Dev Diaries #6: Upgrade Complete – What’s New?

We’re pleased to announce that the upgrade of My Dundee has been completed ahead of schedule. You can now log in as usual at my.dundee.ac.uk to access your content, use services such as Turnitin and make edits to modules.

As I wrote in a previous post, the major changes that come with this upgrade affect background services and won’t be immediately apparent when you log in. However, we have implemented a number of user interface (UI) changes and other tweaks you should be aware of.

New Theme

The first thing you’ll see when you log into My Dundee is that we have applied a new theme. This change has been made for three reasons:

  • To improve the accessibility of the interface.
  • To improve the responsive design of the interface (make it work better on different screen sizes, including mobile)
  • To develop a consistent user experience as we move toward adopting the Ultra Experience

CTIL will be talking a lot more about the Ultra Experience in the next few months as we work to enable this completely redesigned user interface in the summer.

Here are some of the specifics to look out for when you log into My Dundee after the upgrade:

Full Width

The new theme will now stretch the interface across the full width of the page. This allows more information to be displayed on wider screens.

My Dundee Tab Layout

We have made some improvements to the default ‘My Dundee’ tab layout for both staff and students (each group has their own tab):

  • The core ‘My Modules’ is in the same place, though we’ve move the ‘My Organisations’ into the same column.
  • We’ve tweaked the left hand column to include more tool and resource links as well as making Mobile Apps more prominent.
  • We made a significant change to the way we deliver news and blog post notifications on the right that will bring useful information to your attention.

Note that any school/discipline specific tabs and UI text is still in place.

Language Pack

You may not notice this change, but we’d previously been using a slightly ‘eccentric’ language pack. This has now been rectified – you’ll no longer get the occasional gimps of US English in the interface.

Grade Centre will…. remain as ‘Grade Centre’

We need to correct a previously noted change of name from Grade Centre to Mark Centre. This is no longer the case and Grade Centre will remain in place. This is because of a change applied by Blackboard that they subsequently withdrew. Sorry for any confusion.

Module Menu Issues

One issue that has cropped up is that some modules that have previously had customised menu colours and patterns before the upgrade have not switched to the default theme colours or changed to an old colour set. If you are an instructor and wish to change your module menu, you can read the below post that details how to change this:

– Changing your module menu colours

What’s Next

This upgrade has been about changing the way we deliver Blackboard to enable future improvements: My Dundee is now delivered via software as a service (SaaS). I’ll be writing a post about what this means next week and will cover how updates, patches and support now works with My Dundee. The first thing to understand about this new setup is that My Dundee is now a ‘service’ provided to us rather than a piece of software we have installed on some servers in UoD IT’s basement. This has a number of implications to the way the service works – more on this next week.

You can see an outline of our overall road-map for the year in our previous dev diary post . For now, CTIL will continue to clean up and improve our services, processes and the way we handle your data. You should also be on the look out for information about the Ultra interface and the programme for early adopters.

For now, happy new year from all of us in CTIL and a thanks for your patience to anyone who’s had to change their plans or work due to this upgrade.

 

Comments

  1. Hello I see that the upgrade is complete however I cannot log in using my details, please can you advise what to do? I need to submit my work and cannot get access to blackboard

    1. Hi Elaine,

      First thing i would suggest is to close your browser and start with a clean session. Otherwise, can you report your login issue to Help4u (email, phone or online form)? UoD IT are the first port of call for issues around user accounts.

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