Blackboard (Faculty): Start-of-Semester Activities
ITS suggests completing the following activities in your Blackboard courses at the start of each semester.
- Check that Your Course is in Blackboard.
- Blackboard course shells are automatically created for every course listed in CougarNet/Banner and appear in Blackboard three months prior to the start of the upcoming semester (ex: October for SP courses). ITS will notify the campus when course shells are ready. Classes added to CougarNet/Banner later will have a corresponding course shell in Blackboard by the following day.
- You must be listed as the "Instructor of Record" in CougarNet/Banner in order to see the course in Blackboard. This ITS Knowledge Base article explains how to determine the Instructor of Record in CougarNet/Banner and what to do if the teaching faculty is not listed there.
- If you are teaching multiple sections of the same course and want them to be in one Blackboard shell, please request that your sections be merged prior to starting work in your Blackboard courses. Once courses are merged, you will not have access to the child (original) shells. Export any existing content in the original shells prior to request a merging.
- Blackboard course shells are automatically created for every course listed in CougarNet/Banner and appear in Blackboard three months prior to the start of the upcoming semester (ex: October for SP courses). ITS will notify the campus when course shells are ready. Classes added to CougarNet/Banner later will have a corresponding course shell in Blackboard by the following day.
- Build Your Course.
- If you have never taught the class before and need to build it from scratch, feel free to contact an ITS Instructional Designer for assistance (618-650-5500).
- Quick tip: Use YuJa for storing and linking your videos. Be sure to store large media files, such as voiceover PowerPoints, in an external location such as OneDrive. Uploading large media files directly into your course can cause latent technical issues with playback and content exporting. ITS can assist you with storing and linking large media files.
- Quick tip: Use YuJa for storing and linking your videos. Be sure to store large media files, such as voiceover PowerPoints, in an external location such as OneDrive. Uploading large media files directly into your course can cause latent technical issues with playback and content exporting. ITS can assist you with storing and linking large media files.
- If you have taught the class previously, you might start by exporting a copy of the course from a previous shell and importing it into your new course shell. Please see these instructions for exporting/importing a previous course in Blackboard and contact ITS with any questions. When copying a course from a previous semester, be sure to:
- If you have never taught the class before and need to build it from scratch, feel free to contact an ITS Instructional Designer for assistance (618-650-5500).
- Organize items in the left navigation and delete duplicated items. Note that your copied navigational items will generally appear beneath the default course navigational items that were in the course at the time it was created. Delete unnecessary items and reorder items in the order in which you want them to appear.
- Review the imported Grade Center, delete any duplicate columns, remove columns for assessments that will no longer be used, create columns for new assessments, and review the Total and/or Weighted Total columns to be sure they are accurate for the new course.
- Edit all imported Discussion Boards in order to 1) associate your name (rather than Anonymous) as the creator of any instructor-created discussion thread prompts, and 2) to delete Anonymous threads imported from discussion boards where students could create their own threads.
- Review and update other content and settings, such as:
- YuJa Videos - if you inserted videos with a connection to the grade center, you will have to re-link the videos. Follow these instructions for how to deploy a YuJa video quiz. Follow these instructions for deploying a plackback quiz to score the percent watched.
- Turnitin Links - Turnitin updated the creation tool. All Turnitin Assignment links should be updated as the old assignment links will not work in the future. For further instructions, see Create a Turnitin Assignment.
- Accessibility - Enhance your content for accessibility with Blackboard Ally - files such as Word documents, PDFs, and PowerPoint files will display colorful icons to indicate the accessibility level of the file. Click the indicator for more guidance on how to increase accessibility. Consider adding this item to your course to help students know how Ally can assist them in learning. Faculty are also encouraged to use ACCESS' Course Accessibility Checklist to check the accessibility of their course materials prior to the start of each semester and to also visit the page for ACCESS Faculty Resources.
- Activate your Student Preview. This will allow you to see the course as your students see it, test Adaptive Release rules, and verify Grade Center settings.
- Make Your Course Available. All Blackboard courses are set to be "unavailable" at the time of creation. Once your course is developed and is ready for students to view, you must make it available in order for students to see it.