Blackboard is a five-part system that creates information for use in Blackboard about courses, students and faculty. Information comes from both the Algonquin College Student Information System (ACSIS) and from administrators, student and faculty users through their browsers (Graphical User Interface – the GUI).

How Blackboard handles information depends on whether it has been created automatically from ACSIS or manually through the GUI.

• Five Parts of Blackboard
• Types of Information
• Data Source
• Blackboard Updates from ACSIS (GeneSiS)
• Blackboard Passwords
• Evening and Weekend Courses

Blackboard, online.algonquincollege.com, is a system that depends on four servers:

1. the Blackboard server

2. the SQL database server, which contains all the user and course information or data related to Blackboard:

a. course content (text entered by instructors, documents, etc.)

b. records of user transactions (user sessions, quiz results, forum postings, etc.)

3. ACSIS (Algonquin College Student Information System), is a front-end Gui to"GeneSIS," which provides student and course information and allows updates to preferred email and address information.

4. the password server, which checks passwords as users log in to Blackboard.

5. In addition, information can be added to Blackboard manually through the Graphical User Interface (GUI). For example Blackboard administrators can create courses that are not on ACSIS; teachers have been able to add students to courses, users can change their passwords within Blackboard, all through the GUI.

To add courses or users to Blackboard, either from ACSIS or manually through the GUI, data are required about courses, users (students, faculty) and this creates course enrolments and instructor assignments within Blackboard.

Data Source

Within the SQL Database, Blackboard retains information about the Data Source of information, so that Blackboard knows whether course, users, course enrollments or instructor assignments have been created manually or by ACSIS.

The Data Source governs how Blackboard will treat the information. A change to a record can only be made using the same data source that created it.

For example:

Users manually added through the GUI cannot be changed by ACSIS
(a system administrator adds a student to a course through the GUI – this student will not be removed from the course by the ACSIS process).

·While temporary changes can be made through the GUI to information created by ACSIS, these changes are not permanent and will be reset to ACSIS values the next time the ACSIS update is run. (Examples: a user changes her or his password, a teacher changes the name of a course.)

Students who wish to change their email addresses within Blackboard need to use the mechanism provided through ACSIS (at acsis.algonquincollege.com), where they can choose a "preferred" email address. The address that they choose through ACSIS is the one that is passed to Blackboard in the update.

Blackboard updates from ACSIS run, starting at 5:00 in the morning, Monday through Friday and reflect changes that have been made to ACSIS on the previous day and updated that night.

Within Blackboard, users are identified by their Algonquin network username. When the user wishes to login to Blackboard, a message is sent to a password server which compares the password the user provides with the user’s network password.

Only faculty and students with Algonquin usernames and passwords can use Blackboard.

o New teachers or students must have network access before they can login to Blackboard and this process may take 48 hours from hiring or registration.

o For students, this is the first (four) letters of their last name plus a number such as "003".  This username for first-time users is generated for students by Information Technology Services.  To discover their usernames, students need to visit a campus access centre with their official timetable, which lists their Personal Identification Number (PIN).   The PIN is also the default password for network access unless the student has changed the password.  Blackboard authenticates against network passwords -- there are no passwords stored within Blackboard.

o For new teachers, a network access form must be completed by the department and sent to Information Technology Services (ITS).

To change a password on Blackboard, use the Start--> Settings--> Passwords  on your local computer to change your network password.

This academic year, Blackboard courses are being created automatically once a day from ACSIS for all course-sections in the daytime timetable. Blackboard courses for evening and weekend activities are being created manually.

· To request a Blackboard course for your evening or weekend course, and to have a class list of your students loaded into the course, send an email to bbhelp@algonquincollege.com specifying the course and section number of the course(s) you require. There will be a one-week turn around and the class list will not be updated automatically to reflect changes in the class.