Flipgrid to Replace VoiceThread

• June 9th, 2021
• in Software News

Flipgrid is available to UA students, faculty and staff. Flipgrid offers a modern, fun and accessible video discussion option for UA instructors and students, ideal for engaging students asynchronously.

By using Flipgrid, instructors can increase feelings of social connections and community among students while providing students with the opportunity to develop their voices. All UA students, faculty and staff have access to Flipgrid through UA’s Microsoft license agreement.

Flipgrid can be embedded in a Blackboard Learn course or viewed from a browser or the Flipgrid app, which is available on mobile devices. Instructors can create welcome videos with the tool, and students can use it for presentations. Instructors can create Flipgrid assignments and allow students to…

• Verbalize their thinking process
• Create and deliver short how-to videos
• Create or participate in a digital video scavenger hunt
• Verbalize goals or reflect
• Provide digital or oral reading responses
• Collaborate on projects
• Provide feedback through peer reviews
• Summarize and highlight student work or discussions
• Plus, so much more!

Get started with Flipgrid at flipgrid.com. Click the Educator Sign up button and choose to login with a Microsoft O365 account. Enter your myBamausername@ua.edu email address, or Crimson email address, and password to sign in. More information and guides for using Flipgrid is available on the CIT website.

UA is transitioning to Flipgrid as our video discussion and collaboration tool. Effective for the Fall 2021 semester, VoiceThread will no longer be available to UA students, faculty and staff. If you previously used VoiceThread for recorded lectures, you can export that content and upload into Panopto, then share it as a link in Flipgrid. We have step-by-step instructions on how to export VoiceThread content on the CIT website.

Courses to be Removed from Blackboard

• May 27th, 2021
• in Software News

In accordance with UA’s LMS Course Retention Policy, materials more than two years old will be removed from the Blackboard Learn system. The Center for Instructional Technology will begin removing content from the LMS on July 15. Instructors can export course content, copy content to another course, and request a course shell to copy content from an existing course. Visit the CIT website for more information.

MATLAB Webinars – Spring 2021

• April 21st, 2021
• in Software News

MathWorks is offering several free upcoming webinars for research with MATLAB and Simulink. Topics include “MATLAB and Simulink with Python,” “The Use of MATLAB in Open Science,” “Scaling Up MATLAB Applications to Clusters and Clouds,” and others! More information, and webinar registration, is available on the MathWorks website.

Student Alias Email Address Change

• March 31st, 2021
• in Software News

Currently, students have unadvertised alias @ua.edu accounts that direct to @crimson.ua.edu. As a part of the student email migration May 7-9, OIT will be removing alias @ua.edu email addresses for students. Students that use their @ua.edu alias email addresses for any accounts, memberships, email lists, etc. should change from @ua.edu to @crimson.ua.edu. This change is designed to simplify the mail environment for students and IT administrators, and also to allow the coexistence of student and employee email domains within the UA Microsoft O365 tenant.

Latest Version of NVivo Now Available

• March 29th, 2021
• in Software News

The latest version of NVivo is now available for UA students, faculty and staff. Previously, NVivo released versions with numbers, the latest version (sans numbers) is now available. NVivo 10 and NVivo 11 are also still available. License keys for each version are available on the OIT software catalog.

OIT To Apply Online Archiving for O365 Mailboxes

• March 24th, 2021
• in Software News

Microsoft O365 provides online archive space for faculty and staff mailboxes. Sunday, April 11, OIT will apply the Online Archive feature to all UA faculty and staff O365 mailboxes.

With the Online Archive feature, UA faculty and staff can move files they wish to archive to the Online Archive mailbox from within their Outlook application or Outlook on the web. Below is a screenshot of how the Online Archive folder will appear for UA faculty and staff O365 mailboxes.  Learn archiving, and other Outlook best practices, on the OIT website.

Microsoft Teams Workshops

• March 19th, 2021
• in Software News

Microsoft Teams is OIT’s favorite communication and collaboration app. Microsoft Teams is a digital hub that brings conversations, content, assignments, and apps together in one place. Microsoft Training professionals will be offering three upcoming virtual workshops for UA students, faculty and staff.

Microsoft Teams 101
March 26

Microsoft Teams Organization and Settings
April 1

Adding Files in Microsoft Teams
April 8

Learn more about each of these workshops on the UA Events Calendar.

Review Calendar Permissions

• March 5th, 2021
• in Software News

When student email accounts are migrated from Google to Microsoft O365, UA students, faculty and staff calendars will be hosted in the same environment. The default calendar setting is to share free/busy information only; however, faculty and staff may choose to make their calendars completely private. Before student email is migrated into O365, OIT encourages UA faculty and staff to review their current calendar permissions. Instructions to do so are available on the OIT website.

Learn Teams – Within Teams

• March 2nd, 2021
• in Software News

Join the Microsoft Resources Team – a Team within the Microsoft Teams app where UA Microsoft partners share tutorials, videos and helpful content. All UA students, faculty and staff are welcome to join. This Team allows users to learn more about the Microsoft Teams environment through experience.

Join the Team today! If you’re new to Teams, learn more about it on the OIT website.

Live Transcription Available in Zoom

• February 23rd, 2021
• in Software News

Live transcription is now available for UA Zoom accounts! Transcription can be enabled by the host, and any participants can view the captioning as needed. The robot transcription service enables speech to text transcription in Zoom meetings and webinars. Live transcription only supports English.

AI/automatic speech recommendation captions are not accurate enough to serve as an accommodation – for that, human/manual captioning is necessary –  but this service can enhance accessibility for all users.

To enable live transcription, sign into the Zoom web portal, and visit Settings. Select the Meeting tab, scroll to the Advanced settings and select the checkbox to enable transcription.