Archive for the 'Tips' Category

Atomic Learning Building Block Now Available

Published by Jon on March 21, 2013 in Information, New Features, Online Training Materials and Tips. Closed

If you are not familiar with Atomic Learning, it is the online video training services provider for the University of Richmond.  There are hundreds of applications in their inventory, often spanning multiple versions of the application and for both Windows and Mac users.  Applications include but are not limited to Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Acrobat, InDesign, etc.), Blackboard, iPod Touch, and Windows and Mac OS.  Tutorials are broken up into short (1-4 minute long) video tutorials that you can watch using Flash or QuickTime formats. Users can pause, rewind, or navigate easily between video clips.  You can access the system outside of Blackboard by going to http://is.richmond.edu/training/tutorials.html. Continue reading ‘Atomic Learning Building Block Now Available’

Adding Users to a Course

Published by Jon on January 24, 2013 in Information and Tips. Closed

Need to add a teaching assistant, administrative assistant, or writing consultant to your course?

Follow these easy steps: Continue reading ‘Adding Users to a Course’

Using Assessments

Published by Jon on December 10, 2012 in Information and Tips. Closed

It is time to give assessments and Blackboard can help! The following information assists you in creating a test and deploying it in Blackboard. Continue reading ‘Using Assessments’

NEW Feature – Improved Pasting from Word

Published by Jon on September 20, 2012 in Information, New Features and Tips. Closed

We all do it and we all suffer. You know what I mean, we copy our text, tables and other information from Microsoft Word into Blackboard. The next thing you see is an item that doesn’t display correctly or at all. Now there is a solution: Paste from Word!

The Paste From Word feature provides an easy way to paste text from Microsoft® Word into the text editor without bringing Microsoft specific markup with it. This is added to the text editor. When used to paste text from Word, Microsoft markup is stripped out so the text does not become corrupt and appears as it did in the original Word document. When using the Visual Textbox Editor, you can access through a toolbar. The image below will help you locate this hidden gem! Continue reading ‘NEW Feature – Improved Pasting from Word’

Blackboard Tip: Customizing your course, part 1

Published by Jon on September 10, 2012 in Tips. Closed

Did you know you could customize several aspects of Blackboard to meet your needs? Start by deleting buttons you don’t use for your course by clicking on the chevron on the button and “delete”. (Make sure to select your course entry point prior to deleting buttons.)  Next, rename buttons to reflect your course. If you prefer a button for “Articles” instead of “Content”, click the chevron on “Content” and then “Rename link”. Finally, organize the buttons that make the most sense for your course by dragging the button into position using the black, 2-way arrow to the left of the button.

Student Photographs

Published by Jon on August 28, 2012 in Information and Tips. Closed

This is a reminder that the University of Richmond maintains a building block to allow professors to see photographs of their students within Blackboard. To access this feature, the instructor must be in an academic course within Blackboard (this is a course with a CRN from the Registrar). In the control panel click on “Course Tools” and then “Student Photographs”.  For support with Blackboard contact blackboard@richmond.edu or 287-6860 or your CTLT liaison. [This feature only applies to instructors not students].

Requesting Blackboard Courses

Published by Jon on August 23, 2012 in Information and Tips. Closed

For faculty choosing to use Blackboard with their academic courses, a new Blackboard course must be requested each semester. To request a Blackboard course, please follow these few steps.
Go to http://blackboard.richmond.edu and look to the right of the log-in screen. You will see a link to “Faculty Blackboard Course Request System”. Click on that link.

On the next screen, log into Blackboard with your NetID and Password.

 

On the next screen, you will notice your name at the top followed by options to request academic, non-academic or removal of courses.

 

Follow the prompts to request an academic course.

If you need further assistance, we are having Blackboard training on Aug. 28 at 10:30. You can sign-up for the workshop at http://cygnet.richmond.edu/events/1213workshops.

Finalizing Fall Teaching

Published by Jon on December 13, 2011 in Information and Tips. 0 Comments

It’s been a great semester! Your students were at the top of their game, and you were at the top of yours. Now for the winter break.

Now is the perfect time to consider the role of technology in your courses. The first question you might consider is how are you using technology currently? Do you use Blackboard, email, netfiles or PowerPoint? If so, how are you using those technologies?
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Blackboard is a great space to consolidate class handouts, syllabi and other files that need to be distributed to your students. BUT did you know it can do so much more? Blackboard allows the instructor to create assignments that students upload directly into Blackboard Grade Center, where the instructor can download all the files at one time.  You also can use multiple choice, true/false, and multiple answer quizzes and test as an assessment of student knowledge which can be graded by the system. The instant feedback provided to the student increases student knowledge and provides a foundation for future learning.

There is another feature in Blackboard that as faculty, you will want to know about. The feature displays student photographs for the students in your course. This is a great way to associate a face with a name and can really speed up the first day of class.

Blackboard also has features that you might want to explore for the fall such as discussion board, groups, wikis, and blogs. These technologies allow you to introduce outside classroom discussion to the course, collaboration and reflection to generate higher order cognitive skills. If you would like to know about these technologies within Blackboard, please contact your liaison.

As you prepare for the spring semester, contact your liaison to discuss how technology can support your class objectives. The Center for Teaching, Learning, and Technology is here to help you consider the best technological tool to support your pedagogical needs.

A few tips: consider archiving your course as soon as possible. If you are not sure how, read click here.

This is a great time to download your Grade Center so that you can have an easy-to-get-to record of student work in your course. Remember, all students are removed from your course 60 days from the end of the semester. Also, if you are using the discussion board, consider making an archive of those responses as well.

We hope you had a wonderful semester and we look forward to working with you in the spring!

Course Entry Point

Published by Jon on July 20, 2011 in Information, Tips and Warnings. 0 Comments

As we start up a new academic year, it might be helpful to revisit a best practice for setting up your course. After you request your course, you might want to copy a previous course into the new course. When a course is copied, the navigation buttons (those on the left side of the screen) are placed at the bottom of those created from the course template. You may not want the buttons created by the course template and want to delete these. STOP! First, you will need to change the course entry point for the course. This is located in the Course Management area under the Control Panel and then Customization. Continue reading ‘Course Entry Point’

Groups: Improvements in Blackboard 9

Published by Allison on September 15, 2010 in New Features and Tips. 0 Comments

Groups are one of the most underutilized features in Blackboard, IMHO, but also one of the most useful.

With Groups in Blackboard 9.1, you can:

  • Release quizzes and assignments to different groups at different times
  • Batch-add people to groups
  • Set SmartViews in the Grade Center to view the grades of particular sets of students

Groups basics

If you’ve requested a merged course or just want to give students a space where they can work as a team by exchanging files, keeping a team blog,using group chat room, etc., Groups will be helpful to you. You can enable some or all of these for each group. Blackboard has a helpful viewlet about how to add students to groups.

Setting up sets of Groups

Group sets can be useful if you want to divide your students multiple ways (i.e. sections AND teams; teams WITHIN sections), The Academic Colleges Group IT (ACGICT) has created two video tutorials that will show you how to create group sets and how to edit group sets.  You can also randomize user enrollments into groups in sets.

Self-enrolling in Groups

Need a sign-up sheet? You can use the self-enroll option in Groups to set up groups to which students add themselves. Group sets also include a self-enroll option.

Tests: Adaptive Release for Groups

When setting up a test that will be deployed, you can create Rules in Advanced Adaptive Release, which you find by clicking the double-chevron to the right of the test once you’ve added it to a content area. Select Create Criteria > Membership to select the Group; select Create Criteria > Date to set the to/from dates).

ACGICT also has created a viewlet on using Adaptive Release to restrict content to groups.

Please contact your technology liaison, or e-mail blackboard AT richmond DOT edu for further assistance with or ideas about using groups!