Useful Tips for Using Blackboard

Archiving Courses

This is a good way of ensuring that you have a back up copy of your Blackboard course.

When you archive a course, you do not remove it from the system, but simply create a .zip file of the course, which you can then upload back into Blackboard, as you need.

To archive a course,

1. open the Control Panel of the course
2. select the Course Utilities under Course Option
3. click on the Archive Course link
   (Path: COURSES >XXXX101> CONTROL PANEL > COURSE UTILITIES > ARCHIVE COURSE ).
4. Select parts of the course that you want to archive by ticking the required boxed in Section 1: Content Areas.
5. Leave the package option as 5.5 and click on the Submit button.
   When the receipt page comes up, click on the link provided (i.e., 'Click here to download the exported course site'.) to download the archive.
6. This action will download a Zip archive to the Internet downloads folder on your computer.
   

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Using Learning Units

If you want to display information sequentially, use the Learning Unit option

In a learning unit, you can choose whether to display items in a particular order, or not. In a Learning Unit, you can use different types of content, for example, text and image files, documents or even quizzes. For instance, you can pre-teach a topic and then test understanding, by including a quiz at the end of the Learning Unit.

To create a Learning Unit,

1. open the Control Panel of the course
2. select the Content Area where you want to add your Learning Unit
3. enter a name and description for the Learning Unit you are creating
4. under Options, select whether you want to 'enforce sequential viewing of the Learning Unit'. Click 'Yes' if you want items within the Learning Unit to be accessed according to a set order. If Yes is selected, students will have to follow the order specified by you. Under Options, you can also choose to display the Learning Unit in a new window.
5. click the Submit button to finish creating the Learning Unit.
6. Now your new Learning Unit has been added to the content area your selected as the last item. You can change the order of items by selecting the drop down menu next to the item you wish to reorder within the page, and then selecting the placement number.
7. The Learning Unit you've created so far is an empty container, much like a folder containing no items. You now need to add items to this Learning Unit. To do this, first click on the Learning Unit link.
8. From there, you can either click on the Add Item or the Add File button to add content to the Learning Unit.
9. To add a Quiz to a Learning Unit, exit the Learning Unit section of the Control Panel and go to the Assessment Manager section. You can either add a new Quiz or select an existing Quiz (existing Quizzes must be set to unavailable to include them in a Learning Unit).
10. When you make a Quiz available (by using the Set Availability option in the Assessment Manager), in the drop down menu next to the 'Place a link in' option, select the Learning Unit you've created. This will add the Quiz as the last item to your Learning Unit.
    

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Guest Access

Remember: It is possible to allow guest access to selected parts of Blackboard courses only.

When Guest Access to a course is allowed, while some of the course areas are locked, prospective students can visit the course and get information about it, without gaining access to the secure parts of the course. This may be useful for students who are taking first year papers, and are considering which second/third year papers to choose. This setup also means that members of general public who are browsing the VUW Blackboard course catalogue can get more relevant information about courses.

To allow Guest Access,

1. open the Control Panel of the course
2. choose Course Settings in the Course Options section
3. choose Guest Access
4. click the 'Yes' option under Allow Guest Access
5. click the Submit button
   (Navigation Path: ... > CONTROL PANEL > COURSE SETTINGS > GUEST ACCESS)

Now you need to make sure that Guest Users cannot access course areas you don't want them to see.

To lock areas of a Blackboard course

1. open the Control Panel of the course
2. choose Area Availability in the Course Options section
3. tick a box in the Secure column for each of the course areas, you do not want Guest Users to see.
   Note: The Communication and Tools areas are always disabled for guest users.
   (Navigation Path: ... > CONTROL PANEL > COURSE SETTINGS > AREA AVAILABILITY)

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Making Courses Available

When you first gain access to a new course, as an instructor, the course is 'Unavailable' by default. This means that students cannot access it. Once you have configured the course Web site and are ready for student to start using it, you need to make the course available.

To make courses available:

1. open the Control Panel of the course
2. choose Course Settings in the Course Options section
3. choose Course Availability
4. click the 'Yes' option under Set Course Availability
5. click the Submit button
   (Navigation Path: ... > CONTROL PANEL > COURSE SETTINGS > COURSE AVAILABILITY)

Tip: Do not forget to make your site unavailable to students at the end of the course. Students do not like having old courses in their course list in Blackboard unless there is a reason for them to keep visiting the course.

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Browser Back Button and Blackboard

Try to avoid using the Web browser Back button when working with Blackboard. Blackboard is a dynamic system which generates Web pages using information stored in a database. This is why sometimes, when you click on the Back button you may end up in the wrong part of the Blackboard site, see a "Data Missing" message or even be asked to log in again.

Recommended ways to navigate in Blackboard

	Use Navigation Tabs at the top of the screen to move between the main Blackboard areas.
	To move between sections of a course, use a set of buttons on the left
	When inside the Control Panel area, click on underlined links of the Navigation Path, at the top of the screen, below the Tabs, to navigate inside the Control Panel area or go back to the course site.

 

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Adding an image to an Announcement

Posting Announcements with images in them

1. Create a folder called "Course Images" in any content area, such as Course Resources
2. Select "do not make visible" for this folder so that the students cannot see it.
3. Open the "Course Images" folder by clicking on its name.
4. Choose "Add Item."
5. In "specify your own name" box, type image name as Image: xxxxxxx
6. Browse and select image file next the "File to Attach."
7. Choose " Create a link to this file."
8. Under options, select "Yes" for " Do you want to make the content visible?", then press Submit.
9. When presented with receipt, click OK.
10. Now click on the link to the image (xxxxx.jpg).
11. In Netscape 7+, right click on the image itself, and select "Copy Image Location" from the drop down box. In Internet Explorer 5+, right click on the image itself, and select "Properties" from the drop down box. Then highlight the URL that is indicated in the pop-up box, and press "control + c" or "apple + c".
12. Now return to your Control Panel , select Announcements from Course Tools then click "add Announcement.”. Give the announcement a name and type in the text of your announcement.
13. Click on the "html" option in the tool bar of the edit window
14. Either before or after the text, depending on where you want the image, add the HTML code <IMG SRC="url">. Instead of URL between the quotes, press "control + c" or "apple + c" to paste the actual URL saved to your clipboard in Step 11.
15. then press Submit to close the html window.
16. and Submit again to add the announcement.

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