Category: Tips Page 2 of 5

End of Semester Preparation

If you are an instructor using Blackboard and haven’t gotten around to archiving your courses and you want to keep a record of your students’ grades and discussion board interactions, now is the time to archive your course, download your Grade Center as an Excel file, and/or collect your discussion board discussions. Student information is taken out of courses 60 days after the end of the semester. Other than student interactions and grades, all materials will remain in your course until you request its removal or three years has passed (whichever comes first). To download your grades, in Grade Center go to Workoffline > Download and save the full Grade Center. On the next screen, be sure to hit Download instead of OK.

Student information Disappears from Fall ’13 courses Feb. 18

On February  18th, instructors’ students will be disappearing from last semester’s Blackboard courses. These courses have IDs that begin with 201310_.  So if you are an instructor using Blackboard and haven’t gotten around to archiving your courses and you want to keep a record of your students’ grades and discussion board interactions, now is the time to archive your course, download your Grade Center as an Excel file, and/or collect your discussion board discussions.Other than student interactions and grades, all materials will remain in your course until you request its removal or three years has passed (whichever comes first). To download your grades, in Grade Center go to WorkofflineDownload and save the full Grade Center. On the next screen, be sure to hit Download instead of OK.

Adding Users to a Course

Need to add a teaching assistant, administrative assistant, or writing consultant to your course? You will not need to add students since this information comes from the Registrar.

Follow these easy steps:

Retaining Grades and Student Materials

Sixty days after the last day of each semester, instructors’ students will disappear from that semester’s Blackboard courses. In general, this means students will disappear from fall courses early the next February and will disappear from spring courses in the following July.

So if you are an instructor using Blackboard, we strongly recommend that you create an archive of your course that you retain and that you also download students’ grades and discussion board interactions.  The best time o do this is after instructors have completed grading but before the 60-day mark arrives.

Other than student interactions and grades, all materials will remain in your course until you request its removal or five years has passed (whichever comes first).

Download Grades

To download your grades, in Grade Center go to WorkofflineDownload and save the full Grade Center. On the next screen, be sure to hit Download instead of OK.

Keeping on Track This Semester

Blackboard has a NEW Calendar feature to help you keep track of due dates in your courses. As professors add material and assignments to the course, along with due dates for those items, they will appear on your calendar color coordinated for the course. You also can add your personal entries to the calendar. If you would like, you can link the calendar to an outside calendar as well so that you do not miss any deadlines this semester. Check out the video below and the link to additional functionality of the calendar.

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