Support

Students with questions about course content, availability, assignments, or grades, should contact their course instructors. Students with how-to questions and technical problems should first check Blackboard Student Help. If this resource does not resolve the issue, students should contact Customer Support (IT Help Desk) at 913-945-9999 option 2.

During regular business hours, faculty and staff needing immediate assistance contact TLT at 913-588-7107 or tlt@kumc.edu. After hours, faculty and staff should contact Customer Support (IT Help Desk) at 913-945-9999 option 2. Customer Support (IT Help Desk) will contact appropriate on-call support staff for critical problems, such as a complete Blackboard outage. Non-critical problems will be handled on the next business day.

Communication

If Blackboard is not running at all, TLT posts an announcement on the TLT Blog and updates the blog when the problem is resolved. When Blackboard is running but a component/tool is not working correctly, TLT posts an announcement in Blackboard about the problem and updates the announcement when the problem is resolved.

Access

All KUMC faculty, staff, and students have access to the KUMC Blackboard Learning system (https://bb.kumc.edu) using their regular KUMC network account. If a user account was created without Blackboard access, please contact Customer Support (IT Help Desk) at 913-945-9999 option 2, to be added to Blackboard.

Using university enrollment data, KUMC students are automatically added to Blackboard course sites for all courses that have a Blackboard course site. Students who do not have access to a needed Blackboard course site should contact their course instructor. Students needing access to a course they have not officially enrolled in using Enroll and Pay will need to contact the instructor. The instructor will then need to seek approval for this. For the School of Nursing, approval will need to come from the Dean. For the School of Health Professions and the School of Medicine, approval will need to come from the respective department chairs. That approval will then need to be sent to TLT so that the student can be enrolled in the course requested.

The procedure for faculty requesting Blackboard course sites varies by school and department. Although the procedure is described below, faculty should check with their school or department administration about specifics for their areas:

• School of Health Professions: Faculty request course sites using an online form.
• School of Medicine (Year 1, Year 2, and Clerkships): Course site creation is handled by TLT working directly with school administration.
• School of Medicine (Graduate Programs): Faculty request course sites through their department.
• School of Nursing: Course site creation is handled by TLT working directly with school administration.

Beginning-of-Term

Starting two months before the beginning of each semester, the TLT Liaison for each school emails several faculty reminders to request course sites, and sends reminders when students are added to course sites and about enabling course sites for student access. During the second week of the semester, a Blackboard system announcement is posted reminding all Blackboard users of regularly scheduled maintenance times/outages and outage communication procedures.

End-of-Term and Course Retention

Three weeks after the end of the semester, all course sites for that semester are disabled for student access, unless otherwise requested by the faculty or school. After disabling student access, all course sites for that semester are archived. These archive files contain all course documents and student data. Health Profession, Nursing, and Graduate course sites are maintained on the system for two years after the completion of a course. Access to a course site during the two years is controlled by the primary course instructor. (CORE Medicine students have access to their Blackboard course sites during the four years they attend medical school at KUMC.)

Update

The Blackboard system must be periodically updated to maintain performance, improve functionality, and ensure security. Every Tuesday is a regularly scheduled maintenance window, and Blackboard may be unavailable from 3-3:30 AM. If critical updates must be applied outside of this time frame, TLT will post an announcement in Blackboard and on the TLT blog informing users of this outage, providing as much time as possible for users to work around this outage.

Trouble Ticket

Some of the problems users may encounter may be problems with the application itself, which only Blackboard is able to correct. When TLT has identified such a problem, they will open a trouble ticket with Blackboard Support, and these two groups will work together to resolve the problem. Once the problem has been resolved, the TLT Liaisons will communicate this to affected users through Blackboard announcements, TLT Blog entries, direct emails to specific users, etc.

Backup and Restore

Blackboard courses are archived after every semester and kept according to the TLT Content Retention policy. Faculty, staff, and students should keep copies of all-important course files on their own computer system or network directory. Faculty and staff should email TLT (tlt@kumc.edu) restore requests within twenty-one days of the deletion. Restoration may take up to 7 business days depending on what is needed to be restored.