Blackboard at Carnegie Mellon

How To:

Access Blackboard

Get Started (for students)

Set Up Your Course

Add Content

Create Assignments

Create Assessments

Manage Users | Groups

Make Course Available

Use the Gradebook

Archive Course

Export Course

Import Course Content

"How To" Index >

BLACKBOARD SUPPORT:

Office of Technology
for Education
Support e-mail:
bb-help@andrew.cmu.edu
Support Phone:
412-268-9090

Teaching with Blackboard:

Implementation

The semester is about to begin and you've already:

planned, designed, and developed the structure of your Blackboard course site
uploaded existing course materials in their native file formats
created new materials where necessary in various multimedia formats
made initial components of your course site available to your students

Now, you need to prepare your students.

The Implementation phase includes the following steps:

1. Prepare your students to use Blackboard
2. Integrate Blackboard into your instruction
3. Prepare to use Blackboard tools

1. Prepare your students to use Blackboard

- Inform your students that you will be using Blackboard as part of your instruction.

- Make sure your students have been enrolled in your Blackboard course:

contact the OTE if your students haven't been enrolled

- Make your expectations of students' use of Blackboard is clear:

inform students which plug-ins they will need to access course materials and where they can download them
if students need to download materials from Blackboard prior to class, make sure students know this
tell students which materials will only be available on Blackboard and not handed out in class (e.g., the syllabus, homework assignments)
inform your students that it is possible to monitor their usage of Blackboard using the Course Statistics feature, whether you choose to do so or not

- Make your expectations of students' use of each of the Blackboard tools clear:

if you've decided to use the Discussion Board, set rules and standards for posting
if you plan to use the Virtual Chat, be sure you've addressed its limitations
if you plan to have your students submit their homework electronically using the Digital Dropbox or Email feature, provide students with guidelines as to what file types you will accept and how they should be named
- adopt a naming convention for assignments to help organize them once they are downloaded(e.g. userid + assignment name)
- advise students to name files appropriately: with a 3-letter extension and with no spaces or symbols - otherwise, they will be unreadable

2. Integrate Blackboard into your instruction

Review this chart for strategies for integrating Blackboard into your instruction.
(this link will open a new browser window)

3. Preparing to Use Blackboard Tools

General Course Options	Enable/Disable Blackboard sections (e.g., Course Information, Assignments, etc.) Set security properties of content areas Set guest access Set course button styles and color Upload course banner Enable communication tools
Announcements	Create an welcome announcement that provides information about your course and select the option to have it always appear on the Announcements Include information such as: class location class times text book how you will be using Blackboard how often students should check Blackboard
Digital Dropbox	Provide students with guidelines as to what file types you will accept and how they should be named Adopt a naming convention for your assignments to help you organize them once you download them (e.g. userid + assignment name) Create a homework folder within the course folder that you have for your Blackboard course on your local machine where you could organize the student files that you download from the dropbox (e.g., folders for each of the assignments)
Online Gradebook	Be sure to back up your gradebook after every grading change and at the end of the semester - view How to Create Back-ups Create a gradebook folder within the course folder that you have for your Blackboard course on your local machine to store your backups of the gradebook
Assessment Manager	Design an online survey to assess student technology skills and comfort level
Email	Enable the level of access you want students to have from the Control Panel (Communication under Site Management)
Discussion Board	Create forums and select the desired settings for each forum: Allow anonymous posts Allow author to edit message after posting Allow author to remove own posted messages Allow file attachments Allow new threads Assign user settings: Forum Administrator privileges Permanent Forum Administrator User is blocked from posting
Groups	Enable the Groups tool from the Control Panel (Communication under Site Management) Divide your students into groups for project work using the Groups tool
Virtual Classroom	Enable the Virtual Classroom from the Control Panel (Communication under Site Management) Set Virtual Classroom options: Enter Virtual Classroom View Archives Be sure you've addressed its limitations
External Links	Because Blackboard only allows you to enter and modify only one link at a time, you might want to maintain a web page of links on another server that you can link to from External Links - this could save you time both in creating and maintaining your links

Design & Develop

Implement

Evaluate

Office of Technology for Education

Updated: August 12, 2004

© Copyright 2004, Carnegie Mellon University, All Rights Reserved.