Technology Supported Learning for Faculty

Every Amarillo College course has a Blackboard Learn (LMS) course site. You can access your courses through the AC Connect portal page. If you require assistance with your Blackboard courses, please contact the Center for Teaching & Learning.

Post key class materials

• Add content such as your class notes, readings, and presentations.

Communicate with your class through Blackboard

• Announcements are a great way to post time-sensitive information critical to student success. Add announcements for due dates for assignments and projects, changes to your syllabus, corrections/clarifications of materials, and exam schedules. You can also change the start date of your Blackboard courses to allow your students early access. 
• Online discussions allow students to interact with you as well as their fellow students. You can observe as students demonstrate their understanding of the material and correct misconceptions. You can extend your office hours and reach students more often during the week so that learning is continuous.
• The email tool allows you to send email to other people in your course without launching a separate email program, such as Outlook or Gmail. You can send email to individual users or to groups of users.
• Video allows you to demonstrate concepts visually and engage with your students, and creating the video yourself helps you to build and maintain connections with them in an online environment as you would in a traditional setting. AC’s video tool, Vidgrid, has put together a set of tutorials for teaching remotely. If you do not have a Vidgrid account, click here to create one. If you do have an account, but you do not see the “Record” button in the upper left corner of the screen, contact Heather or Richard to have your permissions changed from Viewer to Creator. It is HIGHLY recommended that you use Google Chrome with VidGrid.

Assess your students

• Assignments allow you to create and edit assignments as well as grade assignments submitted by students.
• Tests and surveys functionality allows you to measure student knowledge, gauge progress, and gather information from students.
• Respondus Lockdown Browser is also available for assessments while maintaining academic integrity. Please contact CTL for assistance.

Hold a Virtual Meet space for your students

• Blackboard Collaborate is a powerful all-in-one platform that offers you an immersive human experience through your computer, tablet, or mobile device anywhere, anytime. A fully interactive web conferencing environment and asynchronous voice authoring capabilities allow for greater engagement so that you're not missing a thing. 
• Google Meet is part of Amarillo College's G Suite and is available to all students, faculty and staff. Just log in to Google with you amarillocollege.com email address and Password (same password as your ACNetID). ex. youracnetid@amarillocollege.com
• Microsoft Teams allows for group meetings and is available through Office 365 to all Faculty and Staff.

ITS Support

There are 3 ways to get your ticket created.

1. Send an email to Technology Information Center <tic@actx.edu>. In the email please put what your issue is and any error or explanation of what is happening. You can attach screenshots or anything else you think may help us figure out your problem quicker.

2. You can open a ticket directly in Service Now. You can login to our self service ticketing system to open and track your IT requests directly through this portal. Need instructions for this? Click here.

3. Call 806-371-5100 during normal business hours to get help and open a ticket.

Getting Phone Messages while at Home

Remember, voicemail messages can be accessed via email. Here are instructions for changing your voicemail message so you can let people know how to get ahold of you while you work from home. Do not forward your phone unless authorized by your cabinet member.

Library Resources

The library has an open chat feature on our website http://actx.edu/library as well is in the Library tab of Blackboard. Librarians can help you find sources, create citations, and other research needs.  AC Librarians will be manning the chat box during normal Library business hours, but the chat is staffed with research professionals outside of normal business hours as well.  It is available until 2AM Sunday – Thursday and until Midnight on Fridays and Saturdays.

• While the Library is open, you can contact us by calling (806) 371-5468 or emailing library-help@actx.edu. Our normal hours are Monday & Wednesday 8:30A – 12P.
• We can create special websites, called LibGuide, just for you! LibGuide are websites that are designed specifically for your class, or even a specific assignment in your class.  All information is vetted before posted. Check out what we have to offer here: http://actx.libguides.com/ . Contact the library to have a LibGuide made for you!
• We can provide live virtual Library Instruction classes through Blackboard Collaborate.  Let us know you would like one and we’ll get it all set up and email you a link to the session.
• We could also provide one-on-one reference assistance through Collaborate if student or staff needs more assistance.  
• We have tutorials! We have tutorials on how to research, information on Google Drive Apps, as well as how to research and use our databases. Check them out in the Library tab of Blackboard.
• We have eBook collections through Harrington Consortium and EBSCO. You can find links to our electronic books here: https://www.actx.edu/library/books.
• Last, but definitely not least, the databases are online collections of information.  Use of these resources can continue as usual.

• This is an excellent guiding document for copyright during COVID-19: https://docs.google.com/document/d/10baTITJbFRh7D6dHVVvfgiGP2zqaMvm0EHHZYf2cBRk/edit.  It was written by many copyright librarians to help the rest of us understand how to work within the law, but still provide the instruction our students need.