Humber Magazine reflects a growing diversity of voices and stories from the Humber community and is a place where we can come together to learn, share and celebrate.

In this issue, you will learn more about the historic Unlimited Campaign, Humber’s first fundraising campaign, which publicly launched in 2020. Named for the unlimited possibilities it will create for Humber students, it will provide current and future generations with the tools they need to thrive and succeed.

This issue also shares stories of how students, faculty and staff, alumni and friends have come together like never before to give back and face recent challenges, ensuring that students and the entire Humber community can continue to reach new heights.

Click here to read the Winter 2021 issue or visit humber.ca/magazine to download an accessible version.

We hope you enjoy these stories, news and tips and that they provide you with useful information and inspiration for 2021!

If you have any questions about the magazine, please contact Adelia Marchese, Director, Alumni Relations, at adelia.marchese@humber.ca or 416.729.5110.

Microsoft OneNote is a note-taking program for free-form information gathering and multi-user collaboration. It gathers your notes, drawings, screen clippings, and audio commentaries. Notes can be shared with other OneNote users over the Internet or a network. You already have access to OneNote and now you can get coaching on it!

Learn the basics of OneNote by signing up to 1:1 Virtual Coaching at its.humber.ca/coaching.

Usage in Blackboard continues to grow as more and more faculty are leveraging the LMS/Blackboard platform. The growth in Blackboard usage has spiked an increase in data storage and in response, Humber College will be initiating their annual Blackboard Data Retention Initiative. This initiative is sponsored and supported by ITS, AOC and the Teaching & Learning support services.

Who will be impacted?

• All faculty and administrators who have courses in Blackboard, pre-Fall 2018, will be impacted.

Which Blackboard courses will be archived and deleted?

• All Banner generated courses, courses that have an assigned CRN number, including XL/cross listed courses, from Fall 2017 to Summer 2018 inclusive will be archived and then fully deleted from Blackboard.
• .DEV, _DEV, SBX, TUTR, Master/MSTR and other specially requested Blackboard courses will not be archived nor deleted. Faculty can contact naveed.aqeel@humber.ca if they have questions regarding which courses will be impacted.
• Faculty will continue to have access to their courses tied to the following academic years – 2018/2019, 2019/2020.

When will courses be archived and deleted?

• The archiving process will commence immediately. There will be no impact to Blackboard courses or Blackboard services during the archiving process.
• The deletion of Blackboard course data (Fall 2017 – Summer 2018 courses) will begin the weekend of January 30/31, 2021.
• The process of archiving and deleting data from Blackboard will be carried out annually as per the retention policy and after the close out of each academic year.

Faculty considerations and responsibilities:

• Faculty should export/archive any courses older than Fall 2018 that they wish to keep offline. This task should be ideally completed by January 29, 2021.
• Help documentation on how to export/archive a course can be found here.
• Exported/archived courses should be saved either offline on a USB or uploaded to a cloud storage solution such as Microsoft OneDrive.
• Faculty one-on-one support is available through the Instructional Support Studios.
• Additional communication reminders (Communiqué announcements, social media posts, websites) reminding faculty of this initiative will be ongoing up until/including the January 30/31 deletion weekend.

If you have any questions or concerns regarding the Blackboard Data Retention Initiative, please contact mark.ihnat@humber.ca or ryan.burton@humber.ca. Thank you.

The Communiqué webpage (www.humber.ca/staff) and daily newsletter was refreshed in September 2019. Those changes included a new look and the addition of analytic functionality that provides information on engagement like open rates, click-through rates etc. We have been using this information to help strengthen our communications about what is happening across our physical and digital campuses.

As a result, we have implemented a few initial changes following insights about employee engagement so far. In general, our updated approach will be:

• Event posts will be limited to those promoting events that are no more than one month away. 
• The number of times an announcement or event post can be repeated will be limited to three.

To help us continue to improve the daily Communiqué newsletter, we are asking for your input. Please complete this short survey to anonymously share your experiences with Communiqué with us. The survey will close at the end of day on Friday, February 5.

Permissions have been updated to allow all members of the Humber and Guelph-Humber community to access the survey. If you previously could not access it, please try again.

If you have additional feedback on Communiqué, we would love to hear from you. Please connect with Emily Milic, Humber’s PR and Communications Manager.