System Announcements

• BLACKBOARD: CRITICAL PRODUCTION DOWNTIME for Monday, December 28th (Thursday, December 3, 2020)
  

  On Monday, December 28th beginning at 6:00AM (Eastern) through 8:00PM (Eastern), the blackboard.jhu.edu system will be upgraded to Blackboard Learn 9.1 Q4 2019 (more info at 'What Is New').

  The system will be unavailable during this time, and a maintenance page will be displayed until the system is available once more.

• Now Available: Ally Alternative Formats (Wednesday, September 23, 2020)
  

  To support our commitment to a more inclusive campus, we’re introducing a new feature called Ally into your Blackboard courses. As more of our courses are being facilitated online due to COVID-19, the importance of accessible online content has become imperative. Johns Hopkins University is making Ally available across most of our FA20 courses at the end of September to support students in engaging with digital content as well as to support faculty in providing accessible content.

  Ally will provide support to your students by allowing them to download your course files in different formats, like a MP3 or mobile-friendly version. Next to your course files, students will find an icon for a dropdown menu. They can then simply select the dropdown icon and then select “Alternative Formats”:

  

  

  From there students can choose the formats that work best for them. For more information visit https://uis.jhu.edu/blackboard/bb-ally/

  We hope you will encourage your students to take advantage of the Alternative Formats being made available in their Fall 2020 courses to support their learning. If you have questions, you can contact us at blackboard@jhu.edu.

• Phishing emails appearing to come from Blackboard (Tuesday, June 23, 2015)
  

  Phishing scams use fraudulent emails to get users to reveal confidential information. Such emails usually look like they come from a legitimate organization such as Blackboard but contain links to illegitimate sites.

  Blackboard has become aware of a mass phishing scam targeting customers using Blackboard Learn. To be clear, Blackboard Learn has not been hacked -- these are emails sent directly from a spammer to emails it may have harvested by spidering the institution's websites for email addresses.

  For more information see:  https://uis.jhu.edu/blackboard/blackboard-known-issues/phishing-emails-appearing-to-come-from-blackboard/