 Blackboard
Faculty & Staff Procedures
The following items are designed to provide Blackboard faculty
and staff who use the system with procedures and information about
the key administrative functions. These functions include:
Adding
Classes
Context:
Courses should be automatically
created when a Program Director/Chair submits classes to the Registrar.
Your name must be associated with the course so that Blackboard
will assign the course to your account. You can check to see if
the course is assigned to you within Blackboard and in Webtools.
If you do not have the appropriate course/section assigned, you
will need to contact your Program Director/Chair to make sure
that this is corrected. If you are assigned to the course, then
call the Helpdesk 1-800-635-5987 x7800 or email helpdesk@smumn.edu
the course number, section, and your name.
Procedures:
- Once you have made
sure you are properly assigned to a course in Webtools, you
can then make a call to the Helpdesk (1-800-635-5987 x 7800).
- The Helpdesk staff
member will ask you for the Course ID, Section, Session/Semester
you are teaching, and your name. Please be ready to provide
this information.
- Once we have this
information, we will generate this course for you within about
two working days.
Adding
Students to Blackboard
Context:
After
the semester starts, you may have students who have added late
and are not in your blackboard classes. We will be reloading students
automatically after seven business days into the semester. If
you need them in the system before this time, you can add them
in yourself.
Procedures:
- First check to see
if the student is in the class. To do this go to the List/Modify
Users in the Control Panel for the class.
- If there is a student
who enrolled in the system late, a faculty member can manually
add a student in the course by going into the Control Panel
of Blackboard and then click on the Add Users link (Click here
for a Tutorial on this process).
- A faculty member
should then go to Enroll Existing Users. If they do not find
the student on the list, they may already be in the course.
Then go back to List/Modify Users.
Archiving
Courses
Context:
Some
people become overwhelmed with the number of classes you can have
on blackboard at any given time. We recommend that you archive
and then pull courses off of Blackboard when you are not going
to be teaching a given course in the coming semester (Below is
the procedures to Archive your course or click here
to see a multimedia tutorial to do the same process).
Procedures:
- Go to the Control
Panel > Course Utilities > Archive Course
for the course you would like to archive. You should be at
the screen found below.
- After you have
placed a check mark in the appropriate boxes (above checked
boxes are recommend) click on the submit button and you will
see the following screen.
- It is critical
that you click on the download feature of this receipt.
This will then prompt you to save the course; you can put
it on your network space or burn the course to CD.
Course
Structures
Context:
We
generate a course for every faculty member using Blackboard.
This course is titled with your name and course id (i.e., ckjorlie_EDD815)
and should be where you put your course content. An additional
course for the section, or sections, will be automatically generated
(i.e., 2002 WI_E101A). This allows you to keep the two sections
separate and yet not have to duplicate everything. Within the
section courses, you can turn off buttons that you will not
use in this part of the course.
Procedures:
-
To turn off buttons, simply go to the course Control Panel
-
Click
on COURSE SETTINGS > AREA
AVAILABILITY and turn off any button by clicking
the Disable dot. Submit your changes at the bottom of this
part of Blackboard. See screen below.
Deleting
Classes
Context:
Deleting classes from
Blackboard should be done when you have sections of a class from
previous semesters that you would like to take out of blackboard,
also if you are not ever going to teach this course. To delete
a course from Blackboard, you should first archive the course
and save it to a safe place.
After the course has
been archived and saved to your network space or CD, you can then
email or send a hard copy of the Course ID to the Helpdesk (helpdesk@smumn.edu
or P.O. Box 33 on the Winona campus).
Problems
with Entering Blackboard
If you are unable to pull up the Blackboard entry page, you will
need to call the helpdesk 1-800-635-5987 x7800.
Recycling
Courses
Context:
After every semester,
you will want to archive your course and then recycle it so that
students, their grades, digital assignments, and communications
are pulled out. This allows you to have a fresh course with the
content you intend to use in the next semester's course.
Process:
- Go to the course
Control Panel.
- Click on CONTROL
PANEL > COURSE UTILITIES > COURSE RECYCLER
and click on the areas you would like to remove (i.e., most
just check the Users box).
- When you type Remove,
you will need to use a capital R and then hit submit. This
is irreversible. Please view the example below.
Is your blacboard course ready for student access?
Context:
Semester
Legend
At Saint Mary's University, currently each semester is represented
in the format YYYYM# i.e., 2003M1 whereby:
YYYY - current academic year
M - Site/Location i.e. M - Minneapolis, W - Winona
# - Current Semester i.e.
1 - Fall Semester
2 - Winter Semester
3 - Spring Semester
Blackboard Course
Checklist
- Where should I put
my content for my courses? When each
blackboard course is setup the there are two courses that are
initially setup for the instructor
- The root course
(INSTUCTOR_COURSENUMBER)
- is only
created once, the first time the course is offered by
this instructor
- is a template
for any future offerings of this course
- is used
to assist the instructor in maintaining or archiving
the content of their course over along period of time.
- has a list
of all students who have ever enrolled in the course
since it was first offered.
- makes this
course accessible/available so that all the students
who ever enrolled in this course will be able to see
it.
- Actual/Real
course (i.e., 2003M2_BU400A.)
- is used
for the actual course/semester
- is only
be available when the instructor activates the course.
- lists only
the students enlisted in the class for the current semester
only.
- The instructor
may copy the content from their root course to this
course if they are planning to use same content in the
new class.
- Did you make the
course available? You may see the course on in your list
of courses that you are teaching, however, if the course is
set to the unavailable status you students will not be able
to access your published course. To view the tutorial
on how you to make your courses available click here.
- Remind your students
to make sure they have the correct email addresses in blackboard.
For most students we will update their accounts to the official
smumn.edu account. For our Graduate and Professional Programs
we do not requires these accounts so it will be important to
make sure they have the correct account in the system. You
may provide students with a link to the following tutorial so
they can update their own addresses. The URL for this
tutorial is http://www2.smumn.edu/deptpages/~instructtech/lol/blackboard/personal_info.swf
- Ask students on
the first day of class if they are able to get to your course
materials. If any of your students are not able to access
blackboard, please have them contac the IT helpdesk via email
at: helpdesk@smumn.edu.
Blackboard
Technical Requirements
Context:
Hardware and software
minimum requirements for blackboard are recommended for both students
and faculty. These minimum requirements help assure that your
usage is seamless.
- Hardware: 64 MB
of RAM, 5 G of free disk space
- Browser: Internet
Explorer 4.0, or newer, Netscape 4.7 JavaScript &
- Cookies must be
enabled
- Software: Microsoft
Word, Adobe Acrobat Reader
- Platform: Windows
95, 98, 2000, and XP
- Modem: 28.8 k will
work (56 k is recommended)
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