Ten Top Tips for a Successful Start to the New Academic Year
1. Do you have access to your “10-11” courses?
Most courses for the 2010/11 academic year have been ready on Blackboard since early July and have “1011” at the beginning of the course title. Any member of staff listed as an instructor for a course last year will automatically be made an instructor on the “1011” Blackboard version of the course.
If you believe you should have instructor access to a 2010-2011 course but cannot see it in your My Courses list it is likely that you have not yet requested it, or another colleague was teaching the course last year. To remedy this, ask your colleague to make sure that you are listed as an instructor for the courses that you are teaching. If the course has not been requested before, fill in a Blackboard course request form and email it to us.
2. Are you aware that the Digital Dropbox will be withdrawn?
Blackboard has announced that the Digital Dropbox function will be removed in the next version (version 9) of Blackboard. The functionality will be replaced with an enhanced Assignment feature. While a firm date for the University to upgrade to the next version has not yet been set we recommend that you do not use the Digital Dropbox feature if at all possible. Consider the use of the Assignment tool instead.
3. Have you “rolled over” your course materials?
Each Blackboard course begins life as an empty shell. If you wish you may copy over your course materials en masse from last year’s version of the course to this year’s. You can find out more by going our Blackboard web site:
4. Did you make your Blackboard course available to students?
When courses are created on Blackboard they are set to be unavailable to students. This is so that you may prepare the course and then make it available when it is ready. You can easily tell if a course is unavailable to students, because the word “unavailable” appears beside it in your My Courses list. Remember to make your course available to students before you tell them to use it. To find out how to make your Blackboard course available check this web page:
5. Do you want to tidy up your My Courses list?
After using Blackboard for more than a year you may find that your My Courses list becomes cluttered. You can tidy it up and make it show only your relevant courses by following these instructions.
6. Have you let students know where to find help?
Students contact the Service Desk for help with Blackboard, but it’s worth letting your students know that there is a lot of help online for them too. Our web pages answer all common student questions.
7. Do you want to add a colleague or a student manually to your course?
There may be times where you wish to add a colleague or a student to your course manually. Read this web page to find out how to do this.
8. Want to find out how to use other Blackboard features?
Our web pages contain help and step by step guides to using many aspects of Blackboard. So if you want to find out how to add content , use discussion boards , set up tests and surveys , or any other topics please take a look at our web pages.
9. Training
If you are new to Blackboard you may be interested in attending an introductory course. More information will be available from our events web pages, in August.
10. Have you checked out the Learning, Teaching and Assessment Strategy?
For help designing or redesigning your courses to include recommendations set out in the Learning, Teaching and Assessment Strategy, guides are available on the CELT website
- LTA Strategy and in the Teaching and Learning Forum on Blackboard.
11. What to do if you have a question about Blackboard.
If you have a question about Blackboard please read our support web page. This details who you should contact and what kind of information you should supply to help us to help you as quickly as possible.
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Leagan Gaeilge
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