Info for Summer 2021

All Summer 2021 Courses are Hosted on GPS Blackboard

UMass Lowell's Graduate, Online and Professional Studies unit (GPS) hosts ALL courses on Blackboard during the summer terms. This includes all online courses, in addition to all virtual, on campus and hybrid graduate and undergraduate courses.

YOUR BLACKBOARD COURSE - If you are teaching this summer, your course site in GPS Blackboard should already be available for you. Online courses will have your content from a previous semester pre-loaded, while virtual and on campus courses will have a blank template pre-loaded. If you don't see your course site in Blackboard, would like to request a site for a Directed Study, or would like to request content be copied over from the day school instance of Blackboard, then please email Alena_Woods@uml.edu or Carrie_PowandaCroft@uml.edu.

WHAT'S NEW - GPS has decided to turn on Zoom by default for all course sites. This means that faculty can add the Zoom integration to their site, schedule and launch meetings right from Blackboard, and have students join and watch recordings of meetings. You can still use Collaborate if you like, but Zoom is also an option if you prefer it.

LOGIN PROBLEMS – You can login to GPS Blackboard using your UML username and password. Retrieve your UML password or set your password retrieval security questions at the UMass Lowell MyPassword website.

STUDENT AND TA ACCESS TO BLACKBOARD - Students are loaded into Blackboard courses a few days prior to the start of each term, and then incrementally each day thereafter 2x daily. Faculty can request TA or Grader access to their Blackboard course site by emailing Alena_Woods@uml.edu or Carrie_PowandaCroft@uml.edu.

CALENDAR AND IMPORTANT DATES - Summer Term 2021 Start I begins on May 17, 2021. Start II begins on July 6, 2021. Faculty should refer to the Academic Calendar and Summer Class Dates for semester start/end dates, holidays, and final exam days.

  • Note: For the Summer 2021 semester, all 6-week Session I and II courses end on a Monday instead of Sunday

NEW TO UML - If you are teaching a Virtual class for the first time at UML, there is a Self-Paced Virtual Training that you should be enrolled in on Blackboard. You can access this by logging into Blackboard and looking for the "UML Virtual, Hybrid and Web-Enhanced Course Blackboard Training - Self-Paced" course in your course list. 

Support & Training

The GPS Online Learning and Faculty Development Team are here to help with online course design and development support, and online teaching with Blackboard issues.