A Student's
Guide to Blackboard
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Communication
Collaboration
- by clicking on the Collaboration link
under Course Tools, you will have the
opportunity to join a synchronous chat room, used by students
and instructor for communicating online
- Virtual Classroom is used to hold
live on-line classroom discussions, lectures and office-hour-type
question/answer forums. Instructors could invite guest
speakers and subject matter experts from around the world
to talk with
you in the Virtual Classroom
- 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 other students and your instructor
- Chat can also be used for virtual office-hour-type
question/answer forums. Once you log in, you can start communicating
with whoever is in the classroom.
Note: Virtual Classroom and Chat are Java applications
and may initially take a few minutes to load. You must
have
Java
installed on your system and also have a Java enabled
browsers. Multiple students
will participate
in the discussions at the same time. Your instructor
could schedule Virtual
Classroom
and Chat sessions: know when they are and make sure you
attend at the specified time.
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Discussion
Board
The Discussion Board is a communication tool that allows students
and instructors to engage in asynchronous discussions, which means that both
do not have to be online in order for communication to take place. Topics are
posted to the Discussion Board and course participants can reply to them
on-line. An additional advantage of the Discussion Board
is that Student conversations are logged and organized. Conversations are grouped
into threads that contain a main posting and all related replies for easy retrieval.
Note: Instructors have the ability to block and unblock
specific students from seeing discussion threads. Instructors
may also allow or not allow users to start new threads,
attach files and post anonymously.
To add a new discussion
thread:
- click on the Communication link from
the Course Menu
- the instructor may have already created a "topic-specific"
forum or a general discussion; by going into the forum,
you will have the opportunity to start new threads (if
this option is allowed by the instructor)
- click the Add New Thread buttton to
post your idea regarding the main issue of the forum
- type in the subject and the message
- click Submit
To reply to a post:
- follow the first two instructions of adding a new thread
- click on a post of interest
- click Reply to answer the issue
discussed in the thread
- type in the message (the Subject field should already
be filled in with a proper heading)
- click Submit
Note: Students can modify and remove their own posts.
Look the post / thread you want to modify and
click the Modify button or click Remove. TOP
Group
Pages
Instructors can create Groups in a course to enable
Students to collaborate with each other. These groups
usually consist of a smaller group of Students in
a class, such as study groups or project groups.
From a Group page, users may:
- send email to Group members
- exchange
files
- enter discussion forums
- enter Collaboration Sessions
All of the functions available
from Group pages, with the exception of the File Exchange,
act in the same way
in the course Web site. Additional features of the
Collaboration Tools are also available when accessed
through Groups.
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Roster
Users can search the
Roster and view lists of Students, Instructors, and
Teaching Assistants associated with
a specific course. The Roster contains a search function.
Users can search using different variables. Once
a list has been generated, click the name of a Student
in the list to view their homepage or select their
email address to send them an email.
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Send Email
Users can access email functions for specific courses and
organizations through the Send Email page. From this page
students can send email to the following people in a course:
- Fellow
classmates
- Instructors
- Teaching Assistants
- Groups within a course
Send Email allows users direct access
to course participants and can also be accessed from
the Tools Box under the My
Bradley tab.
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