKC ITS call center (235-6700 or ITS@umkc.edu) for questions and problem resolution during normal hours of operation.
    
     

Anonymous accounts: Anonymous accounts are Blackboard user accounts which give course site access to one or more users whose identities cannot be specified ahead of time. These accounts are normally created at the request of individual instructors, who share the login credentials with non-UMKC users on an “as needed” basis. Due to security concerns, anonymous accounts will be created very rarely and only under conditions of demonstrable need and assurance of adequate protection of student information. Each anonymous account must have a UMKC faculty or staff sponsor who will be held responsible for all actions taken by people logged into Blackboard with that account. The sponsor must also ensure that the account user has no access to student data. To protect student privacy, sponsors are not to grant anonymous account course roles other than ‘guest’ for any instructional site which contains student grades or coursework. Sponsors should also be cautious when granting anonymous accounts access to course content areas that contain copyrighted materials. To request an anonymous account, the potential sponsor should email ITS@umkc.edu. In the request, please specify the need for the account, the duration of the need, and the course sites and course roles to which the account will be given access. The sponsor will be contacted by Instructional Technologies before the termination date. At that time, the sponsor will be given the opportunity to extend the account’s access period; if this is not requested, the account will be deleted at the termination date.


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Account deletion

UM users' accounts will remain active for the duration of their affiliation with the university. Users whose affiliation with UMKC has ceased will have their Blackboard accounts removed. For students, this will normally occur after two consecutive terms of non-enrollment. For faculty and staff, cessation of affiliation normally means termination of employment. Faculty who leave the University but need to maintain their involvement in an active course site may request that their UMKC Blackboard accounts be converted to external user accounts. Departing faculty who wish to assign ownership of their UMKC Blackboard sites or the sites’ content to another UMKC faculty or staff member may freely do so.

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Course site creation

Starting WS2007, a Blackboard course site is automatically created for each course taught at UMKC. Instructors no longer need to fill out course site request forms every semester for each course they are teaching.

Course sites for the upcoming semester are created six to eight weeks before the end of the current semester, in order to allow instructors sufficient time to update sites before the new term begins.

UMKC faculty and staff who wish to request the creation of a Blackboard site for purposes other than use by students in a regular, semester-based course should submit an Organization Request using the new Request System. 

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Student enrollment in sites

Students are enrolled in Blackboard sites approximately one week before the first day of classes for the term. At that time, students are automatically added to the course sites’ rosters based on enrollment data in the SIS database. Course site enrollment is updated three times daily.

To view an online tutorial on changing a site's availability setting, please click here.

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Course site longevity

After the end of each semester, old course sites will be archived and removed from the active Blackboard server. This will eliminate "clutter" in students' and instructors' course listings, as well as insure that that the Blackboard database, which stores student and test data as well as course files, performs at its optimum capacity. Instructors will be given advance notice of the course site removal date via both email and a Blackboard system announcement.

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Course availability

Bb Course sites will be set to be available to students by default.  If you do not want one of your Blackboard sites to be available to students, please go into site's control panel to Settings > Course Availability, select "No", and click <Submit>. This will need to be done for each course. (video tutorial).

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Course and file size quotas

The default course size limit for Blackboard sites is 1 Gb. When a Blackboard site's size approaches the quota limit, an automatic warning email will be sent to all of the site's instructors. After the warning letter has been sent, there is 50 Mb of grace quota before the hard size limit is reached. When a course site reaches the hard size limit, students and instructors will receive an error message when they attempt any action that would further increase the size of the course website. The maximum size for an individual file upload on Blackboard is 50 Mb. Both the course quota and single-file upload size limit can be set at the course site level. Instructors who find that they need more disk quota should contact Instructional Technologies detailing their need for additional file storage.

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Blackboard maintenance window

Regular Blackboard system maintenance will be carried out between 6 PM and 10 PM on the second and fourth Fridays of each month as needed. Please plan your semester accordingly, and do not schedule events such as online chats or assessments during this period. Outages will be posted on the Information Services website.

Major annual maintenance of hardware and software that requires an extended system outage will be carried out between the end of the regular UMKC summer semester and the beginning of the regular UMKC fall semester. Instructors will be given advance notification of the date and expected duration of the maintenance outage.

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Records requests

Blackboard maintains a record of most actions taken by users logged into the server. Both instructors and students may have occasion for recourse to these records. To request a records search, one of the parties involved must contact the UMKC CIO in writing. A request must have the requester’s name, title (or student status), daytime telephone number and SSO ID. The reason for the request and the time frame for the range of records must also be included. The request is forwarded to the UMKC CIO for review and authorization. The CIO may seek authorization or counsel from other executive level administrators before authorizing or declining the request. Once authorized, the records are reviewed and extracted from the Bb database. The records are printed, along with any notes and observations. The records, in printed form, are copied and a file maintained in the Information Services Office of Administration and Operations. The original printed records and findings are released to the requester.
 

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