New Portal Info Notifications

Through the Portal Info support site (http://www.portalinfo.utoronto.ca) we have created a new Notifications module that resides on the right hand side of the front page.  The intent of the module is to inform our user base of updates or problems that might affect the use of some of the tools that are integrated or accessed through the Portal, for example Blackboard Collaborate.  In order to make it easier to reach everyone we have also created an RSS feed, http://www.portalinfo.utoronto.ca/notifications.xml. 

I thought any of you who provide educational technology support might be interested in subscribing and/or passing the information on to your community.

The Portal Status module and the System Status page (http://www.systemstatus.utoronto.ca/system/systems/portal) is still the method for providing information about the Portal and its operation.

Ryan Green
February 20, 2013

Arts and Science Online Exams

From Sian, December 2009:

I've just introduced a new feature to the Library Resources feed [in Blackboard] for St.George Campus Faculty of Arts and Science courses -- for courses that have previous exams online, a link to the course's old exams now appears in the Library Resources feed ....

The collection so far includes Faculty of Arts and Science exams for the last three years (December 2006 - August 2009).

Trouble Shooting for Blackboard

Although access to Blackboard/the Portal is not a direct Library responsibility, we can do a little troubleshooting when students come to our desks wondering why they can't log into the Portal (http://portal.utoronto.ca)

1. The portal may be down. You can always check status updates here: http://www.portalinfo.utoronto.ca

2. If the portal is up, and the student knows their UTORID and password, but still can't log in to the portal, it may have something to do with their EMAIL ADDRESS in ROSI. If the student's e-mail address stored in ROSI is not a UTORmail address, they will not be able to access the Portal until that is updated to a valid University of Toronto address. They can be referred to the IC Help Desk, of course, to get assistance in getting that account set up, entered in ROSI, etc.

Rita