Your Bb course

Adding a reading list to your Blackboard course menu

Bb Course Design, Blackboard, Your Bb course

If you set up a Library Talis reading list for a module, you can add links to the Reading List to your Blackboard course:

  • Add a Reading List menu item – this links to the entire list.
  • Add a Reading List link as part of your course content from the “Build Content” options- you can add a link to the entire list or sections within it. For example, you may want to set up week by week sections to the reading list, or sections by topic.

See the Library guide to setting up a Reading list.

 

Add a Reading list link to the course menu

Blackboard control panel tool bar with plus button highlighted

  • Select the + (plus) button in the top left of the course menu

Tool bar drop down menu with "Tool Link" highlighted

  • In this drop down menu, select “Tool Link”

Tool Link insert page with example of reading list

  • Name your menu item and select the tool link type “Reading List”
  • Leave the box “Available to Users” if you wish for the link to be hidden from students, or check the box to make the link immediately available. You can always edit link availability using these instructions.
  • Select “Submit” to create your Reading List link

 

Video Guide

 

Toggling Blackboard Course Availability

Bb Course availability, Blackboard, Your Bb course

Blackboard courses can be quickly toggled between being available or unavailable using a course availability toggle.

1. The course availability toggle can be seen in Blackboard when the following two criteria are met:

a. Edit mode is set to On

b. You are viewing a content area (e.g. Course Content, Assignments, Module Information etc).

 

2. The icon for the toggle is a padlock. When the padlock is locked it means the course is unavailable to students. When the padlock is unlocked it means the course is available to students.

 

3. Change the availability of a course by clicking on the padlock icon.

 

Making your Banner Course Available to Students

Bb Course availability, Blackboard, Your Bb course

When a course is created it is unavailable to students. This allows the instructor to make the course available to students only when the course is ready. You can tell at a glance if your course is available to students, in the My Courses box if a course is not available to students the word unavailable will appear next to it.

All course modules in Banner now have a Blackboard equivalent. When you are ready to make the course available to students it is necessary to simply change the Course Availability setting. Banner modules in Blackboard automatically enrol any student listed in the Banner system as enrolled on the module onto the Blackboard version. It is still possible to add students manually to the course.

You may also set the enrolment options so that other students may self-enrol using the same method as for “Arbitrary” Courses if you wish. Doing this may be useful as a method of quickly resolving any issues for students who have not automatically been enrolled onto the course but require access.

Access the Control Panel

1. Identify the course you wish to make available.

2. From the Control Panel, expand the Customisation menu and click on Properties.

Make the Course Available

3. Scroll down to section 2.

4. Set Make Course Available to Yes.

Click on Submit

5. Click on Submit to finish.  Your course is now available.  Any students enrolled on your course will now be able to access it.

Viewing photographs of members of your Blackboard course

Bb User admin, Blackboard, Your Bb course

You can use the class photo roster to show photographs (where available) of users who have access to your course. This includes users with any role including students, instructors, and teaching assistants. Where a photograph is not available a placeholder image is used.

Photographs are from the University ID Studio https://www.idcard.soton.ac.uk/

1. Access your course Control Panel.
2. Click on Student and Staff Photos

3. If you are using a course with a large number of users, the photo roster may take some time to display. It is best to wait for the page to fully load before scrolling.

photoroster2SUP4-FreeOpenBBs

Using Instructor Quick Tools

Bb Communication, Bb Course availability, Blackboard

Using the Instructor Quick Tools link you can

  • send emails and announcements to multiple courses at once.

Accessing Instructor Quick Tools

  • From the Blackboard Home page go to the all Courses view.

  • From the navigation options to the right of your profile picture,  select Tools.

  •  From the Tools box, select Instructor Quick Tools.

Instructor Quick Tools

 

Using the Quick Tools to make the same announcement to multiple courses at once.

  • Select Post announcement.

Post announcement

  • Select to which courses you wish to make the announcement by ticking the box beside each required course.
  • Enter a subject and a message
  • If you wish for an email to be sent to users tick the Email announcement tick box. If you do not tick the box no announcement email will be sent.
  • Click Submit to finish.

qwick6

Using the Quick Tools to make send an email to users on multiple courses at once.

  • Select Send Email.

Send email

  • Select to which course’s users you wish to send email by ticking the box beside each required course. Note that the email will be sent to all course users, not just students.
  • Enter a subject and a message
  • Select whether you wish to receive a copy of the email once, or once per course by choosing the relevant option under “Send this Email to Myself”.
  • Click Submit to finish.

qwick8

 

SUP4-FreeOpenBBsThe instructor quick tools are a freeware plugin for Blackboard.

Your Blackboard Course

Blackboard, Your Bb course 0 Comments

Blackboard courses are usually set up automatically using information in the Banner student record system, this allows courses to automatically be populated with students and staff.  Arbitrary Courses can be used in situations where a course is required which is not listed in Banner, for example for a course project or an admin course for a year group.

When courses are created they are set to be unavailable to students. This means that the instructor can set the course up as they wish and then make the course available.

About ‘Banner’ module courses in Blackboard

Request an Arbitrary Blackboard course

Request a new Arbitrary course a copy of an existing course for the next academic year.

Request a Sandbox course

A sandbox is your personal Blackboard course used for training and testing.

How to batch enrol students onto an arbitrary course in Blackboard

Arbitrary Blackboard courses do not benefit from automatic enrolments like Banner courses.  This simple tool which we have developed makes it easier for you to batch enrol students onto arbitrary courses.

How to change the design of your Blackboard course

It’s possible to change the colour and look of your course’s menu. You may also add a course banner.

View photographs of members of your Blackboard course

You can use the class photo roster to show photographs (where available) of users who have access to your course. This includes users with any role including students, instructors, and teaching assistants. Where a photograph is not available a placeholder image is used.

How to customise the ‘My University of Southampton’ screen

The My University of Southampton shows which courses you have access to and any announcements for those courses. You can change which courses are shown by using this guide. This can be useful for hiding courses that are no longer relevant.

Making a ‘deep link’ into your Blackboard course

A “deep link” is a link that takes someone further into a web site than the standard home page of that site. In Blackboard you may wish to provide students with a link to a part of a Blackboard course, or a piece of content. There are some important consideration when using deep linking, read the guide carefully.

Request a Programme course

You can request a Blackboard Programme Course to hold programme level information and communication. Students can be auto-enrolled and the course will appear under a separate heading on the Blackboard Home page  

Request to merged student enrolments into a single course

If you are teaching closely related Banner modules, you can request to have the Banner module enrolments merged into a single “parent” Blackboard course.  

How to use WebSIS to source data for use with the Batch Enrol tool

The batch enrol tool is a popular facility for adding students en masse to an arbitrary Blackboard course.  This guide shows how to use WebSIS to find the lists of students who meet criteria you select to decide who should be added to your arbitrary Blackboard course.

How to customise the course menu

This guide shows how to make changes to your Blackboard menu items, including adding new ones.

Make your Blackboard course available to students

When you have finished preparing your Blackboard course it is important that you make the course Available to students.

How to change the ‘entry point’ of your Blackboard course

When a user enters a Blackboard course, the first page they see is the course’s “entry point”. By default this is set to be the announcements page. If you wish you may change your course’s entry point to be a different menu item within your course.

How to setup a ‘course module’ page

‘Module pages’ allow you to add modules that contain dynamically generated information about your course, such as what new materials have been added and what deadlines are approaching.

Understanding and controlling Blackboard search results

Blackboard search will search content from the courses a user is enrolled on.  This guide explains what content searched, and how to exclude content from search results.

 

How to set the language in which your Blackboard course appears

It is possible to set your Blackboard course to appear in one of a number of available languages. Once this is set you can also enforce your selection so that students cannot force it to be displayed in a different language.

Set the Language of your Blackboard Course

Blackboard, languages in Bb, Your Bb course 0 Comments

It is possible to set your course to appear in a specific language. This will mean that most of the features of Blackboard will use the language you specify.

The following languages are currently available: Arabic, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English (United Kingdom), English (United States), Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, Spanish, Thai, Turkish, and Welsh.

Control Panel

Control Panel

1. From the Control Panel, expand the Customisation menu and click on Properties.

Choose Language

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2. Scroll down to Section 5 and choose the language in which you wish your course to be displayed.

Enforce Language Pack

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3. Select Enforce Language Pack. This means that student users will not be able to override your setting for this course by choosing their own preferred language.

4. Click on Submit to finish.

Language Set

Language Set

5. Your course will now be shown in the chosen language.

Customising your Blackboard Course Menu

Bb Course Design, Blackboard, Your Bb course 0 Comments

The Blackboard course menu as seen by students maps to areas within the Control Panel.

When Blackboard courses are created they have a default menu layout. You may wish to change the menu items by changing the names of the menu items or by adding or removing items.

Change a menu item 

Use this guide to change the name of a menu item.

Add a menu item

Use this guide to add a menu item to your Blackboard course menu.

Delete or hide a menu item

Deleting a course menu item will delete any content that was held under that item. If you are unsure, then follow the steps to hide the item from students instead.

Move a menu or content item

Blackboard menu items and content items can be re-ordered by dragging and dropping. This guide shows how this works, and also explains a more accessible method for those who would rather not drag and drop.

Change the course ‘Entry Point’

When a user enters a Blackboard course, the first page they see is the course’s “entry point”. By default, the entry point is set to be the announcements page but this can be changed. 

Edit Course Contacts & Staff Information

Contact and profile information for course instructors will now appear automatically in Course Contacts. Follow this guide on how to edit Course Contacts or to create/retrieve your own Staff Information content area.

Add a Talis Reading List to your menu

Use this guide to add a reading list menu item to your Blackboard course.

Add Past Exam Papers to your menu

Use this guide to add a past exam papers menu item to your Blackboard course.

Creating a Blackboard "Module Page"

Blackboard, Your Bb course 0 Comments

A Module Page does not hold traditional content, instead you can add modules to the page which dynamically pull pertinent information from your Blackboard course and present it to users in a similar way to channels in Sussed.  Some of the modules that can be added are more useful than others. When creating a module page think carefully about which modules will be relevant to your course and whether you have entered the information into Blackboard for the modules to use.

Two methods, starting in Edit Mode

Two methods, starting in Edit Mode

1. There are two methods to add a module page. The most useful is from the course menu.

2. Check that Edit Mode is turned ON. This can be switched by clicking ON or OFF.

+ icon

+ icon

3. From the Course Menu, click on the + icon and select Module Page.

Or from a Content Area…

Or from a Content Area...

4. Alternatively, you can add a module page to a content area by going into any content area, hovering over Build Content, and clicking on Module Page.

Details

Details

5. The rest of these instructions assume that you add the Module Page to the course menu.

6. Enter a name for the module page.

7. Place a tick in Available to Users.

8. Click on Submit.

Enter Module Page

Enter Module Page

10. The module page link will be added to the bottom of the course menu. You may move it wherever you wish by dragging and dropping it with the arrow icons.

11. Click on the Name of the module page in the menu to enter it. In this example we called the Module page “Course Info”.

Modify button

Modify button

12. Next we should set up how the module page will behave.  Click on the Modify button beside the module page’s name.

Edit

Edit

13. Click on Edit from the menu that appears.

Allow personalisation?

Allow personalisation?

14. If you would like to give students the ability to personalise the module page, tick Permit Users to Personalise the Page. If you tick this box then students will be able to add extra modules and remove existing ones. They will also be able to change the position of the modules.

15. Click Submit.

Adding Course Modules

Adding Course Modules

16. Next we will add the special content to our module page. Click on Add Course Module.

List of modules

List of modules

17. You will be presented with a list of modules that you could add to your course. You should only add those which you will use in your course. For example, if you do not use the Tasks function then there is no need to add My Tasks.

18. To add a module click on the Add button below it.

19. Click on OK to finish.

Changing position

Changing position

20. You can move modules around by dragging and dropping the blue bar along the top of the module.

How to Change Your Blackboard Course’s “Entry Point”

Bb Course Design, Blackboard, Your Bb course 0 Comments

When a user enters a Blackboard course, the first page they see is the course’s “entry point”.  By default this is set to be the announcements page.  If you wish, you may change your course’s entry point to be a different menu item within your course.

Control Panel

Control Panel

1. From your course’s Control Panel, expand the Customisation menu and choose Style.

Style

Style

2. Scroll down to section 4.

3. Using the dropdown menu, select the course menu item which you wish your Blackboard course to use as an entry point. Note that empty areas are not shown.

Submit

Submit

4. Click submit to finish.

5. You may find that your new entry point is not shown immediately. Click on the refresh button of you web browser. This will make your browser see the new entry point. Your students may also need to do this.

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