An Instructor's Guide to Blackboard

Additional Tools and Communication

Course Calendar
Instructors can manage events (course, institution, or personal) through the Calendar. Upcoming and past events can be viewed daily, weekly, or monthly and organized into categories.

To add an event:

• go to the Course Calendar link under Course Tools
• click on the Add Event button
• type in the necessary information; set time restrictions
• click Submit and OK

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Tasks
Instructors can create tasks and post them on the Tasks page for students participating in their course; task information will be arranged in columns that display the priority, task name, status, and due date.

To create a new task:

• go to the Tasks link under Course Tools
• click on the Add Task button
• type up the task; set its priority: low, normal or high
• click Submit and OK

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Send Email
Through the Send Email link, instructors access email functions, which allow them to send messages to their course participants. When emailing, make sure to choose the appropriate function – send to individuals, to all students, to individual groups, etc.

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Discussion Board
All conversations are grouped into threads that contain a main posting and all related replies. Students’ replies are logged and organized.

To add a new discussion thread:

• go to the Discussion Board link under Course Tools
• click on the Add: Forum button
• type in the title and a short description of what you want the students to discuss in this particular thread
• check all forum settings that apply

Note: Instructors have the ability to block and unblock specific students from seeing discussion threads.

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Collaboration

• by clicking on the Collaboration link under Course Tools, you will have the opportunity to join a synchronous chat room for student and group communications
• Virtual Classroom can be used to hold live on-line classroom discussions and office-hour-type question/answer forums. You can even have guest speakers and subject matter experts from around the world talk with your students in the Virtual Classroom

Note: Virtual Classroom is a Java application and may initially take a few minutes to load. Before developing assignments that require the Virtual Classroom, be sure that all students have Java on their systems and also have Java enabled browsers. Multiple students must participate in the discussion at the same time. Be sure to notify students about a scheduled Virtual Classroom session to ensure attendance.

• once you have entered the Virtual Classroom, you can draw and create various shapes in the whiteboard area, you can also write messages and read/look at responses of your students

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Digital Dropbox

This is a tool that instructor and students can use to exchange files. The Dropbox works by uploading a file from a disk or a computer to a central location. A participant can then download the file to work on it locally. Individual student access to the Dropbox is available from the Digital Dropbox area located in the Student Tools area.

1. To Add a File (only seen by the individual adding the file):

• click on the Add File button
• type in the name of the file; browse your computer for the file you want to attach; write any comments regarding the file
• click Submit and OK

2. This is what you will see once a file is added (dropped).

3. To Send a File

• click on the Send File button
• select which students (or groups of students, if you have groups set up) will receive the file.

Note: students can only Send a file to the instructors.

• select the name of the file you want to send from the dropdown box or upload a new file
• click Submit and OK

4. To Remove a File

• click on the Remove button across from the name of the uploaded file
• click OK

Note: Removing a file permanently deletes the file from Blackboard.

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Glossary Manager
Each course on Blackboard can have its own glossary of terms. Instructors can use this glossary to post terms that are used throughout the course. Students can then use these terms as a reference when working on assignments or reviewing for a test. (Students can access the glossary from the Tools link.)

1. To Add terms to the course glossary

• go to the Glossary Manager link under Course Tools
• click on the Add Term button
• in the Term textbox – enter the term to be added to the glossary; in the Definition textbox – enter the definition for the term
• press Submit and OK

Note: When adding terms to the glossary, they do not need to be added in alphabetical order. Terms will automatically be sorted as they are added.

2. To Modify a term

• click on the Modify button across from the term

3. To Remove a term

• click on the Remove button across from the term

4. Downloading the Glossary
By downloading the glossary, you can reuse it in another course, in which the same glossary terms are applicable.

• click on the Download Glossary button
• click on the Download button to open the File Download dialog box (or, you might have to right-click on the Download button and choose ‘Save Target As…’)
• save the file to your computer
• click Return to go back to the Glossary Manager

5. Uploading a list of terms to the glossary

• click on the Upload Glossary button
• click the Browse button and locate the .csv file
• under the Upload File Option section, choose whether you would like these glossary terms to be added to the exiting terms or if you would like to replace the current terms in the glossary with the ones being uploaded
• click Submit and OK

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Learning Units
Learning Units are modules constructed by the instructor to guide the progress of students through a structured presentation of materials. With regular files uploaded in the Course Documents area, students may have to jump around to read the material while following the syllabus, especially when the number of files gets large. With a Learning Unit, materials are sequenced in the order in which they should be read by the students, aiding them to stay on track. The materials are accessed using slide-show type navigation buttons and can be specified to open within the browser.

To Create a Leaning Unit:

• from the Control Panel of your course, select the content area in which the learning unit should be placed

select the Learning Unit link and click Go

• type in the name and the descriptions of the Leaning Unit
• check the options: make the learning unit is available, enforce sequential viewing of the Learning Unit, choose date restrictions (if necessary)
• click Submit and OK
• click the link for your new Learning Unit and begin adding content

Adding Content to the Learning Unit:
Many different types of materials can be added to a Learning Unit. A physical document residing on your hard drive can be added as an “item” or a “file”.

When adding something as an “item”, students will see the description of the file that you have typed in, and will need to click on the attached file to open it in the browser window.

When adding something as a “file”, students will see the information (attached documents) automatically opened up within the page.

The Learning Unit has slide-show style navigation buttons (plug-ins/viewers should be properly configured in the browser).

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