Category:Blackboard - Faculty: Difference between revisions

• Use this link to contact the IT Help Desk
• Consult the Faculty Bb Bulletin for help setting up, saving and closing course shells; standard practices

Standard Practices

The Basics!

Standard practices are the conventions followed by faculty and the Blackboard support staff in order to guarantee that the semester gets off to a smooth start. Adhering standard practices guarantee a common experience: students are added to the courses on the same day. It also helps guarantee clear, commonly understood communication between instructors and Teaching with Technology staff.

1. Students are added to course shells two days prior to the start of the semester.
2. Instructors can communicate with students before they are added to shells
3. Instructors are responsible for activating their course shells; students will not be able to participate in, or even see, course shells until they're activated. The exception are courses taught completely online.
4. Course shells are identified by the year/semester - department and course number - course section Example: 201740-hist1010-80 Semester designations: Spring: 10 - Summer: 25 - Fall: 40 - Winter: 50
5. The version of Blackboard we use is called Learn and you can ignore references to Ultra except in relation to Blackboard Collaborate.

Transfer course content

Recently the online form has been disabled and all transfers should go through the Help Desk. The form was a legacy tool we'd used prior to the advent of the Help Desk but after four years on the Help Desk is an established feature of the technology environment at William Paterson and the form has been terminated.

To request a transfer please access the Help Desk and select the request types Blackboard and Course Transfer Request.

Enter the department, semester, the four-digit course number and two digit course section for both the origin and destination courses. Enter special directions in the Request Detail interface.

Do it Yourself Option Use the Control Panel Packages and Utilities tab to save a copy of an existing course and upload it into a new shell: Export, Archive, and Restore Courses

Merge cross-listed or multi-section course shells

Please use the Help Desk to request course merges. The merge form has been deprecated (see above).

Note: Until very recently solution available to us was the Merge (Combine). The availability of the Master option gives faculty more choices, so please consult this link to decide which solution is best for you. Differences between merge and master

Activate course shell

Remember that students will not see course content, or even a link to the course, until the it has been activated by the instructor. This is the easiest way to activate a course:

On the My Blackboard page select Faculty: Set Course Availability in the Tools menu (upper left):

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  The second method is listed below in the Beginning of the Semester module.

Click ON to activate a course and OFF to deactivate (at the end of the semester, for example):


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Communicate with students before they've been added to course shells

Follow these directions: Email students using WPConnect '

View Student Roster

After students have been added to course shells (see the first unit of the Standard Practices module) start by selecting Users in the Control Panel:

Control Panel => Users and Groups => Users

Beginning of the semester

Course Building

Collaboration

Please contact the help desk with all technology-related questions, problems or reports: http://www.wpunj.edu/helpdesk

General

Discussions

Collaborate Web Conferencing

Assessments

Grade Center

Course Reports & Retention Center

Do you have questions or need support? Please file a ticket with the IT Help Desk: http://www.wpunj.edu/helpdesk/

Blackboard Mobile for Instructors

End of the Semester