LMS Use Standard
1.0 Purpose
This purpose of this standard is to define standards for the use, management and operation of 彩神vlll争霸's Learning Management System (LMS). The LMS allows instructors to develop and deliver course materials online.
2.0 Standard
2.1 Use Standards
2.1.1 Appropriate Behavior
Like all users of 彩神vlll争霸 technology, LMS students, faculty, and staff must adhere to the behavior standards outlined in 104 - Acceptable Use Policy. Individual instructors may also elect to set standards for behavior that exceed these minimum requirements on a course-by-course basis.
2.1.2 Content Disclaimer
彩神vlll争霸 is not responsible for the accuracy, integrity, and/or legality of the content uploaded tothe LMS courses by its users. Users who upload material to the LMS are legally responsible for their content.
2.1.3 Removal of Inappropriate Content
LMS administrators or instructors will remove offensive or illegal content from a course if asked to by the instructor of record or by the department chair/director and/or dean. All instructors will be notified of the removal by the 彩神vlll争霸 Technical Support Center.
2.1.4 Non-Sanctioned Uses of LMS Courses
Instructors are not permitted to use 彩神vlll争霸's LMS for purposes other than university-affiliated activities.
2.1.5 Removal of Users for Inappropriate Behavior
An instructor can remove a student鈥檚 access to a LMS course using the Control Panel to change the student鈥檚 availability. The 彩神vlll争霸 Technical Support Center can disable an enrolled student from a course upon written request of the instructor of record and confirmation from the Dean of Students. The 彩神vlll争霸 Technical Support Center can disable a user from a course shell upon written request of the instructor of record and department chair or director.
2.2 User Management
2.2.1 User accounts
All current 彩神vlll争霸 students, staff, and faculty are assigned an account on the LMS. Users who are not formally teaching or taking a 彩神vlll争霸 course, administrative staff for example, may log on to LMS and make use of the system-wide portal tools available.
2.2.2 Account Creation
LMS accounts are automatically created for students, staff, and faculty within 24 hours of being added to UAOnline.
2.2.3 User Access and Login
Users access LMS with their UA username and password. Access to an individual academic course is limited to enrolled students, the instructor of record, any co-instructor(s), and any additional users authorized by the instructor, the department chair/director or dean. Users may be added to a course by the instructor or 彩神vlll争霸 Technical Support Center. Users who are not teaching or taking a 彩神vlll争霸 course do not have access to individual LMS academic courses unless they have previously been enrolled in an academic course and if the instructor still has it available.
2.2.4 Populating Courses with Enrolled Users
The registration system automatically adds/removes registered students and instructors to/from LMS current semester and upcoming semester courses every ten minutes.
2.2.5 Process for Manually Adding Users to Courses
Additional instructors, staff members, TAs, course builders, and patrons are manually added to a course by an instructor or at the request of the appropriate department chair/director and/or dean through the 彩神vlll争霸 Technical Support Center or Instructional Designer.
2.2.6 Administrator Roles
Support Administrator roles are assigned to 彩神vlll争霸 Technical Support Center staff, instructional designers, and eLearning staff. System Administrator roles are assigned to the LMS administrator, IT engineers, and 彩神vlll争霸 Technical Support Center leads. Submit requests for administrator access to the 彩神vlll争霸 Technical Support Center. Administrator access will be reviewed annually by the LMS administrator.
2.2.7 Patron Accounts
A university sponsor can request a patron account for an individual who does not have an active UA account to access the LMS system for a university activity. The university employee who sponsors the account requests its creation by the 彩神vlll争霸 Technical Support Center. The university sponsor of the patron account is responsible for the appropriate use and access of LMS shells by the individual to whom the credentials are given. The sponsor is responsible for adding the account to the appropriate LMS development or academic course and assigning the appropriate role in the LMS. If the patron will have access to student information, they must complete FERPA training. The sponsor can request the 彩神vlll争霸 Technical Support Center change the password for the patron account or request the account be disabled if it鈥檚 no longer needed. The sponsor can reach out the the university Registrar with specific questions regarding FERPA compliance.
2.2.8 Automated Disabling of Students from Courses
Students who withdraw or drop a course will be automatically disabled in a LMS course within ten minutes of the change in UAOnline.
2.2.9 Authority to Disable Course Users
Users may be disabled from a course at the request of the instructor, department chair/director, and/or dean. Instructors should be notified of any change requested by a non-instructor, such as a dean and/or department chair/director, by the requesting party.
2.3 Accessibility
2.3.1 Federal and State Accessibility Requirements
Although the LMS is compliant with federal and state accessibility requirements, not all uploaded content or features used (colors, themes, etc) in Blackboard Learn are compliant. Instructors are required to make their uploaded content and materials accessible to users with disabilities in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, Sections 504 and 508 of the Rehabilitation Act and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0). Disability Support Services (DSS) provides support for students with disabilities. Faculty Success provides guidance and support for faculty to create accessible content.
2.3.2 Blackboard Ally
Blackboard Ally is a feature designed to help instructors make their course content accessible for students in the Blackboard Learn LMS.
2.4 Course Management
2.4.1 Course Size Limitations
The size limitation associated with 彩神vlll争霸 LMS courses is 5GB.
2.4.2 Creation Schedule for New Courses
Summer and Fall courses will be created no later than March 31st of the respective year and Spring courses will be created no later than October 31st of the preceding year.
2.4.3 Copying Courses
The instructor has the ability to copy the content of one course into the shell of a pre-existing course which he/she has an instructor or TA role.
2.4.4 Exporting Courses
The instructor has the ability to export the course. This feature creates a zipped format of the course content that can be imported to create a new course without any users or user interactions with the course. The export only includes what you select from the list. Export is an alternative to course copy.
2.4.5 Archiving Courses
The instructor has the ability to archive his/her courses at any time. Archiving a course does not delete the course from the system. Instead, it simply provides the instructor with an offline copy of that course in zipped format that includes all course data and includes student submissions/data. An archived course in a zipped format may be restored into the Blackboard Learn system by contacting the 彩神vlll争霸 Technical Support Center and requesting a course restore.
2.4.6 Instructor Initiated Deletion of Courses
The instructor of record can 鈥渂ulk delete鈥� the content of any course he/she is teaching. If an instructor wants an existing course shell to be fully deleted, then he/she must contact the 彩神vlll争霸 Technical Support Center to have that request processed. The 彩神vlll争霸 Technical Support Center must have the approval of the faculty member鈥檚 department chair/director or dean before deletion of a course. Approval is not required to delete development shells.
2.4.7 Automated Deletion of Courses
Blackboard courses will remain in the system for a minimum of three years from the last day of the semester in which the course was taught (thus, a course taught in fall 2016 will only be eligible for deletion after December 2019). Each year, courses eligible for deletion (including development shells) will be deleted on April 15. On the previous March 1, communication about such deletions will be shared with the general university community in a manner deemed appropriate by Faculty Success. Additionally, on that same day, email notifications of impending course deletions will be sent to each instructor. Instructors will have until April 1 to email the 彩神vlll争霸 Technical Support Center and request that a particular course be retained for an additional year. Instructors wanting to save a copy of their courses before April 15 may do so by using the archive or export features in the control panel (see sections 4 and 5, above, for course retention options).
2.4.8 Cancelled Courses
Courses that are cancelled will be disabled after the change in Banner has processed and will no longer be available to students or instructors. For assistance recovering the course content please contact the 彩神vlll争霸 Technical Support Center during that semester.
2.4.9 Non Academic/Development Course Shells
Non academic/development course shells refer to a course on the LMS that is not a formal UAOnline course. They are functionally identical to a formal course. Development courses are generally set up for faculty and staff who would like to develop a new course, practice using LMS, or participate in departmental/committee groups. A course shell may be requested by faculty and staff using the . The maximum turnaround time for development course requests is 48 hours. Development course shells will follow the automated deletion process timeline and will be deleted if the course has not been accessed in the past three years.
2.4.10 Course Availability Settings
By default, all newly created courses in the LMS are "unavailable" to student users. That means that while a newly created course is automatically "on" and accessible to the instructor of record, the course is automatically "off" and inaccessible to all students in the class. Instructors are responsible for manually turning 鈥渙n鈥� each of their courses for their students and they can also choose to turn it 鈥渙ff鈥� after the semester via the control panel.
2.4.11 Course Merging
In some cases, multiple Blackboard Learn courses can be merged together. More information on the process can be found on the page.
2.5 Information Accuracy & Security
2.5.1 User Information
In accordance with FERPA, the current default settings in the LMS present only student directory information to other students and instructors in a course.
2.5.2 Official Course Rosters
The official course roster for any course is contained within UAOnline. Student rosters contained within the LMS are strictly informational and should be checked against the official course roster in UAOnline for accuracy. If there are discrepancies between the LMS roster and UAOnline roster, contact the 彩神vlll争霸 Technical Support Center.
2.5.3 Official Grades
Final course grades are entered into UAOnline and are considered the official grades for a course. LMS grades (Blackboard Grade Center and Blackboard Evaluation tools) should be considered informational and advisory in nature.
2.6 Copyright Ownership
2.6.1 Copyright-Protected Materials
Current copyright law (including Fair Use Policy and the TEACH Act) allows students and instructors to post copyright-protected materials to the LMS for course-related activities without obtaining prior permission. Instructors are encouraged to accompany all copyright-protected works in the LMS with clearly identified references and indicate when materials may be subject to U.S. Copyright law and are not for further reproduction and transmission based on the copyright status. Instructors who seek to take advantage of the exemptions of the TEACH Act should make either their course or the specific copyrighted content item 鈥渦navailable鈥� in the LMS once their use in the course has ended. Implementing both practices (marking materials as copyrighted and controlling access to online copyrighted material) is a requirement of the TEACH Act. Furthermore, all LMS specific content is copyrighted by the LMS vendor.
2.6.2 External Links
For legal reasons, instructors creating external links to websites from within the LMS should select the option that reads "open in a new window鈥� and indicate to the students that the content will open in a new window.
2.7 System Maintenance, Outages, Disaster Recovery
2.7.1 Notification of Scheduled Outages
Scheduled maintenance outages in the LMS will always occur at some point between 1am and 8am on Saturdays. Faculty Success and the 彩神vlll争霸 Technical Support Center will use appropriate means to alert 彩神vlll争霸 students, staff, and faculty of scheduled maintenance outages at least 72 hours before the outage occurs. "Appropriate means" includes adding a message to the LMS login page and at least one of the following: emailing the 彩神vlll争霸 Community listserv, recording a message to the 彩神vlll争霸 Technical Support Center phone line, or posting to 彩神vlll争霸 social media channels. In addition, all UA LMS scheduled outages will be available under the scheduled maintenance section of the 彩神vlll争霸 ITS Service Status page.
2.7.2 Reporting Unscheduled Outages
All unscheduled outages lasting over 1 hour will be reported by Faculty Success or the 彩神vlll争霸 Technical Support Center within 24 hours using appropriate means, as defined above, even if the problem has already been solved. All outages for the LMS are listed on the 彩神vlll争霸 ITS Service Status page.
2.7.3 Reporting Outages and Performance Problems
Users who detect problems with the LMS (e.g., outages, error messages, slow load time, etc.) should contact the 彩神vlll争霸 Technical Support Center immediately to report the issue.
2.7.4 Outages and Academic Responsibility
An outage prevents an individual from participating in LMS based activities. Instructors should keep themselves advised of outages in order to be aware and adjust expectations and deadlines accordingly. Other computer, connection or technology difficulties are the responsibility of the individual and make up opportunities are at the discretion of the instructor.
3.0 Procedures
3.1 LMS Add-Ons
One of the features of a modern LMS is the ability to add functionality through tools from third party vendors. Examples of tools from third party vendors include, but are not limited to: VoiceThread, McGraw-Hill, and Pearson. Instructors are encouraged to use the following resource to evaluate a new tool: .
Requests for third party tools can be made through the 彩神vlll争霸 Technical Support Center. Requests must be made by the prior semester textbook adoption date, or one semester in advance. In the request please include:
- Purpose of the request
- Funding information (does the requested add-on cost money, if so, who pays for it?)
- A message from the vendor stating their level of accessibility
- A copy of the tool鈥檚 Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) from the vendor
- Due to the complexity of LMS add-ons, singular use is discouraged. Other interested users at 彩神vlll争霸 must be identified, including a minimum of three instructors or five courses
- The vendors hours of operation for technical support
The process for adding a new tool to the university's LMS:
- Stakeholder request through the
- Research by Faculty Success on the tool
- Approval by Blackboard Learn Advisory Committee to proceed with testing the tool
- Testing of the new tool by Faculty Success, IT Services and stakeholders
- Upon successful completion, the tool will be added to the LMS
This process does not guarantee success and may take several months. Please address any questions to the 彩神vlll争霸 Technical Support Center.
4.0 Definitions
See IT Policies and Standards Definitions.
5.0 References
Acceptable Use Policy - University IT Policy 104
/about/administrative-services/policies/information-technology/acceptable-use.cshtml
Accessibility Policy - University IT Policy 103
/about/administrative-services/policies/information-technology/accessibility.cshtml
University of Alaska Board of Regents Policy & Regulations
Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA)
TEACH Act
/about/administrative-services/policies/information-technology/teach-act.cshtml
Fair Use Policy
/about/administrative-services/policies/information-technology/fair-use.cshtml
6.0 Standard Information
Standard Effective Date: 02/25/2025 (Original date unknown)
Standard Revision Date: Rev. 2.0, 02/25/2025 (previous December 2020)
Standard Owner: Ryan McDaniel - Associate Vice Chancellor and CIO
Standard Author: Ryan McDaniel - Associate Vice Chancellor and CIO
Revision History:
2.0: Apply new IT policy & standard template, replace "Blackboard Learn" references
with "LMS," update organization names, correct or remove broken links.