Blackboard
Workshop
Materials
Presented by Karalee James &
Tracy Ann Robinson
Writing 520/Computers in Composition
Dr. Teena Carnegie, Professor
This packet includes instructions on how to:
1. Activate your course
2. Communicate announcements to your class
3. Post your syllabus
4. Create links to external web sites
5. Set up a threaded discussion
6. Use the Digital Drop Box to exchange files with students
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Logging on to ONID on a Mac
1. Click on the apple (located at the very top left-hand corner of your
screen.
2. Click on Chooser.
3. Click on Appleshare.
4. Scroll down to Computing Services and highlight it.
5. Double-click on ONID.
6. Enter your ONID username and password and click
7. A new screen will pop up. Highlight home and click
8. Close Chooser window by clicking the upper left-hand box.
9. You are logged in to ONID when the home icon appears at the right-
hand side of your screen.
Downloading an E-mail Attachment on a Mac
1. Click on the , which is located in the upper left-hand corner of your
screen.
2. Scroll down to Internet and choose either Internet Explorer or Netscape.
3. In the browser window, type the URL of your e-mail service to which you
sent your document. (For example, ONID at www.onid.orst.edu or
ORST)
4. Type in your username and password.
5. Open the e-mail message that contains the attachment.
6.
Open the attachment (if you are using ONID, click on )
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7. If you receive the following prompt, click . Then perform the
following steps:
a. Double-click Mac HD
b. Scroll down to Microsoft and double-click (Note: it doesn’t matter
if your file was created in another program such as word perfect)
c. Double-click Microsoft Word
Logging on to Blackboard
1. In your open internet browser, enter the Blackboard URL --
my.oregonstate.edu
2. On the Blackboard Welcome page, click the Login button to display the
Blackboard Log-In page.
3. On the Blackboard Log-In page, type your ONID user name and
password and then click the Login button.
4. You’ll now be at your Blackboard Portal page through which you access
your Blackboard courses.
5. On the Blackboard Portal page, click on the “My Courses” box.
6. Click on the listed course in which you want to work.
7. Once in that course, look for the Control Panel button (at the bottom of
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the stack on the left-hand side of the screen).
Posting Announcements
Use Blackboard’s Announcements feature to communicate time-sensitive information or
other information of importance to your students, such as a paper’s due date, a change
in class location or schedule, clarification of an assignment, a new posting in the Course
Information or Course Document area, an announcement you forgot to make in class,
and the course exam schedule.
Announcements appear on the main page for your class (and, optionally, the “My
Institution” area) in the order in which you post them, with the most recent
announcement posted first. You control the data and time of each announcement’s
appearance and the duration of its display.
1.
From your class page, click on
2. Under Content Areas, click on
3.
Click
4. Type or paste the Subject and Message in the appropriate fields, and
+choose to have the announcement appear as , , or
Note: Smart Text displays the test as written and creates links to URLs
and email addresses that appear in the text. Plain Text displays the text
as written. HTML displays the text as coded using HTML tags. In most
cases you'll probably want to select the default, Smart Text.
5. The Options section lets you specify where the announcement will be
shown and on what date(s) the announcement will be displayed. Set
these parameters as shown below:
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Note: Selecting for posting the announcement on the course’s
main page means that the announcement will be displayed on the My
Institution page as well as the Course page.
6.
Click to post your announcement.
Posting Course Information
Use Blackboard’s Course Information feature to provide your students with online
access to the class syllabus, course objectives, schedule, and other descriptive
information about the course.
Note: Blackboard also includes a “Course Documents” feature. That feature is designed
for providing online access to course-content-specific texts such as handouts, lecture
notes, commentaries on assigned reading, and so on.
You can group different kinds of course information together within separate files,
embed links to URLs and email addresses within the posted texts, track the number of
times your students view these texts, and control the duration of each text’s appearance
in Blackboard.
1. On the main page of the course you are designing, click on
(bottom button on left side of page).
2. Click on
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3.
Click on
4. In the Content Information section, select one of the provided names
(e.g., “Syllabus”) from the drop-down menu or type another name of your
choice.
(Optional) Choose the display color of the name you specified by clicking
on
5. To paste text from another document into Blackboard, first open the
document from which you are copying.
Note: On a Mac, you simply have to click on the , double-click the
file (which has been saved to your desktop),
6.
Highlight the text to be copied, and click (or your application’s copy
icon) to copy it to the clipboard.
7. Return to Blackboard and click on the Text box.
8. Paste the selected text into the Text box by clicking and
highlighting Paste or by pressing [open-apple + V].
9. Optional: If you would rather have the syllabus appear as a separate
document or if you would like to attach an additional document, move to
section 2, Content Attachments, and click to locate the file
on your computer.
Note: Unless you enter a descriptive name in the “Name of Link to File”
box, Blackboard uses the name of the file as the link.
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10. In Section 3, Options, specify the following:
Note: Make sure to specify the dates of availability information or your
document will not appear.
11. Click to post your information.
Note: You will receive a receipt detailing the information you have
included.
12. Click to return to the Content Information page and click
again to return to the Control Panel.
How to Modify or Remove Course Information after it has been Posted:
1. After you have posted course information, and
buttons will appear to the right of the item. You may use these buttons to
change or delete the item.
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How to Track the Number of Times Students Visit a Course Information Item:
1. From the Control Panel, click on
2. Next to the document you wish to track, click on .
3. Under Select Report Filter, choose a Time Period:
OR
4. Select specific Users:
OR
5. Under Options, answer the following question or :
Do you wish to refresh the dataset?
Note: Selecting will update the data set.
6. Under What information do you want to display?, select the following
options:
1. Number of accesses over time
2. User accesses per hour of the day
3. User accesses per day of the week
4. Total accesses by user
7.
Click to display the tracking information you have specified.
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Creating External Links
Use Blackboard’s External Links feature to connect your students with Web sites
containing information relevant to your course. For example, in a course on American
Transcendentalist Literature, you could provide links to Web sites on Thoreau,
Emerson, Fuller and so on. One advantage of establishing external links is that they
allow you to direct students to those Web sites that you consider most helpful and
creditable.
Notes:
You can establish separate folders in which to group like Web sites together.
For each external link that you set up, you can include a brief description of the
Web site. Use this descriptive line to “annotate” the site—that is, tell your
students both why and how they should use the site.
Creating a Folder for a Group of Related External Links:
1.
Click
2. Under Content Areas, click
3.
Click
4. Select a name for the folder from the drop-down menu
OR
Type another name for the folder.
5.
Click to choose a color for the folder.
6. In the Text box, type or paste descriptive information about the folder.
7. Under Options, answer or to the following question: “Do you
want to make this folder visible?”
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8.
Click to create your folder and click to post it.
Creating an External Link:
1.
Click
2. Under Content Areas, click
3. To have the link appear on the main External Links page, click
Note: To put the link in a folder, click on the folder name and then click
.
4. In the Name field, enter a descriptive name for the web site.
5. In the URL field, enter the URL address.
6. In the Description field, enter descriptive guiding information about the
site.
7. Under Options, answer or the following questions:
1. “Do you want to make link visible” (translation: do you want to provide
the URL to your students?)
2. “Launch item in external window?” (translation: do you want the
website to open up a new browser window?)
8.
Click and then click to confirm the posting.
9. Test the URL by clicking on the link, and then click to return to the
Control Panel.
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Creating Threaded Discussions
Use Blackboard’s Discussion Board feature to conduct asynchronous online
conversations. These conversations are organized as threads that contain a main
posting and all related replies. When you set up a discussion, you specify whether
students can post messages anonymously, whether they can remove or edit their
messages after posting them, and whether they can attach files to posted messages.
You can also block (and unblock) specific students from posting messages to a
discussion.
Note: The following instructions explain how to set up a whole-class discussion, which
students access by clicking on the Discussion Board option. You can also set up
discussions for individual student groups; students access small-group discussions
through the through the Group option.
1.
Click
2. Under Course Tools, click
3.
Click
4. Type or paste a title in the Title field
5. In the Description field, enter the discussion question.
Choose to have the discussion question appear as , , or
Note: Smart Text displays the test as written and creates links to URLs
and email addresses that appear in the text. Plain Text displays the text
as written. HTML displays the text as coded using HTML tags. In most
cases you'll probably want to select the default, Smart Text.
6. Under Forum Settings, select or deselect the following options by
clicking on the box next to the specific item:
Allow anonymous posts
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Allow author to edit messages after posting
Allow author to remove own post messages
Allow file attachments
Allow new thread
7. Use Forum User Settings to change a student’s status in the discussion
forum. Highlight the student’s name, and then click on the appropriate
button.
8.
Click to post your discussion question and click to the
Control Panel.
Using the Digital Drop Box
Use Blackboard’s Digital Drop Box feature to exchange files with individual students.
The drop box works by uploading a file from the sender’s computer to a central
location. You can then download the file to work on it locally.
Notes:
Students access the Digital Drop Box from the Tools area on their course page.
You can also establish drop boxes for groups; these are accessed from the
group home page.
The Digital Drop Box is used to exchange information with individual students. To
post information to all students, use the Course Information or Course
Documents feature.
Adding a File to the Digital Drop Box:
1.
Click
2. Under Course Tools, click
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3.
Click
4. Type or paste in the Title
5. In the File field, click
6.
Select file and click
7. (Optional) Add extra information about the file under Comments.
8.
Click
Sending a File Using the Digital Drop Box:
1.
Click
2. Under Course Tools, click
3.
Click
4. Select the file recipient(s) by clicking on names of students to whom you
want to send the file.
Note: To select more than one student, simply hold down the open
apple key while using the mouse.
5. In File Information section, either select one of the files you have
already added to the Digital Drop Box, or click to upload
and send another file, optionally adding a Title and Comments for the
new file.
6.
After selecting the file, click .
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7.
Click to return to the Digital Drop Box.
8.
Click again to return to the Control Panel.
Removing a File from the Digital Drop Box:
1. Click to the right of the file you wish to remove.
2.
After the file is removed, click .
Activating Your Blackboard Course for Student Access
1.
Click
2. Under Course Options, click
Click
Select for the “Make Course Available” prompt.
Click .
Blackboard acknowledges that the action was successful.
Click to return to the Course Settings page.
Click again to return to the Control Panel.
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