External Examiners: Briefing Statement

After a conversation with Quality and Enhancement Team, we thought it would be useful to update UCS External Examiners about the changes in LearnUCS, post our Summer 2014 upgrade.

The summer upgrade has introduced a number of enhancements to the system. However, these enhancements do not impact on how you access the system, or review the grade centre or access student submitted work. Any changes to the delivery by the course team due to these enhancements will be communicated with you by the Module Leader and/or Course Administrator.

The support for External Examiners on LearnUCS is not changing. Any questions you have concerning accessing the system, finding what you need, and support on the system need to be directed to the appropriate Course Administrator. The Module Leader will know the contact details for the Course Administrator.

The support package will be enhanced from previous years, including training sessions within the External Examiners Forum Meeting, and online materials.

If you have any questions, please contact the appropriate Course Administrator.

LearnUCS Upgrade - Complete

The LearnUCS upgrade is complete and login is now active again.

As will all upgrades we have tested the site as much as possible and believe the system is working as expected. If you do find any issues please contact the Elevate Team at elevate@ucs.ac.uk

Below are a number of changes that you may notice when using the system:

Staff and Student - Profiles

If you have uploaded a profile photograph or connected LearnUCS to Twitter or Facebook you will need to agree to a new set of terms and conditions for Blackboard and their Cloud Profiles.
This is a very simple process and only takes a few minutes. You need to access your profile by clicking the dashboard button, top right of your screen, where you would normally see your profile picture, as seen below highlighted in red:

Once you click the profile you will see the screen below, this is where the new terms and conditions are:

When you have agreed to the terms and conditions, your profile will reconnect to the one previously setup.

Student - Assignment Submission

There have been a couple of changes in the upgrade that you may notice, the layout of the submission screen has slightly changed, with the grades 'points possible' and the due date being boxed near the top.

New functionality now means that all work is directly submitted to SafeAssign, the plagiarism checking tool used at UCS.  You will notice a new tick box asking you to agree to submit your work to the 'Global Reference Database'.  

Agreeing to this is in your benefit.  It means that if you agree, a copy of your work is held securely in a database.  That all future work from any worldwide University/College using SafeAssign is then checked against, to make sure your work hasn't been copied.

Below is an example of a new submission page, showing the new location for the points possible and due date, as well as the agreement for SafeAssign's Global Reference Database.

Staff - SafeAssign

As above, SafeAssign is now fully integrated into the Submission process.  You are now able to see the plagiarism score in the GradeCentre's Inline Grading view, as shown below:

Please see links below for additional info on some new grading features:

The latest version will provide some enhanced functionality around common tasks, often requested by Staff and Students. These include:

• Student Preview - An actual student account created on the fly when required
• Anonymous and Delegated Grading
• Deeper SafeAssign Integration

LearnUCS Upgrade - Testing Phase

We are pleased to be able to announce that phase 1 of the upgrade has completed.

This now means we can move to phase 2, the testing phase. The Elevate team are currently testing the upgrade to make sure the system is responding as expected.

Phase 3 will be testing the new features, ready for allowing users back on to the system.

Check back later this afternoon for further updates.

LearnUCS Summer Upgrade Underway

The LearnUCS upgrade has started, login access has been removed, both directly into LearnUCS and from MyUCS.

We will be updating this bog as the upgrade progresses, please check back Saturday afternoon for more updates.

LearnUCS Upgrade - Staff Awareness Drop-in Sessions

The Elevate Team are offering staff awareness drop-in sessions to those lecturing staff that would like to see the next release of LearnUCS before it goes live.

The sessions will be primarily looking at:

• Student Preview - An actual student account created on the fly when required
• Anonymous and Delegated Grading
• Deeper SafeAssign Integration

The session will run on the following dates and times:

• Wednesday 16th July - 10am to 12noon
• Thursday 17th July - 12noon to 2pm

The session are being run on a drop-in basis, so please turn up at any point during the time period.

The Elevate Team will be running these sessions from the 4th floor of the Waterfront building.

Please see this link for further upgrade information.

LearnUCS Summer Upgrade

LearnUCS is scheduled to be upgraded on Saturday 19th July to the latest stable Blackboard release (9.1.201404.160205). This will involve the service being unavailable on the Friday 18th from 17.00, being upgraded on the Saturday, tested by the Elevate Team on Sunday 20th, and available by 8.00am on Monday 21st (if not earlier).

We have already worked with Blackboard to complete a successful upgrade on our test environment which has passed our Phase 1 Test Plan. This is great news, and means we are very confident to be able to deliver the upgrade on the live LearnUCS platform within the timeline above.

The latest version will provide some enhanced functionality around common tasks, often requested by Staff and Students. These include:

• Student Preview - An actual student account created on the fly when required
• Anonymous and Delegated Grading
• Deeper SafeAssign Integration

The Elevate Team will be holding two open day sessions where interested parties can come along to find out more about the upgrade and to use those new features in a control environment.  These two dates will be publicised here and on MyUCS in the near future.

A more detailed timeline is available below:

June

Technical: Elevate

• Test Integrations on Test Environment
• Identify common tasks and document how to do this in the new version
• Building Block Management (see risk log) - what about SafeAssign submissions, course merge functionality
• Agree new course template with Academic Services

Project Management

• Communication
• announcement on MyUCS - what are we doing, why are we doing it, why should you benefit, and how to stay informed?
• Communicate with SU - Union Council
• Bi weekly update on Blog, plus ongoing news
• Email briefing to HoS, HoD, HE Coordinators (LN), team leaders
• Presentation to UCS Exec

User testing

• Identify the power groups (staff & system / course admins) and the tasks they need to complete. what did they do? how did they find it? did it meet their needs? do they like it?
• Staff & Student Support
• Design work packages for FAQs and Videos - what scenarios do we need to cover? 

July

Technical: Elevate

• Test SSO from MyUCS to ucstest environment
• Upgrade Production Environment to April 2014 Release (9.1.201404.160205)
• course design applied to Template
• Roll out 14/15 modules

Project Management

• Communication
• Bi weekly update on Blog, plus ongoing news (include myUCS announcement)
• Email briefing to HoS, HoD, HE Coordinators (LN), team leaders
• School & LN roadshow
• Staff & Student Support
• create FAQs and Videos

We will update this blog with more details when they are released, including user scenario videos of the new features.  

Contact elevate@ucs.ac.uk if you would like to discuss this upgrade or if you require any support with LearnUCS.