Blackboard alert of Feb. 15 — No action required

by Benjamin Shier and Shawnalee Whitney  |   

Colleagues,

On the afternoon of Tuesday, Feb. 15, faculty may have received an email from "helpdesk@alaska.edu." The message referenced Blackboard system maintenance and, unfortunately, included confusing and troubling language that may have caused some faculty to believe that a permanent deletion of courses was afoot. THIS IS NOT THE CASE. Blackboard shells are safe. Students’ work is safe. Faculty need not take any action at this time to save anything. The message was triggered in error and came from the Blackboard system. UA Statewide's Office of Information Technology has been working with Blackboard on this matter and has posted a notice on the Blackboard login page. We are reaching out to highlight key resources related to technologies, whether academic and more general.

UAA Information Technology Services supports Seawolf Tech Portal, UAA's Statuspage and UAA's Technical Support Center (formerly known as the Help Desk). These important resources are available 24/7 to all members of the UAA community serving at all campuses. A link to the Statuspage was recently added to the bottom of UAA's websites for quick access to current information on system status. You may include these links in your syllabi or in the "contact instructor" area on your Blackboard shells. If you or other members of the university community have questions about technologies at UAA, are having trouble accessing a platform or system, or have questions about an issue, please contact ITS via the pathways provided above.

The teams in UAA Information Technology Services and Faculty Development and Instructional Support work together closely. We want to do everything we can to support teaching and learning at UAA. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have questions.

Benjamin Shier
Chief Information Officer
UAA Information Technology Services
benjamin.shier@alaska.edu

Shawnalee Whitney
Associate Vice Provost
Faculty Development & Instructional Support
sawhitney@alaska.edu

Creative Commons License "Blackboard alert of Feb. 15 — No action required" is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
February Archive