Facts about UTC Online for Faculty
Faculty Help
Access the UTC Online System
Acceptable Use Practices
Security and Student Information
Email Addresses
Course Cartridges
Intellectual Property of Course Material
Copyrighted Materials
Incompletes
Default Course Menu Items
Course and File Size Restrictions at UTC Online
Export and Archive your course at end of semester
Blackboard Training for Faculty and Students
Blackboard Usage at UTC
Faculty Help
If you need help logging in to the UTC Online system, call the UTC IT Support at 425-4000. For other questions, call the Walker Teaching Resource Center (x4188). Please refer any student questions to the UTC IT Support at 425-4000.
How do I access the UTC Online system?
UTC's online learning system (Blackboard) is secure and restricts access. Once you have a UTC ID and password (and a UTC email account), you can access the UTC Online system at http://utconline.utc.edu/. Your UTC Online user name is your UTC ID (3 letters and 3 numbers, for example, abc123).
Acceptable Use Practices
Use of the UTC Online system is governed by the practices outlined in the UTC Acceptable Use Practices (AUP) available at www.utc.edu/AUP/.
Security and Student Information
The security of the systems is of paramount importance in maintaining a reliable and trusted resource for online instructional materials and tools. As with other university records, faculty are cautioned to take care that student information (including, but not limited to, grades, test scores, user names, or ID numbers) is guarded closely. Grades should be posted so that students may see only their scores (for example, do not post a spreadsheet with all course grades into the class). UTC IDs can be viewed for users who have access to the following features: enroll, list or modify users, remove users, the grade book and the assessments area. The group function displays UTC IDs as a part of the file sharing function. The system is patched regularly and has the latest virus protection installed at all times.
Email Addresses
UTC Online (Blackboard) ONLY uses your UTC email address.
Course Cartridges
Course cartridges enable instructors to gain access to complete sets of teaching tools provided by academic publishers. Instructors who choose to use course cartridges must get the appropriate download key from the publisher and load the course cartridge him/herself. Before adopting books or course cartridges, please consult with the Blackboard Administrator or the Walker Teaching Resource Center about the lead time and system resources necessary for loading course cartridges. Exported or archived classes are not course cartridges.
Before deciding to use a course cartridge, please check with the UTC Online system administrator to ensure that our system can accommodate the cartridge under consideration. Information about the current version of Blackboard is posted on the utconline.utc.edu/ web page. You may need let the publisher know the system version number and license type to ensure that our system will accommodate the cartridges under consideration.
Course cartridges are course content and not part of the UTC Online system. They are the responsibility of the faculty member or department representative employing them.
Course cartridges can require very long download times and reduce availability of the UTC Online server. Any faculty member or department representative that needs to have course cartridges downloaded must inform the Online Technologies Coordinator four (4) weeks before the first day of classes for the semester in which the cartridge will be used. At this time, UTC Online staff will consult with the faculty or department regarding the best time to download the cartridge.
Intellectual Property of Course Material
The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga recognizes the intellectual property rights of faculty, staff, and students. The following policies are aligned with those already in place, which can be found at http://utrf.tennessee.edu/tto/policy.html
Instructors who create course sites retain all rights to those materials, including the right to create and retain archived and exported copies of the site in digital format. Use of the site and access to its materials and tools are determined by the instructor, and these rights may be reassigned by that individual only. UTC Online system administrators will ONLY add the faculty of record to courses. If other faculty need to be added to courses, the faculty of record should add them to the class and provide them with the access to the materials.
Students retain all rights to their class work, which also includes posted messages in discussion forums. Instructors may choose to post student work (or expect students to post their own work) on the course site. Students must be informed of this (preferably in writing) at the beginning of the course. They must also be told if their work will be retained in the course site beyond the duration of the semester and whether others will have access to it. No evaluative commentary or grade information from the instructor may be included with student work if the work includes information identifying its creator.
Copyrighted Course Materials
Faculty must respect the property of others by obeying copyright laws. Best practice encourages faculty to link directly to articles and additional readings provided through the Library online databases and electronic reserves. See
www.lib.utc.edu/reserves-faq-for-faculty.html and www.lib.utc.edu/guides/d/D15_Blackboard_linking.pdf
What do I do About Incompletes?
Instructors must request continuation of a course past the current semester to maintain student access to classes. If faculty keep a course available for one student, the course will be available for all students enrolled. Faculty may also choose to enroll students with incompletes into their current courses.
Default Course Menu Items
Default class menu items include Announcements, Syllabus, Assignments, and Faculty Information. Faculty can individualize each class to add more functionality or to edit the names of the default menu items. These changes should be made through the Control Panel of each course (Control Panel > Manage Course Menu). Importing course contents from a previous semester may duplicate menu buttons. Faculty are urged to remove the empty items from the menu before making the course available to students.
What are the Size Restrictions at UTC Online?
As of January 2008, course, organization, and file sizes doubled for instructors.
Instructors will be warned when their course/organization size exceeds 1 GB. The maximum course size is 1.5 GB.
The maximum size of a single file upload is 400 MB.
If you are close to exceeding your size restriction, call the Walker Teaching Resource Center (x4188) or put your course information on your personal web site.
Export and Archive your Course at end of the Semester
UTC Online administration does not keep archived copies of any classes on the system. Faculty are strongly encouraged to export and archive their courses through the Control Panel at the end of each semester. In addition, we strongly urge faculty to export and back up the grade book of each class throughout and at the end of each semester.
Faculty are responsible for making and retaining course exports and archives. UTC Online system administration will NOT archive or export any courses for back up. Classes from the previous semester will be deleted the fifth week after the start of the following semester. Faculty are notified via email several times before classes are deleted.
Exporting a course allows the instructor to select the parts of the course to keep for future use. It is recommended that when you import course content into a new course, you use the exported course (not the archived course).
Archiving a course allows the instructor to save the entire course including all content and user information. This is useful for keeping a record of class interactions, grades, and enrollment. When importing previous course content into a new course, do not import an archived course; instead, use the exported course. If you import an archived course, it will import unnecessary information into your new course such as previous semester student information.
More information about exporting and archiving your course is located at http://utconline.utc.edu/online/faculty.php#archive
Blackboard Training for Faculty and Students
Faculty and staff do not have to attend Blackboard training to access or use the UTC Online system. However, pre-scheduled training sessions are offered through the Walker Teaching Resource Center (www.utc.edu/TRC/Schedule).Faculty and staff may request specific training sessions to meet their needs by calling the Walker Teaching Resource Center at 425-4188. Student resources are located at http://utconline.utc.edu/online/bbtutorials.php. Students can get help accessing UTC Online from their instructors, UTC IT Support, or the online manual available through the Blackboard site.
Blackboard Usage at UTC
Measured usage statistics of Blackboard at UTC Online are conducted at the end of the 2nd week, the 4th week, midterms, and finals of the fall and spring semesters, and at the end of the 2nd week of each summer term. The following table indicates the percentage of UTC classes that use Blackboard at UTC Online:
| 2nd Week | 4th Week | Midterm | Finals | |
| Summer 2008 | 36.0% | -- | -- | -- |
| Spring 2008 | 47.4% | 50.3% | 53.8% | 54.9% |
| Fall 2007 | 43.9% | 44.9% | 46.4% | 46.9% |
