IntroductionWelcome| 00:04 | Welcome to Blackboard 9
Essential Training for Instructors.
| | 00:07 | My name is Patrick Crispen, and for
the past ten years I have supported
| | 00:10 | Blackboard at three of the five
largest universities in Southern California.
| | 00:14 | In this course, I am going to show
you what you need to know to get started
| | 00:17 | with Blackboard Learn.
| | 00:18 | I am also going to throw in some tips,
tricks, and even some instructional design
| | 00:21 | strategies that I picked up along the way,
| | 00:24 | things that will help you and your
students get the most out of Blackboard.
| | 00:28 | We will cover essentials, such as how
to create an assignment and make it
| | 00:31 | available to students.
| | 00:32 | I will explore many of the
communication tools, and we will look at how to use
| | 00:36 | discussions in email.
| | 00:37 | I will teach you how to set up your grade
center, add items, and export the records.
| | 00:42 | We will cover how to create
assessment items of all sorts, and how to set
| | 00:45 | various settings that will allow you
to deliver and grade these items as
| | 00:49 | efficiently as possible.
| | 00:51 | Before we get started, let me
give you a quick bit of advice:
| | 00:54 | don't try to learn or use all
of Blackboard's tools at once.
| | 00:57 | If you have never used Blackboard,
start with the first few chapters as a quick
| | 01:01 | start and then build on that as you need to.
| | 01:04 | Again, welcome to Blackboard 9
Essential Training for Instructors.
| | 01:07 | Let's get started.
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| Using the exercise files| 00:00 | If you are a Premium member of the
lynda.com Online Training Library, you have
| | 00:04 | access to the exercise files
used throughout this title.
| | 00:08 | The exercise files are in the Exercise Files
folder, which I have placed here on my Desktop.
| | 00:13 | You can store this wherever you'd like.
| | 00:15 | There are files for some, but not all, of
the movies, and it is not necessary for
| | 00:20 | you to use these files.
| | 00:22 | In fact, you can use files of
your own in place of any of these.
| | 00:25 | If you are a Monthly or Annual
subscriber to lynda.com, you don't have access to
| | 00:30 | the exercise files, but you can
follow along with your own work.
| | 00:33 | Let's get started.
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| What is an LMS?| 00:00 | Let me ask you a question.
What is an LMS? Put simply,
| | 00:04 | an LMS is just a learning management system.
| | 00:06 | More realistically, it's a
course management system.
| | 00:09 | It's a centrally administered service
offered by your institution in which
| | 00:13 | you can manage a course or group of courses,
their files, students' grades, and so forth.
| | 00:18 | Sound an awful like a web site, doesn't it?
| | 00:20 | Well, no, it's actually quite different.
| | 00:22 | See, rather than having you remember
the web site addresses for each course web
| | 00:27 | site that you own, the LMS uses a
single web site with a single sign-on, which is
| | 00:32 | much easier to remember, and once you
get into your learning management system,
| | 00:36 | your username and password get you
access not only to the learning management
| | 00:40 | system, but also to all of your
LMSs' course sites in which you're an
| | 00:44 | instructor or a student.
| | 00:46 | Once you get into the courses, you are
going to notice that there is a uniform
| | 00:49 | look and feel across all courses.
| | 00:51 | Notice here we have got navigation on
the left-hand side, content on the right.
| | 00:55 | Let me go into a different course.
| | 00:57 | I want you to notice that it's going to
look almost identical, in fact, exactly
| | 01:01 | identical, and this is really helpful for
students, because having the navigation
| | 01:06 | and content areas in the same place
makes it much less likely that your
| | 01:10 | students are going to get lost.
| | 01:12 | Once you are within your course, you
are going to notice that there is an
| | 01:14 | integrated system of core instructional tools,
| | 01:17 | kind of a toolbox, built into the LMS.
| | 01:20 | Announcements, email, roster, grade book,
they are already sitting there waiting for you.
| | 01:24 | You don't have to download or install anything.
| | 01:27 | In fact, what you are going to be
doing within your course in your learning
| | 01:30 | management system is going to accessed
and modified through a graphical user
| | 01:35 | interface, through your web browser.
| | 01:37 | You don't have to know HTML.
| | 01:38 | You don't have to use FTP. In fact,
if you know how to attach a file to an
| | 01:42 | email message or upload a picture to Facebook,
you already know how to upload files to your LMS.
| | 01:49 | Best of all, your learning management
system is centrally administered and supported.
| | 01:54 | Usually, there is going to be automated
course and user provisioning that's tied
| | 01:57 | to your institution student information system.
| | 01:59 | What that means is that when a course
is scheduled at your institution, it's
| | 02:03 | very likely that a learning
management system course is also going to be
| | 02:06 | created at the same time.
| | 02:08 | When you are assigned to teach that
course in your student information
| | 02:11 | system, you will automatically get assigned to
that course in your learning management system.
| | 02:15 | When a student is given an account,
that account usually will get them into
| | 02:18 | learning management system.
| | 02:19 | You don't have to do anything.
| | 02:21 | And if your learning management
system is really tied to your student
| | 02:25 | information system, what happens is
when a student enrolls in the course, they
| | 02:28 | are automatically enrolled in your
learning management system course.
| | 02:32 | You don't even have to touch or
modify your raster. It's done for you.
| | 02:37 | Best of all, there is someone at your
institution is going to be available to
| | 02:40 | answer your question and
your students' questions.
| | 02:42 | With a web site, you are kind of on your own.
| | 02:45 | Finally, out of the box, a learning
management system is a secure, private,
| | 02:50 | FERPA-compliant environment.
| | 02:52 | FERPA here in the United States is the
Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act
| | 02:56 | of 1974, sometimes know as the Buckley
Amendment, and that pretty much rules what
| | 03:01 | can and cannot be shared when it comes
to student information, student-grade
| | 03:05 | non-directory information.
| | 03:07 | Your learning management system
actually offers three levels of access
| | 03:11 | control and security.
| | 03:12 | System access, meaning that not anybody
in the world can get into the learning
| | 03:15 | management system--only people with
user names and password can get in.
| | 03:19 | There is course level access--
| | 03:21 | we have a list of courses here.
| | 03:23 | You can't access all the courses on your
system, only the courses that you have
| | 03:26 | permission to access. And then most
importantly, once you get into a course, as
| | 03:31 | an instructor, instructors have
access to certain tools, such as the course
| | 03:35 | management area here, but students don't.
| | 03:37 | Students can only be participants in the course.
| | 03:39 | They can't make any changes to the course.
| | 03:42 | So that's what a learning management system is.
| | 03:45 | It's pretty much just a centrally
administered service offered by your
| | 03:49 | institution in which you can manage a
course or a group of courses, its files,
| | 03:54 | students' grades, and so forth.
| | 03:56 | What exactly is Blackboard?
| | 03:57 | Well, Blackboard is just a popular
learning management system that grew out of
| | 04:01 | the Business School at
Cornell University back in 1996.
| | 04:05 | You may have heard of other LMSs
like Moodle, Desire2Learn, SACI,
| | 04:09 | Instructure Canvas,
| | 04:10 | but in this title we are going
to be focusing on Blackboard 9.1.
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| Understanding Blackboard 9.X versions and campus customizations | 00:00 | In this title we're going to be using
a version of Blackboard that may look a
| | 00:03 | little different than what you're
used to seeing at your institution.
| | 00:06 | In fact, we're running Blackboard 9.1.
That's been available since March 2010, and
| | 00:12 | we're actually running a version of
the call Blackboard 9.1 Service Pack 5
| | 00:16 | that's been available since late April 2011.
| | 00:19 | Your institution may be running an
older version, and that's perfectly fine.
| | 00:23 | I'll make sure to point
out what is new or different.
| | 00:25 | With relatively few exceptions, so
long as your school is running some
| | 00:29 | version of Blackboard 9.1, you should be able
to do almost anything you see in these movies.
| | 00:35 | Your institution's help desk can tell you
what version of Blackboard they're running.
| | 00:38 | What exactly is different between what
you see now and what your institution has
| | 00:43 | running on their Blackboard?
| | 00:44 | Well, institutions have the ability
to completely customize Blackboard.
| | 00:49 | The first thing you're going to notice
that's probably different is that the Login
| | 00:51 | screen is different at your
institution than what you see here.
| | 00:54 | We're using the default color scheme
and layout, but campuses have the ability
| | 00:58 | to completely customize this page.
| | 01:00 | Your campus's Login page may
not look anything like this.
| | 01:04 | That's perfectly fine.
| | 01:05 | Once you get into Blackboard, you're
going to notice probably a completely
| | 01:09 | different color scheme.
| | 01:11 | Your institution has the ability to
change the logo, the color, the layout, even
| | 01:15 | the modules, these little boxes.
| | 01:16 | They have the ability to add and remove those.
| | 01:19 | So it's going to look a little
different that way, and once you get into the
| | 01:22 | courses, the courses themselves might
look a little different as well, because
| | 01:26 | your institution might have a
different landing page, or a starting page.
| | 01:29 | They might have different menu
items, but that's perfectly fine.
| | 01:33 | Just because what you see in these
movies doesn't exactly match what you see on
| | 01:36 | your institution's Blackboard
site, don't let that throw you.
| | 01:39 | For the most part, Blackboard is Blackboard.
| | 01:42 | As I said, with relatively few
exceptions, so long as your school is
| | 01:45 | running some version of Blackboard 9.1,
you'll be able to do almost anything
| | 01:50 | you see in these movies.
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1. What's New in Blackboard 9.1 SP8 and SP9?The new graphical user interface| 00:00 | In these movies, we're going to take a quick
look at what's new and what's different in
| | 00:03 | Blackboard 9.1 service packs 8 and 9, or as we in the
Blackboard community refer to them SP8 and SP9.
| | 00:11 | These movies are intended for instructors who
already know a little bit about Blackboard.
| | 00:15 | If you're completely new to Blackboard, if
you've never used it before, my recommendation
| | 00:19 | is for you to watch these movies and then
hop on over to the Blackboard 9.x Essential
| | 00:24 | Training for Instructors movies at lynda.com
to fill in the gaps, but for those of you,
| | 00:29 | who have used Blackboard before,
let's take a look at SP8 and SP9.
| | 00:33 | The first thing you're going to notice that
some institutions is that nothing has really
| | 00:37 | changed. You've got the same colors, the same tabs,
same modules; there is no apparent difference.
| | 00:43 | However, if your institution has chosen to use
Blackboard's new BB Learn 2012 theme, everything
| | 00:50 | is going to look different, but not really.
Service Pack 8 and 9's new look and feel looks
| | 00:55 | a little jarring at first, but trust me when
I say that this is still the same Blackboard
| | 01:00 | you've used before, just with a softer
background and more neutral colors.
| | 01:04 | In fact, let's take a quick look at what
hasn't changed. When you log into Blackboard at
| | 01:08 | the top of each page is still a
series of tabs and sub tabs.
| | 01:12 | The tabs are just now a little less obvious and they
may actually be in a different location on the screen.
| | 01:19 | The logo in the top left-hand corner still
takes you back to the My Institution tab,
| | 01:24 | my places, home, help and Logout they're still
there. They're moved farther over to the right,
| | 01:29 | and now only show as icons. You can still get into
your courses the same way, you just click
| | 01:34 | on the name of your course.
| | 01:36 | So what has changed?
| | 01:37 | Well, in my mind, there are three huge cosmetic
changes in SP8 and SP9's graphical user interface,
| | 01:44 | and a handful of smaller ones.
| | 01:47 | The first huge change is the most obvious,
there is a new color scheme using Web 2.0
| | 01:52 | Colors, but only if your
institution has adopted it.
| | 01:55 | By the way if you have Internet Explorer 7
or 8 you really do need to update your web
| | 02:00 | browser right now. I've got
Internet Explorer 9 here.
| | 02:05 | Why do you need updated Internet Explorer
version 9 or later? Blackboard's new look
| | 02:09 | and feel uses something called cascading style
sheets or CSS, and simply put, CSS just plain
| | 02:15 | works better in IE 9 and later.
| | 02:18 | Let me get into a course here and I want to
show you the second major cosmetic change.
| | 02:25 | Remember those infamous downward facing chevrons
that were scattered throughout earlier versions
| | 02:29 | of Blackboard? I've got an old version here
and these are the buttons I'm talking about.
| | 02:33 | Let me get back into the new version here.
| | 02:35 | Where did all those downward facing chevrons go?
Well, they're still there. They are just hidden.
| | 02:41 | If you hold your mouse over an item or a
button the downward facing chevron reappears.
| | 02:47 | This new hide it until you need it design
philosophy is embedded throughout the entire
| | 02:52 | new theme of Service Pack 8 and 9.
| | 02:55 | So action links, drag and drop, minimized
downward facing chevron; they're all hidden
| | 03:00 | until you hold your mouse over them and
this is a potentially confusing change.
| | 03:05 | Just remember, if your campus is using the
new look and feel in Service Pack 8 or 9,
| | 03:10 | you need to hold your mouse over something
first before you'll see any tools or options
| | 03:14 | to modify that thing.
| | 03:16 | The third major cosmetic change is
potentially frustrating especially for your students.
| | 03:21 | Remember, how you used to be able to hide
your course menu by clicking on that greater
| | 03:25 | than or less then sign button? In fact, I'll do
it over here in an older version of Blackboard,
| | 03:29 | so I just hid the course menu. There it's back.
| | 03:33 | Well, in Service Pack 8 and 9 you can still
hide your course menu, but the new hide it
| | 03:39 | until you need it design philosophy means
that the button doesn't show up until
| | 03:42 | you hold your mouse over it.
| | 03:44 | So I'm going to hold my mouse over, there it goes,
and there's no button now saying get it back.
| | 03:49 | I may see a colored bar in the left-hand side
of the page, and if I hold my mouse over the
| | 03:54 | button then appears, but it's actually going
to be pretty easy for you and your students
| | 03:59 | to accidentally hide your course menu
and then not understand what's going on.
| | 04:05 | In Service Pack 8, if you hide the course menu
like I've done here, it stays hidden forever
| | 04:10 | until you manually unhide
it and that's not good.
| | 04:14 | Fortunately, Service Pack 9 fixes that.
| | 04:16 | The menu only stays collapsed for the duration
of your user session and on a per course basis,
| | 04:22 | so if you close your browser, log back in
the menu is going to magically reappear or
| | 04:27 | you can just click on Show Course Menu.
| | 04:30 | The hidden course menu problems that you and your
students had in earlier versions of Blackboard
| | 04:34 | can still potentially pop up in
Service Pack 8 and Service Pack 9.
| | 04:39 | Remember that a great way to diagnose hidden
course menu problems with your students is
| | 04:43 | to manually create a hyperlink on your course
menu to some important resource like lynda.com
| | 04:48 | or your institution's code of ethics.
| | 04:50 | When your students tell you that they cannot
access your course or that they can only open
| | 04:54 | new materials, they are never going to say I
can't see my course menu, just ask, do you
| | 04:59 | see a link to whatever that resource is? If
they don't, you automatically know the problem
| | 05:04 | and how to fix it.
| | 05:05 | Those are the three major cosmetic changes.
There's a new look and feel action links, drag
| | 05:12 | and drop, minimized downward facing chevrons;
they're all hidden until you mouse over them
| | 05:16 | and Hide Course Menu no longer has a
button until you hold your mouse over it.
| | 05:21 | What else has changed? Really, cosmetically
Service Pack 8 and 9 are just less cluttered.
| | 05:26 | The Tools module has common system tools, it
always has, although the icons are now gone
| | 05:31 | and there's a little more
space in between each tool.
| | 05:33 | In other words, this is just Blackboard with a
different look and feel, a little bit cleaner,
| | 05:38 | a little more professional or at least
little more like iGoogle, but it's different and
| | 05:42 | it may take a while for
you to get used to that.
| | 05:45 | In the following movies in this chapter,
we're going to take a quick look at some of the
| | 05:48 | new tools, features, and fixes you
can find in Service Pack 8 and 9.
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| Exploring course-to-course navigation| 00:00 | If you're like many instructors, you probably
teach more than one Blackboard course each
| | 00:04 | academic term, because of that you may find
yourself performing the time-consuming task
| | 00:09 | of bouncing from course to course throughout
the term to do things like enter grades or
| | 00:14 | upload new files.
| | 00:15 | For example, let me get into the
Grade Center of this first course.
| | 00:18 | I'm going to scroll down,
get into the Grade Center.
| | 00:23 | Got Jayden Brown as my first student
in this course and I can enter grades.
| | 00:27 | In previous versions of Blackboard, if I
wanted to go to the Grade Center of another course
| | 00:31 | I'm teaching I would have to leave this course
by clicking the My Institutional Courses tab,
| | 00:36 | open the other course, and then manually
navigate to where I need to be. That's lots of steps
| | 00:40 | and lots of time.
| | 00:42 | This all changes in Blackboard
9.1 Service Pack 8 or later.
| | 00:47 | SP8 and SP9 have what they call course to
course navigation that let's you jump from
| | 00:52 | one place in a course to that
exact same place in another course.
| | 00:56 | Let me show you what I mean.
| | 00:58 | Depending upon the default theme your institution
uses, the breadcrumb trail at the top of the
| | 01:03 | page is going to show either the name
of your course or just a house icon.
| | 01:07 | To the right of that, click the Action button,
the button with either one or two downward
| | 01:13 | facing chevrons and you don't actually have
to hold your mouse over to see this button,
| | 01:17 | and choose the course you want to go to.
| | 01:20 | So I've got Jayden Brown in this first course,
let me go to this second course, the 66 course.
| | 01:27 | I'm now in the Grade Center of
my 66 course, before the 3766.
| | 01:32 | If I want to go to the Grade Center of my 67 course,
there I'm in the Grade Center of my 67 course.
| | 01:40 | I'll show you this again, go into Announcements,
I'm in the Announcements in the 43765 section,
| | 01:46 | I'm in the Announcements
section of this other course.
| | 01:50 | One another neat feature of SP8 and SP9 is at
least in this default theme the breadcrumb
| | 01:55 | trail specifically tells you if
your course is available to students.
| | 02:00 | Remember, to make a course available, just go
to Customization properties, set available,
| | 02:05 | but the big new feature is that in SP8 and
SP9 you can now jump from one place in the
| | 02:10 | course to that exact same place in another
course you've recently accessed by clicking
| | 02:15 | the Action button in the breadcrumb trail,
and then choosing the course you want to go to.
| | 02:20 |
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| Using course themes| 00:00 | Blackboard has always let you customize
the look and feel of your course to a point.
| | 00:04 | You can go to Customization > Style, and change
the course menu from text to buttons, change the
| | 00:09 | button background colors; that all changes
in Blackboard 9.1 Service Pack 8 or later.
| | 00:15 | In fact, when I scroll down, I'm going to go to
Customization and I want you to notice Style is gone.
| | 00:23 | Technically they smoosh that page into
something called Teaching Style, we'll talk
| | 00:26 | about that in the next movie.
| | 00:28 | The reason why Customization Style is less
prominent is that Service Pack 8 and Service
| | 00:34 | Pack 9 have a much more powerful and
pretty tool called Course Themes.
| | 00:39 | If your institution is using the new BB Learn
2012 theme and if your institution has enabled
| | 00:45 | this feature, you'll see at the top of the
page, up here in the breadcrumb trail, this
| | 00:50 | sort of multicolored fan of color chips.
| | 00:54 | It's to the far right of your course is
breadcrumb trail just to the left of Edit mode.
| | 00:58 | Hold your mouse over that or even click on it,
and what you'll see are 50 pre-built professional
| | 01:04 | designs you can choose from.
| | 01:05 | I'm going to scroll down here, so I've got by Color,
by Design, by Season, by course structure
| | 01:12 | or actually System, and by Subject.
| | 01:16 | So I'm going to go click
on the Chemistry design.
| | 01:18 | What I want you to see is that scenes change
your course's background image, your course's
| | 01:22 | menu, and notice that the
changes are immediate.
| | 01:25 | I am going to go here and scroll
down, click on Lavender, automatic.
| | 01:30 | The big thing to remember is that
course themes don't modify your content.
| | 01:35 | Notice that as I make these changes, nothing on
the content of my page is actually changing.
| | 01:41 | All you are changing is your
course's skin, its look and feel.
| | 01:44 | Only instructors can change the course theme,
not students, and currently there is no way
| | 01:49 | for you to design your own theme. You have
to use one of the 50 pre-installed themes.
| | 01:53 | If you ever want to reset this back to normal
just click on Default, takes it back to normal.
| | 01:59 | Remember, that some of your students may have vision
issues, low vision, colorblindness, and so forth.
| | 02:05 | So make sure that you choose
a theme with high contrast.
| | 02:09 | There are actually two other ways to change
your course's style, we'll talk about both
| | 02:13 | of those in our next movie.
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| Looking at course structures and the Quick Setup Guide| 00:00 | When you access a new Blackboard course,
your course menu uses a structure that was set
| | 00:05 | by either your institution or your department.
| | 00:08 | At many institutions, you're completely free
to edit your course menu. It's your course.
| | 00:12 | You can move the items up and down the course
menu, you can go and rename it, hide it, delete
| | 00:18 | it, you can even add new
items to your course menu.
| | 00:22 | Blackboard 9.1 Service Pack 8 and later introduces
an extremely powerful new feature called Course
| | 00:29 | Structures which are predefined sets of
course menu links, instructions and if you choose,
| | 00:35 | even fake content examples to help you setup
your course. Let me show you what I mean.
| | 00:40 | I have a course here with the default course
menu, and if I scroll down and go to Customization,
| | 00:47 | and then click on Teaching Style.
| | 00:50 | This replaces actually the old customization
style page, and before we get to the course
| | 00:57 | structure, let me scroll down and show you
what else is available here. You can set the
| | 01:00 | Course Entry Point, the first page the people
see when they get into your course. You can
| | 01:05 | select the course theme. This is the second
way to get to this feature. There's one more
| | 01:10 | way we'll talk about in a minute.
| | 01:12 | You can also go and select the menu style,
choose whether it going to be text or buttons.
| | 01:18 | Remember all the dozens of hours you spent
choosing the right menu button and background
| | 01:22 | in previous versions of
blackboard? That's still available.
| | 01:26 | One word of warning.
| | 01:28 | There is a known bug in Service Pack 9 where
choosing to display buttons instead of text
| | 01:33 | may cause the text to run off the page,
so for now just leave it as text.
| | 01:38 | For the Course Menu Display, it's really just
saying do you want to have List View, Folder
| | 01:44 | View, I usually just leave this alone.
| | 01:47 | Default Content View, in your course's content
area you can choose if each content item should
| | 01:52 | display an Icon Only, Text Only, or an Icon
and Text. I usually just leave this alone
| | 01:57 | and you can also upload a banner that's going
to appear on the course entry page, but we're
| | 02:02 | here to talk about these course structures.
| | 02:06 | In Blackboard 9.1 Service Pack 8 and later
there are 32 different built-in course structures
| | 02:13 | you can choose from, divided into five categories.
You can do it by activity, you can do it by
| | 02:20 | communication, content, systems or
even time. Let me scroll back up here.
| | 02:27 | Before you apply any of these structures, I want
you to read the second sentence very carefully.
| | 02:36 | The selected course structures content is
added to your course and does not replace
| | 02:42 | existing menu items and content.
| | 02:44 | What does this mean? Well, if you apply a
new course structure, Blackboard is going
| | 02:48 | to take your existing course menu items; your
menus, your files, your attachments, everything,
| | 02:54 | push them to the bottom of your course menu and
then add new items to the top of your course menu.
| | 03:00 | Blackboard is not going to copy any of your
existing content into your new menu structure ever.
| | 03:06 | You're going to have to do that by hand, and
you're also going to have to manually edit
| | 03:10 | or delete the course structure content you
don't want. Because of this, before you even
| | 03:15 | think about applying a new course structure to
your course, make sure you are 100% certain
| | 03:21 | you know how to manually edit or fix your
course menu, because there is going to be
| | 03:25 | a lot of cleanup work.
| | 03:27 | Since we actually know how to clean up the
course menu and we know that there's going
| | 03:31 | to be some cleanup, let's actually
just go here and click on Case Study.
| | 03:34 | I'm going to clean on Use This Structure,
and there is check box here which gives me
| | 03:40 | the option of including content examples.
I'm going to choose that as well, and then
| | 03:46 | scroll either to the top or the
bottom of the page and click on Submit.
| | 03:50 | Now it's going to say you've chosen to add
a course structure to your course, do you
| | 03:55 | want to continue? Well yep.
| | 03:57 | This may take a few minutes to process to
put all the files in a place, but notice that
| | 04:03 | our course menu is now completely different,
and all of our old course menu items are down
| | 04:10 | here at the bottom of the page.
| | 04:12 | New course menus are actually at the top.
Let me get in here to Course Overview, and
| | 04:18 | since we chose to use content examples,
| | 04:21 | notice that these items on our course menu have sample
content in them from a fake course on oceanography.
| | 04:28 | This content by the way is not visible to
students. It's kind of a placeholder for you
| | 04:32 | where you can then go in and edit this
content and fill in what you want to put.
| | 04:39 | I've applied a course structure and it turns
out I don't really like this course structure.
| | 04:43 | I want to go back. Let me scroll down here
and I'm going go back to Teaching Style and
| | 04:50 | let's go and just use the Existing Menu,
so click on Submit and nothing has changed.
| | 04:57 | Well it turns out you can't undo course
structures, and if I go back here to course structures
| | 05:03 | and I go and add yet another course structure,
Teaching Style, Expedition Based, and click
| | 05:12 | on Submit, it's taken my original course menu
items, pushed them down, added new items, and
| | 05:18 | I have now made a really
complex and confusing course menu.
| | 05:22 | Can you see now why I said the course
structures is an extremely powerful new feature?
| | 05:27 | You can do just some really great things
with your course, but you can also make a huge
| | 05:30 | mess if you aren't careful, a mess that
would be really confusing for your students and
| | 05:35 | may actually take a while for you to clean up.
| | 05:37 | In fact, because of this, don't be surprised
if your institution has turned Teaching Style
| | 05:42 | and Course Structure off.
| | 05:44 | Let me scroll down and close this, and let me show
you one other thing. There is something called
| | 05:51 | the Quick Setup Guide; this is another new
tool in Blackboard Service Pack 8 and 9, that
| | 05:57 | kind of rolls up a lot of Blackboard's
customization tools and don't be surprised if your institution
| | 06:01 | has turned this feature off as well.
| | 06:03 | The Quick Setup Guide lets you change your
course name and description. A lot of institutions
| | 06:08 | disable this. If they do, you won't even see
this option. You can choose a Course Structure,
| | 06:14 | this is the same as what we just did in customization
teaching style. You can choose a Course Theme,
| | 06:19 | so this is a third way to do that, you could
also go to the Color Chips in the breadcrumb
| | 06:23 | trail or just go to Customization Teaching
Style, you can also learn more about your
| | 06:27 | course. These are just particular
Blackboard help files on tools and features.
| | 06:33 | If I uncheck Hide Quick Setup Guide when I
enter the course, this Quick Setup Guide is
| | 06:38 | going to show up every time I get in
the course, so leave that checked.
| | 06:41 | In this case, I'm just
going to click on Cancel.
| | 06:45 | That's a quick tour of the course
structures and the quick setup guide.
| | 06:50 | In our next movie, we're going to take a look
at some of the new and improved assessment
| | 06:54 | features in Blackboard.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using new and improved assessments| 00:00 | Service Pack 8 and 9 introduce some new or
improved assessment tools and features and
| | 00:05 | we are going to talk about
three of them in this movie;
| | 00:08 | automated re-grading of assessments,
timed assessments, and negative marking.
| | 00:12 | Let's start with automated re-grading.
| | 00:15 | Let's say I give my students a Blackboard test,
the students have submitted their answers
| | 00:19 | and then I discover that one of the questions
has an incorrect right answer or point value.
| | 00:24 | I want to drop that question or give full
credits to everyone, change point value or
| | 00:28 | even correct the answer.
| | 00:29 | In previous versions of Blackboard, I would
have to go into the grade center, open each
| | 00:34 | student's assessment attempt and
manually fix each students test one by one.
| | 00:39 | Service Pack 8, Service Pack 9, they fix that.
| | 00:42 | To fix a test question in a test you've already
deployed, the students have already answered
| | 00:46 | it, just edit the test and they are
actually a couple of ways to do it.
| | 00:50 | Honestly, the easiest way to do it, is just
go to where the test has been deployed in
| | 00:55 | your course and then click on the button
to the right of it and Edit the Test.
| | 00:59 | Blackboard is going to show you warning
message telling you that your students have already
| | 01:03 | submitted attempts. We know that.
| | 01:05 | What we want to do now is
let's go in and fix this.
| | 01:08 | For example, this first question, I
have got the wrong answer here.
| | 01:11 | I have got a couple of ways I can fix this,
I can go over here and just make it worth
| | 01:15 | 0 points, click on 0, and notice that there
is a new button here that says Submit and
| | 01:21 | Regrade, when I click on that button,
Blackboard will automatically make this a zero point
| | 01:26 | question for everyone who has already
submitted a test and for anybody else who takes this
| | 01:30 | test in the future.
| | 01:32 | I could also go and say no
let's just make it extra credit.
| | 01:35 | In other words, if you got it right, you get
ten extra points, if you didn't you are not
| | 01:38 | going to lose any points.
| | 01:40 | I could also say full credit, I am going to
give 10 points to everyone but actually what
| | 01:45 | I want to do here is, fix the answer.
| | 01:47 | So I am going to click on the button to the
right of the question, click on Edit, scroll
| | 01:54 | down and just fix the answer.
| | 01:57 | Actually Albert Bandura is the correct answer,
let's scroll down to the bottom of the page
| | 02:01 | and notice that this button doesn't say
submit, it says Submit and Update Attempts.
| | 02:06 | What that's going to do is
automatically regrade the students test.
| | 02:09 | I am going to click on that, it's going to say hey,
we are about to regrade 5 tests, sure, and it's done.
| | 02:16 | There are already couple
other options you can do here.
| | 02:19 | I can say, well wait a minute.
| | 02:21 | These aren't all ten points,
there should only be five.
| | 02:23 | I can go here, select everything, change the
point value to 5 and I can automatically update
| | 02:29 | and regrade all of the questions at once.
| | 02:32 | I can also go in, select None and say, no
I don't like this question anymore. I want
| | 02:36 | to get rid of it, I can highlight it, I can
delete and regrade and it just throws it out.
| | 02:43 | No matter what changes you make to your test,
even if the test has been deployed and the
| | 02:48 | students answered questions, Blackboard
automatically re-grades all of your students assessments.
| | 02:54 | The second newer improved assessment tool and
feature in SP8 and SP9, are timed assessments.
| | 02:59 | In previous versions of Blackboard, you could
if you wanted to create a timed assessment.
| | 03:05 | This is a somewhat effective way
to cut down on student cheating.
| | 03:08 | You just don't give them enough time to cheat.
| | 03:11 | One thing that Blackboard didn't really
publicize is that even if you had a timed assessment,
| | 03:16 | it didn't really prevent students
from exceeding the time limit.
| | 03:19 | The students could still submit the assessment
after the time had elapsed; SP8, SP9, they fix that.
| | 03:26 | If you choose, when the time expires,
Blackboard will automatically save, submit, and close
| | 03:32 | the student's assessment attempt.
| | 03:34 | To turn this feature on, find where the test
is deployed or deploy a new test and then
| | 03:39 | edit the test options. I am
going to do that right here.
| | 03:43 | Scroll down, set the timer, that's not new.
| | 03:47 | What's new is Auto Submit.
| | 03:49 | If you turn Auto Submit on, Blackboard will
automatically yank and submit your students
| | 03:55 | assessment attempts when the timer expires.
| | 03:58 | Now for the bad news.
| | 03:59 | If you have students who need academic
accommodations because of learning disabilities, in other
| | 04:03 | words, they qualify for extended test times
there is no way in the test options to exclude
| | 04:08 | certain students.
| | 04:10 | This timer is the same for everyone.
| | 04:12 | To fix this, you are going to have to create
and deploy a second longer timed assessment
| | 04:17 | using adaptive release, and make it available to
only those students who need the accommodation.
| | 04:22 | That said, if your campus is running Blackboard
9.1 Service Pack 8 or Service Pack 9, you
| | 04:27 | now have real timed assessments in Blackboard.
| | 04:31 | The last thing I want to talk about, the last
new feature, is something called negative marking.
| | 04:36 | Let me get back into Assessments here.
| | 04:39 | On some assessments, you may want to
penalize students for really wrong answers.
| | 04:44 | What do I mean by that? Well let's
say I have a question worth 10 points.
| | 04:49 | On most assessments, the students can either get
10 points for answering the question correctly
| | 04:53 | or 0 points for answering it incorrectly.
| | 04:57 | Sometimes you may want to penalize
students for guessing or giving a wrong answer.
| | 05:02 | You don't get 0 points,
you get negative points.
| | 05:04 | I am taking points away for you.
| | 05:06 | Negative points are used a lot in medical
assessments, engineering, some standardized
| | 05:10 | test; things where there are high risks.
| | 05:13 | Blackboard lets you set up negative points for
incorrect answers on three types of questions:
| | 05:18 | matching, multiple answer,
and multiple-choice.
| | 05:21 | You can't do negative points on surveys
because surveys don't have any points.
| | 05:26 | Setting up negative points is not the most
intuitive thing but it's not that hard.
| | 05:30 | What I am going to do is actually just deploy a
test I have got sitting here called Negative
| | 05:34 | Points, click on Submit, click Submit again.
| | 05:38 | What I want to do now is I
want to edit the test itself.
| | 05:41 | So I am now editing the test.
| | 05:44 | First thing I need to do is I want to click
on Question Settings and then scroll down,
| | 05:51 | you need to turn on specify partial credit
options for answers, and then specify negative
| | 05:56 | points options for answers.
| | 05:58 | Unless you turn both of these
on, it's not going to work.
| | 06:00 | I am going to click on Submit and then I can
create a new multiple choice, multiple answer
| | 06:08 | or matching question, or just take an existing
one of them, edit that, and then scroll down
| | 06:14 | to the answer that you want to penalize. So
I am going to scroll down and anybody who
| | 06:19 | answers, Elvis Presley, I am sorry.
| | 06:20 | I am just going to have to
take some points away from you.
| | 06:23 | Say this question is worth 10 points and you
want the students who answered incorrectly
| | 06:28 | to not get zero points but
to instead lose five points.
| | 06:32 | I'd enter -50% but I'm not going to include the
percent sign, but you do have to have the minus sign.
| | 06:41 | I'm going to scroll down, and this number has to
be between 0.0 and 100, scroll down to the
| | 06:48 | very bottom of the page and click on Submit.
| | 06:52 | Now anybody who answers on this question,
Elvis Presley, they are not going to get zero
| | 06:57 | point, they are going to
get negative five points.
| | 07:00 | If you're using negative points as the guessing
deterrent, mention this in the test instructions.
| | 07:06 | So these are Blackboard 9.1 Service Pack 8 and 9's
new or improved assessment tools and features;
| | 07:12 | automated regrading of assessments,
timed assessments and negative marking.
| | 07:17 | In our next movie, we are going to take a look
at some of Service Pack 8 and 9's obstacles,
| | 07:22 | fixes, and undocumented features.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Looking at temporary obstacles and workarounds| 00:00 | In this movie, we're going to take a quick look at
three things in Blackboard 9.1 Service Pack 8 and 9
| | 00:05 | that could trip you up; things that still
remain in Blackboard's needs to be fixed list at the
| | 00:10 | time of this recording.
| | 00:12 | The first obstacle you may run into is
that older versions of Internet Explorer
| | 00:17 | do not play well with the new
Blackboard user interface.
| | 00:20 | For example, in Internet Explorer 7, you can't
actually see Blackboard's top frame or tabs.
| | 00:27 | You can tell what version of Internet Explorer
you have by going to About Internet Explorer.
| | 00:31 | In this case, I am running Internet
Explorer 9 which is perfectly fine.
| | 00:36 | Even worse, if you've got an older version of
Internet Explorer when you try to download
| | 00:40 | a package of assignments for grading, for example,
I've got my Week 2 Assignment, I'm going to
| | 00:45 | Assignment File Download.
| | 00:46 | I'm just going to create a zip file.
| | 00:49 | That zip file won't open on your computer.
| | 00:52 | From what I've seen, these problems really
only impact you if you're using Windows Vista
| | 00:56 | or Windows 7 in combination with
Internet Explorer 7 or Internet Explorer 8.
| | 01:01 | The solution is actually really simple; don't
use Internet Explorer 7 or Internet Explorer 8.
| | 01:07 | Update your browser or use Firefox, Chrome or
Safari, and you shouldn't run into this issue.
| | 01:13 | The second obstacle you may run into
and I've got to be honest, this is rare.
| | 01:15 | Is that you may receive a 404 error when
viewing files with special characters that students
| | 01:22 | upload to group assignments.
| | 01:24 | I've got one here with a pound sign
and ampersand and exclamation point.
| | 01:28 | I don't think there's a fix for this yet
but if are going to do group assignments,
| | 01:33 | just let your students know ahead of time
| | 01:35 | that their file name should only include letters,
numbers, and underscores. That should take care of it.
| | 01:40 | The final obstacle is that in
Blackboard 9.1 Service Packs 7, 8 and 9,
| | 01:48 | when you go to Tools from the Course menu, and you
hide a particular tool, for example, Announcements,
| | 01:55 | that tool is no longer available to the
students throughout the entire course.
| | 01:59 | You're not just hiding the tool,
you're turning the tool off course-wide.
| | 02:05 | I click on Hide Link, it's hidden here,
| | 02:09 | I can still see it. I can get into this,
| | 02:11 | but let me logout, and I'll
log into this class as a student.
| | 02:14 | Notice on the homepage I've got announcements, I
log out, log in as Jayden Brown, go into the course.
| | 02:23 | There are no announcements.
| | 02:25 | When you turn off a tool on the Tools area,
you're turning the tool off course-wide.
| | 02:30 | These are just three things to keep
it mind, and I'm sure that Blackboard will
| | 02:34 | be fixing all of these soon.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Finding more Blackboard information| 00:00 | So that's a really quick look at what's new and what's
different in Blackboard 9.1 Service Packs 8 and 9.
| | 00:05 | I have left a couple of things out, like the
new reports you can run at course management
| | 00:09 | evaluation course reports, but
this should get you up and running.
| | 00:12 | Where should you go if you have more questions
about Blackboard 9.1 Service Pack 8 or Service Pack 9?
| | 00:18 | Best resource is your institutions help desk
or central I.T. They will have handouts, customized movies,
| | 00:23 | telephone support, drop-in support; they
may be even offering workshops and seminars. When
| | 00:28 | in doubt, call the help desk or whoever
manages Blackboard at your institution.
| | 00:33 | Blackboard's own help site at help.blackboard.com
actually has been updated to include information
| | 00:39 | about Service Pack 8 and Service Pack 9.
| | 00:43 | The search is still kind of hit or miss though,
for example, if I search for course activity
| | 00:48 | overview, which is one of the new reports,
| | 00:52 | not really seeing what I'm looking for. What
I've discovered is if you go to google.com,
| | 00:58 | search for what you are looking for and
then at the end add site:help.blackboard.com.
| | 01:06 | It actually will help you find which are
looking for within Blackboard's help site.
| | 01:11 | That's it! Have a safe and
prosperous academic term.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
2. The Last-Minute Guide to Blackboard 9Logging in to Blackboard| 00:00 | To log in the Blackboard go to your
institution's Blackboard homepage, key
| | 00:04 | in your username and password or look for
a Login button, and then click Login or Enter.
| | 00:10 | Now your institution's Blackboard login
page probably looks completely different
| | 00:14 | than what you see on the screen. That's okay.
| | 00:16 | Your institution has the ability to
customize Blackboard's look and feel, but
| | 00:19 | logging in is logging in.
| | 00:22 | Most institutions assign you a username
and a password, and if you can't remember
| | 00:26 | either, contact your help desk.
| | 00:28 | Let's me show you two common problems
that people run into when they try to
| | 00:31 | log into Blackboard. The first one,
| | 00:33 | let me type a username that just
doesn't exist in the system: "foo" and "foo."
| | 00:37 | The error message that comes up is,
"An error occurred while the system was
| | 00:42 | processing this login request."
| | 00:44 | That means that it
couldn't recognize the username.
| | 00:47 | By default, Blackboard's
usernames are not case sensitive.
| | 00:51 | However, some campuses'
usernames are case sensitive.
| | 00:55 | The solution to this error is almost
always just retype your username and
| | 00:59 | make sure you type in the correct password,
and you should be able to get into this system.
| | 01:03 | So remember, if we get an error message
that says, "An error occurred while the
| | 01:06 | system was processing this login request,"
that is a username error. That means it
| | 01:11 | couldn't recognize your username.
| | 01:13 | The second type is something where I'm
going to type here my username and I'm
| | 01:18 | going to type in the incorrect password,
and instead of saying, "An error occurred,"
| | 01:23 | it's going to say, "Could not login.
| | 01:24 | Valid authentication
credentials were not provided."
| | 01:27 | When it says, "Valid authentication
credentials were not provided," that almost
| | 01:31 | always means you mistyped your
password, and it's almost always a sign that
| | 01:35 | your Caps Lock is on.
| | 01:37 | So if you've forgotten your password,
Blackboard does have a way for you to
| | 01:42 | retrieve your password;
| | 01:44 | however, many campuses disable
this and have you contact them and go
| | 01:50 | through there processes. When in doubt,
| | 01:52 | if you can't log in, and the password is
just not working, contact your help desk.
| | 01:57 | So, to log in to Blackboard, you go
to the Blackboard login page for your
| | 02:01 | campus, you type in your username and
password, make sure that both are correct,
| | 02:06 | click on Login, and that's all there is to it.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Accessing your course and uploading files| 00:00 | Once you log in to Blackboard, the next
step is to access your course and upload files.
| | 00:05 | Now, the version of Blackboard that we
are using right now might look a little
| | 00:08 | different than what you're used to at
your institution, and we've got different
| | 00:10 | colors, a different logo.
Our tabs are over on the left-hand side.
| | 00:14 | Your campus might have the tabs in
the middle, or the right-hand side.
| | 00:17 | That's perfectly fine.
| | 00:19 | What you want to do is you want to
look for the main tab, the first tab that
| | 00:23 | opens when you log in to Blackboard--in
this case it's called My Institution.
| | 00:27 | Some other campuses call it the Home tab.
| | 00:30 | You want to be in the main tab.
| | 00:32 | And on that tab you are going to see
these boxes, these modules. There's Tools,
| | 00:36 | My Announcements, My Calendar,
My Courses, My Organizations.
| | 00:40 | You want to look for a box called My Courses.
| | 00:43 | My Courses, it's going to show you a
list of all the courses in which you are
| | 00:47 | enrolled as an instructor, a teaching
assistant, a course builder, a course
| | 00:51 | grader, or a student.
| | 00:53 | Now if you don't see the course that you
are teaching right now--it just doesn't
| | 00:57 | show up in My Courses--
| | 00:58 | contact your helpdesk immediately.
| | 01:01 | They can help you figure
out where that course went.
| | 01:03 | But we've found the course that
I am want to get into, which is my
| | 01:06 | Educational Technology course.
To access a course, under My Courses, click on
| | 01:11 | the hyperlink for that course.
| | 01:13 | This opens up the course homepage.
| | 01:15 | Now, this page also might take a few
seconds to load. What ends up happening is
| | 01:19 | you have a little bit of JavaScript
running, and some campuses actually have a
| | 01:22 | different homepage. You might land in
an announcements page or a content page.
| | 01:26 | That's perfectly fine.
| | 01:28 | Over on the left-hand side, you are
going to see a course menu. Again, the course
| | 01:32 | menu might look different at your
institution, and you can customize this later--
| | 01:36 | we'll talk about that.
| | 01:38 | But for now, we want to upload a file.
| | 01:40 | So what you want to do is find one of
the content areas in your course menu into
| | 01:45 | which you can upload the file, usually
called Content, some campuses call it
| | 01:49 | Course Document. In this case
we've got something called Content.
| | 01:53 | Now, in older versions of Blackboard,
you'd actually have to upload files by
| | 01:57 | going to the Control panel.
| | 01:59 | In Blackboard 9, what you do is
you click on where you want to go.
| | 02:02 | So if I want to add content, I click on Content.
| | 02:05 | This opens up the Content folder.
| | 02:07 | There's a button bar across the top
of the page, and if you're running
| | 02:12 | Blackboard 9, not 9.1 but 9, you are going
to see the first button that says Create Item.
| | 02:17 | You want to click on that.
| | 02:18 | We are in 9.1, so we want to
click on Build Content > Item.
| | 02:23 | It's going to ask us to type in a name for
what we are going to upload. This is required.
| | 02:29 | That's what that star stands for.
| | 02:30 | So I am just going to call it the
Cognitive Art, which is a PowerPoint
| | 02:33 | presentation I am going to give to my students.
| | 02:35 | I can, in this textbox--and this is
optional--type instructions for my students
| | 02:40 | like, "Please review prior to class."
| | 02:46 | That's completely optional. Again, I've
got formatting commands there if I want
| | 02:49 | to go a little further.
| | 02:51 | I am just going to scroll down, and now
I need to find the file that I want to
| | 02:55 | upload to Blackboard. And you are going
to know this that this is an awful lot
| | 02:59 | like uploading a file or
attaching a file to an email message.
| | 03:03 | We are going to Browse My Computer,
and on my Desktop I've got a folder
| | 03:08 | called Exercise Files.
| | 03:10 | I am going to double-click on that.
| | 03:11 | I am going to take the PowerPoint
presentation and click on open, and there it is.
| | 03:17 | Now, if I wanted to, I can
go and keep adding more files.
| | 03:20 | I click on Browse My Computer and Upload Files.
| | 03:23 | This is kind of the
old-fashioned way to upload files.
| | 03:25 | We'll show you a newer way a little later on.
| | 03:28 | Remember that when you get to this
page, the Name is absolutely required.
| | 03:34 | You are going to go and, in the attachments,
browse your computer, look for the file
| | 03:38 | or files, that you want to upload.
| | 03:40 | Make sure that file names follow Internet rules.
| | 03:42 | In other words, if you have a Mac,
make sure that you add the file extensions
| | 03:45 | like a .DOC for a Microsoft Word
document, .PDF for an Adobe Acrobat file, and
| | 03:51 | make sure that you don't have
any special characters in it.
| | 03:54 | Also, please be aware, some campuses
limit the size of files that you can
| | 03:59 | upload to Blackboard.
| | 04:00 | This keeps you from
uploading very, very large videos.
| | 04:04 | As long as it's a small
PowerPoint presentation or Microsoft Word
| | 04:07 | document, that's fine.
| | 04:08 | If you run into a file size limitation,
you'll know it when you upload it, and
| | 04:12 | you need to talk to your helpdesk to
find a better way to break this file into a
| | 04:15 | smaller chunk, or find another place to store it.
| | 04:18 | So in this case we've got this
presentation, the Cognitive Art PowerPoint.
| | 04:21 | I am going to ignore the options.
| | 04:23 | We'll get to that in a later
movie, and just click on Submit.
| | 04:25 | Now this might take a few seconds
because what it's doing is it's copying this
| | 04:29 | file from My Computer and
putting it onto Blackboard.
| | 04:32 | And guess what? We're done.
| | 04:35 | We've now uploaded a file
from my computer to Blackboard.
| | 04:39 | So let's go through this one
more time really, really quickly.
| | 04:41 | I'll show you how to do it.
| | 04:42 | What you do is click on the My Institution
tab, or the Home tab, whatever the main tab is.
| | 04:48 | Look for the course that you are
teaching, click on the name of the course,
| | 04:53 | click on the content area somewhere
on the left-hand side--could be course
| | 04:56 | document, could be content.
| | 04:58 | If you have Blackboard 9, what you are going to
do is click on Create > Item. Blackboard 9.1,
| | 05:03 | you are going to click on Build Content > Item.
| | 05:06 | You're going to have to type in a name.
The name is absolutely required, so I'll
| | 05:11 | type this as number Two.
| | 05:14 | The text box here is completely optional,
just extra information for your students.
| | 05:18 | Scroll down, browse your
computer. In this case, I will take my
| | 05:21 | descriptive_statistics and then click on
Submit. That submits the file up to Blackboard.
| | 05:28 | To see what this looks like from a
student point of view, click the Edit mode
| | 05:32 | switch in the top right-hand corner.
That puts you into Student mode, and you
| | 05:35 | can see exactly what your course looks
like from a student's point of view, for
| | 05:38 | the most part.
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| Creating announcements| 00:00 | Now that you have files posted to your
Blackboard course, the next thing you may
| | 00:03 | want to do is create an announcement
to tell your students about important
| | 00:07 | events that are coming up in your class.
| | 00:09 | These announcements are going to
display for seven days on your course Home
| | 00:12 | Page and then disappear.
| | 00:14 | That's actually here where
it says My Announcements.
| | 00:17 | We are on the My Institution page
as well. And it says, "No Institution
| | 00:21 | Announcements have been posted for
7 days. No Course or Organization
| | 00:24 | Announcements have been
posted in the last 7 days."
| | 00:26 | In other words, the announcements
show up for seven days. Then they disappear.
| | 00:30 | It turns out, they don't disappear.
| | 00:31 | They actually just go into an
older folder, and you can make those
| | 00:34 | announcements permanent.
| | 00:35 | Let's show you how
to create an announcement.
| | 00:38 | I am going to get into one of my courses.
| | 00:40 | In this case, we'll click on my
Educational Technology course. And there are few
| | 00:45 | different ways to get in
and create new announcements.
| | 00:48 | I am going to show you from the Home
Page here, there's a button that says
| | 00:51 | more announcements.
| | 00:53 | You can also click on Announcements in
the Course Management area, but we'll
| | 00:56 | talk about that later.
| | 00:57 | For now, click on more announcements, and
there is going to be a big button here
| | 01:02 | that that says Create Announcement, and
that's exactly what I am going to do.
| | 01:05 | I am going to create an announcement
for my students telling them that my class
| | 01:08 | is canceled this week, so class is canceled.
| | 01:11 | I am actually going to paste a message
that I have got for my students that I
| | 01:15 | wrote. "Class is canceled this week.
| | 01:17 | Continue to work on the group projects
and make sure to review and summarize the
| | 01:20 | Cognitive Art PowerPoint
presentation prior to next Tuesday's class."
| | 01:25 | I can, if I want to, format this. I've
got a bunch of formatting tools here, but
| | 01:29 | since class starts in a few hours,
let's get this done right now.
| | 01:33 | Now, here is something I want to show you.
| | 01:35 | We can actually make this where it's a
permanent announcement, an announcement
| | 01:39 | will always show up.
| | 01:40 | It's not date-restrictive, meaning
that anytime the students log in
| | 01:44 | they are going to see that class is canceled.
| | 01:46 | That's probably a bad idea in this case.
| | 01:49 | However, I can make it date-restricted.
| | 01:52 | In other words, this is going to show
up right now, but since I'm going to
| | 01:55 | have class next week, I probably want to
have the announcement disappear a week from now.
| | 02:00 | So I have the ability to
choose the end date here.
| | 02:04 | In this case, I am going to choose the
end date as being next Tuesday, and we'll
| | 02:08 | make it at say the beginning of day, midnight.
| | 02:12 | Big thing to remember in Blackboard:
anytime you have a Display Until, you
| | 02:16 | always want to have a Display After.
| | 02:18 | It's just a good practice to keep these paired.
| | 02:21 | So technically, you can have Display After
unchecked, but it's a good idea to have both on.
| | 02:27 | So we have got our announcement
here, class is canceled this week.
| | 02:31 | We are going to have it show up
starting right now and disappear next Tuesday,
| | 02:34 | at the beginning of the day.
| | 02:35 | Now there is one other thing here that
says Course Link, and what the heck is that?
| | 02:40 | Well, the course link allows me to
add a link inside my announcement to
| | 02:45 | someplace else within my course.
| | 02:47 | For example, I've told my students
here that I want them to review that
| | 02:51 | Cognitive Art PowerPoint presentation.
| | 02:53 | It might be a good idea to give
them a link to that Cognitive Art
| | 02:56 | PowerPoint presentation.
| | 02:58 | I am not going to have to upload it again.
| | 02:59 | It's already on Blackboard.
| | 03:00 | In this case I click on Browse, and I
just find the file within my Course menu.
| | 03:06 | There it is right there, the
Cognitive Art PowerPoint presentation.
| | 03:09 | So what happens is when I click on
Submit, it now creates an announcement.
| | 03:13 | There is the announcement saying that
the class is canceled with a course link
| | 03:16 | to the Cognitive Art.
| | 03:17 | If I go to the Course Home Page, you
will see that there is an announcement.
| | 03:21 | Now this is something you might not be
used to, but it only gives you the title.
| | 03:26 | The students still have to click on
this to be able to get and see the entire
| | 03:31 | announcement. The same thing
happens over on My Institution tab.
| | 03:34 | It will say that the class is canceled,
but the students do have to click on the link.
| | 03:38 | That's one of the reasons why faculty also
prefer sending emails in addition to announcements.
| | 03:44 | We'll talk about that in the next movie,
but for now, to create an announcement,
| | 03:48 | what you need to do is get into the
course into which you wish to make an
| | 03:52 | announcement, on the Home Page click on
More Announcements--again, you can also
| | 03:56 | do this under the Course Management
area on the left-hand side, but for now
| | 03:59 | we'll click on more announcements.
| | 04:01 | Click on Create Announcement, type in
the subject--that's absolutely required--
| | 04:06 | type in your message, and then choose
the date restrictions and any links to
| | 04:11 | other places within the course that
you want to share with your students.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Sending emails| 00:00 | Besides posting announcements, you can
also communicate with your students, and
| | 00:04 | basically anybody else in your
course, using email through Blackboard.
| | 00:08 | Now there are multiple ways to
access Blackboard's email tools.
| | 00:12 | I am going to show you
sort of an old way to do this.
| | 00:15 | We'll show you some
other ways in future classes.
| | 00:17 | I want to let my students know that
I'm going to cancel class next week.
| | 00:20 | So I'm going to get into the course
that I'm canceling, which is going to be by
| | 00:23 | Educational Technology class.
| | 00:25 | Now down on the bottom left-hand side
under Course Management, I see a bunch of
| | 00:30 | links, and one of them is Course tools.
| | 00:32 | If I click on Course tools, I see
a whole bunch of tools, including
| | 00:36 | Announcements, but I'm going to scroll
down a little further, and I am going to
| | 00:39 | click on Send Email.
| | 00:40 | Now, when I click on Send Email, Send
Email is going to say, okay, well, if you
| | 00:45 | want to send an email, who
do you want to send it to?
| | 00:47 | I've got several options.
| | 00:49 | I can choose everyone in the course.
| | 00:51 | I can choose anybody who
is in a group in a course.
| | 00:54 | I can choose just the students or
the teaching assistant. Pretty self-
| | 00:57 | explanatory what's going on.
| | 00:59 | The email addresses that Blackboard
users usually come from your institution.
| | 01:04 | They are populated when the user created.
| | 01:07 | Students may have the ability to update
their email addresses by clicking on My
| | 01:11 | Places at the top of the screen.
| | 01:12 | We'll talk about that in a future movie.
| | 01:14 | Check with your institution on what
their email policy is, just to make sure
| | 01:18 | where the email addresses are coming from.
| | 01:20 | In this case, I am going to send the
email message to everybody in my class
| | 01:24 | letting them know that I am
canceling class next week.
| | 01:28 | And you are going to see that it's
going to open up what looks like pretty much
| | 01:31 | a web mail, although the email
addresses are blank, and that's by default.
| | 01:35 | Blackboard won't show you the email
addresses, just the names of the students.
| | 01:38 | It does show you your email address.
| | 01:40 | In this case, my address is a fake email address.
| | 01:43 | I am going to type in my message that
class is canceled, and let the students
| | 01:47 | know that class is canceled this week.
| | 01:49 | Notice that this is plain text.
| | 01:51 | I don't have the formatting that I had
earlier when I was making an announcement.
| | 01:55 | And the reason why is email should be plain text.
| | 01:58 | You want to make sure that it
reaches the most number of recipients.
| | 02:01 | So, keeping out all the extra formatting
just makes sure that your message is
| | 02:05 | going to be distributed to as
wide an audience as possible.
| | 02:09 | Underneath this message box, I've got a
little box here that says Return Receipt.
| | 02:13 | If I click on Return Receipt, what it's
going to do is when the students open up
| | 02:18 | my email message, their email program
is going to prompt them to say, hey,
| | 02:23 | you've just opened this up;
| | 02:24 | do you want me to inform your
instructor that you've read this email message?
| | 02:28 | This sounds like a really great idea.
| | 02:29 | You can kind of guarantee that your
students have read your email messages.
| | 02:33 | However, it's completely
opt-in from the students.
| | 02:36 | The students can open up the message.
| | 02:38 | Their email program is going to say,
"Your instructor wants to know that you've
| | 02:41 | opened this email message.
| | 02:42 | Do you want your instructor to know?"
| | 02:43 | And you can say, "No, I don't
want my instructor to know."
| | 02:46 | Because it's an opt-in honor system,
Return Receipt sounds like a great idea,
| | 02:51 | but I just never use it.
| | 02:53 | The other thing I never ever do in
a Blackboard email is attach a file.
| | 02:58 | Attaching a file is always, always a bad idea.
| | 03:02 | There are some really overzealous spam
filters out there that will automatically
| | 03:06 | kill anything that has an attachment to it.
| | 03:10 | You want to make sure your message
gets to all your students, so keeping
| | 03:13 | attachments off is a really good idea.
| | 03:15 | The other thing is, if you send a file
as an email attachment, students are
| | 03:19 | going to accidentally delete that
email file, and then they are going to
| | 03:22 | contact you and say, 'can you email me that file
again?', and to keep you from having to deal with that,
| | 03:28 | remember, Blackboard stores files;
| | 03:30 | post your file to Blackboard
somewhere in your course and then tell your
| | 03:33 | students where to find it.
| | 03:34 | So in this case, I have got a message.
| | 03:36 | I am going to send it to everybody
in my course. The subject is that class is
| | 03:40 | canceled. I've got my message.
| | 03:41 | It's plain text. I'm not going to do Return Receipt.
| | 03:44 | It's just not going to be as
happy as I think it's going to be.
| | 03:47 | I am not going to do an attachment.
| | 03:49 | I am going to click on Submit.
| | 03:50 | Now if this works well, you'll get a box
saying congratulations, it's been sent successfully.
| | 03:56 | In his case, because I have got some
fake email addresses in this, I am going to
| | 03:59 | get an error message, but it's
actually going to be a pretty error message.
| | 04:02 | It says, "An error or warning occurred
while sending this email. Some or all
| | 04:06 | recipients may not receive the message."
| | 04:08 | That usually means that there's at least one
bad email address somewhere in your roster.
| | 04:13 | So, to send an email message in
Blackboard to anybody in your course, or to select
| | 04:18 | people in your course, click on the
name of your course under My Courses, then
| | 04:23 | in the Course Management area click on
Send Email, choose the recipients that
| | 04:28 | you want to send your email
message to--in this case All Users.
| | 04:32 | Type in a subject--obviously
that's required. Type in the message.
| | 04:37 | I recommend leaving Return Receipt off
and Attachments blank and click on Submit.
| | 04:42 | Now one thing to keep in mind: when I
click on Submit, the message has sent out,
| | 04:47 | but Blackboard doesn't keep a copy of this.
| | 04:50 | Remember that you are going to need
to check your email inbox to see any
| | 04:53 | messages that were sent
from your Blackboard course.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Viewing your roster| 00:00 | How can you view a roster of
everyone enrolled in your Blackboard course?
| | 00:04 | Well, the first thing you need to do is
get into the Blackboard course itself.
| | 00:07 | I'm going to click under My Courses
and click on the name of the course.
| | 00:11 | Then I'm going to scroll down.
| | 00:13 | Now, I've seen a lot of instructors go
and click on Tools and then scroll down
| | 00:18 | and click on Roster.
| | 00:19 | This is actually a bad idea.
| | 00:21 | This is meant for students, not instructors.
| | 00:23 | In fact, when I get in here, it's
going to say that there are no users in my
| | 00:27 | course--my course is empty!
| | 00:28 | No, it's not empty.
| | 00:30 | In fact, it just did a sort, and the sort
was saying First Name contains nothing.
| | 00:35 | That's why it says No Users.
| | 00:36 | But if, I go First Name, Not blank
and click on Go, it's going to show me
| | 00:41 | my complete roster.
| | 00:42 | But notice it only shows
me my Last Name and my First Name.
| | 00:45 | Now, I can sort by Last
Name, Last Name, First Name.
| | 00:49 | I have the ability to do sorting.
| | 00:51 | It's okay, but there's a much more
powerful roster built into the Course
| | 00:55 | Management area of your course over in
the bottom left-hand side of the page.
| | 01:00 | So I'm going to go under Course
Management, click on Users and Groups, and I am
| | 01:04 | going to click on Users.
| | 01:06 | Now, in Blackboard 9.1, your
roster should automatically come up.
| | 01:11 | If it doesn't, choose Username or any of
these pulldown lists, but you just want
| | 01:16 | to make the second one Not blank.
| | 01:19 | Not blank will then give you a complete and
total list of everybody enrolled in your course.
| | 01:25 | If you're running Blackboard 9.0, not 9.1,
Not blank is going to say 'I can't let
| | 01:31 | you do a Not blank search'.
| | 01:32 | So instead, type a Percent sign.
| | 01:35 | The Percent sign is a hack from some
colleagues of mine at the University of Texas.
| | 01:39 | It's a wildcard character.
| | 01:41 | And if you do a search for username
not blank or anything with a Percent sign
| | 01:45 | click on Go, it gives you the full roster.
| | 01:48 | I want you to notice here, this gives
you the username, gives you the first
| | 01:52 | name, gives you the last name, gives
you the email address, gives you the
| | 01:55 | role, gives you whether or not they can get
into the course--that's what Available means.
| | 02:00 | You have the entire ability to
see your entire course roster.
| | 02:04 | Sometimes you might have multiple pages
of students in your course. Down in the
| | 02:09 | right-hand side, you'll see Edit Paging,
and you can choose how many items to
| | 02:13 | show up on the page.
| | 02:14 | In this case, we're going to choose all
19, but if I were saying I only want to
| | 02:18 | see 10 at a time, click on Go,
| | 02:21 | it'll show me that I'm on page 1 of page
2 and go to 2nd page and that will show
| | 02:26 | me the entire roster. Or I can just go
down and click on Show All. Show All will
| | 02:31 | show me the entire roster.
| | 02:32 | Now you may or may not be able to
enroll users in your course; many
| | 02:38 | institutions disable this feature.
| | 02:40 | We'll talk a little more about this later on.
| | 02:43 | My recommendation is don't
enroll users in your course.
| | 02:45 | Your institution is very likely
going to enroll and un-enroll people into
| | 02:49 | your course for you.
| | 02:50 | That's why you may not even see an Enroll
User button in the top left-hand corner.
| | 02:55 | So I've got this great list.
| | 02:57 | It's actually sortable,
but how do print this out?
| | 03:00 | How do I save this? How do
I carry it along with me?
| | 03:02 | And the answer is you can't.
| | 03:05 | You can't really save this.
| | 03:07 | You can print this basically, if you
right-click on it, and then you can
| | 03:12 | actually say Print or this frame and
just print that frame, but there's a
| | 03:17 | much better way to download this information,
and that involves downloading your Grade Center.
| | 03:22 | We'll talk about that in the next movie.
| | 03:24 | But for now, if you needed to go and
check to see who is enrolled in your course
| | 03:29 | right now, click on the name of your
course--don't click on Roster under
| | 03:33 | Tools--scroll down under Users and Groups,
click on Users, and you should see a list of users.
| | 03:40 | If not, you can choose Username Not
blank and then percentage will also give you
| | 03:45 | a list of users. Click on Go, and
that shows you everybody in your roster.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Downloading the Grade Center| 00:00 | One of the limitations of viewing
your roster within a Blackboard course is
| | 00:04 | there is no easy way for you to
download that roster to your computer.
| | 00:07 | Well, we're going to show you how to
solve that problem by not going into the
| | 00:10 | roster, but rather going into the Grade
Center and downloading the entire Grade
| | 00:15 | Center to your computer.
| | 00:16 | So here's what we're going to do.
| | 00:18 | Under My Courses, click the name of the
course and then scroll down, and under
| | 00:25 | Course Management, to the right of
the words 'Grade Center', click the two
| | 00:29 | Greater Than signs.
| | 00:31 | That actually opens up the Grade Center itself.
| | 00:34 | We're here in the Grade Center.
| | 00:35 | Notice that the Grade Center
shows us basically our roster.
| | 00:38 | It shows Last Name, First
Name, Username, Student ID.
| | 00:42 | It even shows me the date the last
student logged in to the course, whether or
| | 00:46 | not they can see the course.
It shows me their grades.
| | 00:48 | Far right-hand side there's
this button that says Work Offline.
| | 00:52 | That's actually what I'm going to click on.
| | 00:54 | I'm going to download an entire
copy of this. This is my roster.
| | 00:58 | So I click on download, and it's going
to ask me, what do I want to download?
| | 01:02 | Now I have a lot of options here.
| | 01:04 | Usually when I do this I leave
everything the way it is. I'm not going to change
| | 01:07 | any settings. But I do have the choice,
I can download the full Grade
| | 01:10 | Center, or just a selected column or two.
| | 01:13 | I can download just user information.
| | 01:15 | In this case, I'm going to
take the full Grade Center.
| | 01:17 | I can change the delimiter type.
| | 01:20 | What's happening is it's going to be
downloading this as a text file, which is
| | 01:25 | then going to be opened up by Microsoft Excel.
| | 01:28 | Comma-delimited files, I've had
some problems with in the past.
| | 01:32 | I haven't had a problem with
tab-delimited files, so I'm going to keep this is
| | 01:35 | a tab-delimited file, and I'm not going
to play around with the hidden information.
| | 01:40 | Now this safe location, this might trip you up.
| | 01:44 | It's going to say, where you want to
download it? Do you want to download to My Computer?
| | 01:48 | Sure, well, let me click on Browse and
choose where--no, don't click on Browse.
| | 01:53 | Browse actually has to do
with the content collection.
| | 01:56 | Browse is saving it on to Blackboard
itself. That actually could violate FERPA, the
| | 02:01 | Family Educational Fight to Privacy Act.
| | 02:04 | You don't want to share
your grades with anybody else.
| | 02:06 | So browse doesn't let you
choose where to save it--
| | 02:09 | that comes up later.
| | 02:10 | Don't click Browse. Just say, My
Computer, and in this case, click Submit.
| | 02:16 | It's going to take your Grade Center,
put it into an Excel file, a tab-delimited
| | 02:20 | file, and I can now download this.
| | 02:22 | What you see now is you
have your entire Grade Center.
| | 02:26 | You've got the Last Name, the First Name, the
Username, and a very strange Student ID.
| | 02:32 | What ends up happening is, because
this column is so small, it kind of turns
| | 02:36 | this into scientific notation.
| | 02:40 | In this case, there's a real Student ID
and then the Last Accessed date and everything.
| | 02:44 | I can now save this.
| | 02:45 | I can use it on my computer.
| | 02:47 | We'll talk a lot more about the Grade
Center, including how to upload things
| | 02:51 | from this file back into the Grade Center.
| | 02:54 | But for now, what I wanted to show
you is that if you wanted to download
| | 02:57 | your grades, or your roster from
Blackboard, click the name of your course,
| | 03:03 | scroll down. To the right of the word 'Grade
Center', click this twp Greater Than sign button.
| | 03:10 | Far right-hand side of the Grade Center,
after the Grade Center loads, click on
| | 03:13 | Work Offline, and download the Grade Center.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Setting course availability| 00:00 | Many institutions, and many
instructors, for that matter, choose to hide
| | 00:04 | Blackboard courses from the students
until the instructor is ready to make
| | 00:07 | that course available.
| | 00:08 | This in effect gives instructors
time to prep the course in private.
| | 00:12 | Some institutions also choose to hide
courses from students after the end of an
| | 00:16 | academic term, or year.
| | 00:18 | Courses that are not available to the
students have the word Unavailable in
| | 00:23 | parentheses to the right
of the name of the course.
| | 00:27 | Unavailable does not mean that
you cannot access the course,
| | 00:30 | it only means that your
students cannot access the course.
| | 00:33 | And depending on your institution's
Blackboard configuration, an unavailable
| | 00:36 | course doesn't even appear on
the students' My Courses list.
| | 00:40 | Remember, unavailable doesn't
mean that the course doesn't exist.
| | 00:44 | My Instructional Design course is
there. I can access the Instructional Design
| | 00:48 | course by clicking on it.
| | 00:50 | It's just not available to the
students yet, until I turn it on.
| | 00:55 | To make an unavailable course available
to the students, click the name of the
| | 01:00 | course, under My Courses, and then scroll down.
| | 01:03 | In Course Management, under
Customization, choose Properties. There are several
| | 01:09 | properties that are available here.
| | 01:10 | Some institutions allow you to
change the name and description of your
| | 01:14 | course; others do not.
| | 01:15 | Some institutions allow you to
reclassify your course; others do not.
| | 01:18 | In this case, we're
concerned with the Set Availability.
| | 01:22 | Right now, this course is not available
to users, but if I choose yes, I want to
| | 01:27 | make the course available to the users,
and then I either scroll up or down, and
| | 01:32 | click on Submit, I've now made
my course available to the students.
| | 01:36 | If I click on My Institution, I can now
see that the course is available to students.
| | 01:41 | So remember, many institutions and many
instructors hide their courses until they're
| | 01:45 | ready for the students.
| | 01:47 | You can tell if your course is not
available to the students but still
| | 01:50 | it's available to you
| | 01:52 | if you log in to the Blackboard and to
the right of the name of the course, you
| | 01:57 | see the word Unavailable.
| | 01:59 | The word Unavailable means that the
course is not available to students but
| | 02:04 | is available to you.
| | 02:06 | To make an unavailable course
available to students, click the name of the
| | 02:10 | course, scroll down under the Course
Management, in the Properties, third
| | 02:16 | option, choose Yes.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. Navigating Blackboard 9Understanding the tabs and sub-tabs| 00:00 | When you log in to Blackboard, at the top of
each page will be a series of tabs and sub-tabs.
| | 00:05 | Now, your institution can
customize these tabs, their locations.
| | 00:09 | In this case, we have got our tabs on
the left-hand side, but some institutions
| | 00:12 | put them over on the right side.
Some put them in the middle of the screen.
| | 00:16 | They can also customize the colors.
| | 00:18 | They can even customize the
words that appear on the tabs.
| | 00:21 | And depending on what options your
institution is licensed, your institution
| | 00:25 | can also create their own tabs, like say a
tab for the Library or for Blackboard help.
| | 00:30 | In this case, we are going to
focus on two main tabs here:
| | 00:33 | there's My Institution and there's Courses.
| | 00:37 | My Institution is a leftmost tab, regardless
where the tabs are located on your screen,
| | 00:42 | and it's usually the tab that opens
by default when you log in to Blackboard.
| | 00:46 | Some institutions choose not to call
this My Institution. They may call it home
| | 00:51 | or something like that. Or I might
want to say of My State University.
| | 00:55 | However, I probably don't want to
do that if My State University has a
| | 00:59 | mystateuniversity.edu web portal.
| | 01:01 | So we have got a tab here called My
Institution, whatever it's called in your
| | 01:05 | institution doesn't really matter.
| | 01:07 | It's going to be the default home tab
when you get into Blackboard and on this
| | 01:12 | tab you're going to notice that there
are some modules. These are boxes that
| | 01:16 | contain common tools that
you'll be using within your course.
| | 01:19 | You will be using these and
your students will be using them.
| | 01:22 | So we've got the Tools panel, Common Tools.
| | 01:24 | We've got My Announcements, My
Calendar, My Courses--that shows you all the
| | 01:29 | courses in which you are
enrolled--and then My Organizations.
| | 01:33 | Your institution also has the ability
to completely customize this. They can
| | 01:36 | change where these modules appear.
| | 01:39 | They can change the colors.
| | 01:40 | They can also actually create their own modules.
| | 01:43 | So your screen may look a little
different than this, but that's okay.
| | 01:46 | The other thing I want to show you
is I have got a sub-tab here called
| | 01:51 | Notifications Dashboard. Let me click on that.
| | 01:54 | Some institutions leave
this on; others turn it off.
| | 01:57 | This is a sub-tab and it's
available if your institution licenses the
| | 02:00 | Blackboard Community System.
| | 02:02 | There are four modules, or boxes, on
this page that give you information.
| | 02:06 | Needs Attention tells you about
assignments, tests, surveys that your
| | 02:10 | students have submitted.
| | 02:12 | Alerts really only works if you use
Blackboard's Early Warning System. That's
| | 02:17 | really a topic for a more
advanced Blackboard title.
| | 02:21 | What's New shows you submitted
assignments, tests, discussion board posts.
| | 02:26 | To Do is always going to be blank for
instructors because there's nothing for
| | 02:30 | you to do as an instructor
to earn a grade in the class.
| | 02:33 | To Do is these are things I
have to do to earn a grade.
| | 02:37 | You aren't going to get a grade in this
course, so there's never any assignment
| | 02:40 | you have to turn in or submit, or
homework that you have to turn in for a grade.
| | 02:45 | You are the one who is doing the grading, so
your To Do list is always going to be empty.
| | 02:49 | So that's the My Institution tab.
| | 02:52 | Let me show you another tab.
| | 02:54 | There is something called Courses.
| | 02:56 | Courses is pretty much only course information.
| | 02:59 | There's a Course Search box.
| | 03:00 | There's a list of courses you're teaching.
Some institutions have a course catalog.
| | 03:05 | This is very much like the My
Institution tab without any of the extra modules.
| | 03:09 | It's only the things you
need to know about courses.
| | 03:12 | You'll notice here, by the way, I
have one more tab. It's called Community.
| | 03:16 | This is optional. Not every
institution is going to have this, but if your
| | 03:20 | institution licenses the Blackboard
Community System this is a way for you to
| | 03:25 | access non-course course sites, and that
may sound a little confusing, but think
| | 03:31 | like a Blackboard course, but not for
an academic course, but rather for a
| | 03:35 | committee or a club.
| | 03:37 | This is actually a feature that your
institution has to license from Blackboard
| | 03:40 | to be able to make this available.
| | 03:42 | Let me go back to the My Institution tab.
| | 03:45 | The other thing I want to show you--this is
true throughout the system--is this top bar.
| | 03:50 | This remains the same for most tabs,
even when you're within your course,
| | 03:53 | although there is a setting your
institution could use to minimize this bar a
| | 03:58 | little bit inside of your courses.
| | 04:01 | And the top left-hand thing in the top
bar is the logo and in fact, if you click on
| | 04:06 | the logo or the name of your school,
pretty likely it's going to take you back
| | 04:10 | to the main page for your Blackboard
login. Or once you are logged in, it'll
| | 04:16 | actually take you to My Institution tab.
| | 04:19 | Next thing over is your name.
| | 04:22 | Now, some institutions may show
your name; some institutions do not.
| | 04:26 | If you don't see your name
here, that's not a big thing.
| | 04:29 | It's perfectly fine if it's missing.
| | 04:32 | Next thing over is My Places.
| | 04:34 | If I click on My Places, it
actually opens up a little pop-up window.
| | 04:38 | My Places allows you to do
a few things. For example,
| | 04:41 | you can change the default text size or
contrast settings for your browser and
| | 04:46 | for what displays on your screen.
| | 04:48 | Some campuses will allow you to edit
your own personal information. Click on
| | 04:52 | this and check. If you have questions
about it, check with your institution's help
| | 04:55 | desk. And it also shows you a
list of all of your courses.
| | 04:59 | So not only are you going to be able to
see your courses through My Courses or
| | 05:03 | the Courses tab, it also
shows up through My Places.
| | 05:05 | The other thing we've got up here in
this top bar is a Home tab, and it's
| | 05:10 | just like clicking on the State University
logo--it just takes you back to My Institution.
| | 05:15 | Depends on how your institution is set
up. Help is actually going to probably
| | 05:20 | take you to your institution's help
page for Blackboard. Or it will take you
| | 05:24 | blackboard.com and their help pages.
| | 05:27 | And then finally, Logout while
actually log you out of the system.
| | 05:31 | So the big thing to remember is that
when you log in to Blackboard at the top of
| | 05:36 | each page will be a series of tabs and
sub-tabs, and to return back to the Home
| | 05:41 | tab from anywhere within Blackboard,
| | 05:43 | you can click on the My Institution
tab, you can click on the logo for your
| | 05:48 | school, or you can click on Home.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with modules| 00:00 | On a select few Blackboard tabs and
sub-tabs, and within your Blackboard 9
| | 00:04 | courses, you may see modules,
little boxes that contain information.
| | 00:08 | Your institution is going to set up a
default set of modules, and where they are
| | 00:12 | going to laid out on the page,
| | 00:13 | but you may be able to personalize
those modules, where they show up, what color
| | 00:17 | they are, and so forth.
| | 00:19 | To move a module, click and hold your
mouse over the module's title bar and drag
| | 00:23 | it to its new location and let go.
| | 00:25 | For example, I want to take My Announcements,
| | 00:27 | I want to move My
Announcements to the right-hand column.
| | 00:30 | Click and hold my mouse. Just drag it over.
| | 00:32 | Again, I'm just clicking on the title
bar, moving it where I want to put it.
| | 00:36 | I have the ability to move it anywhere on
the page, so long as my institution has
| | 00:40 | enabled this feature.
| | 00:42 | I also have the ability to minimize this module,
| | 00:45 | in other words, not close it but just kind of
smush it down so I don't see all the contents.
| | 00:51 | Far right-hand side in the module title
I might see a Collapse My Announcements
| | 00:56 | Module button, and that
actually minimizes the module.
| | 01:00 | The content is still there;
it's just kind of smushed.
| | 01:02 | If I want to see it again, I
just click on that button again.
| | 01:06 | Some modules can be closed,
for example My Calendar here.
| | 01:09 | I might decide that I don't want
to have that on my My Institution tab.
| | 01:13 | Click on the X in the far
right-hand corner of the module title.
| | 01:18 | In this case, it's close My Calendar module.
| | 01:20 | When I click on that it's going to
pop up a message saying, you know you're
| | 01:24 | about to remove that.
| | 01:25 | It's going to be deleted.
| | 01:25 | What that means is is it's going to be
permanently removed from your tab until
| | 01:31 | you go and add it back.
| | 01:32 | So, yeah sure, there it is. It's gone.
| | 01:34 | Your institution may also give you the
option of adding your own modules, so you
| | 01:39 | can customize this page.
| | 01:41 | The first thing you need to do is make
sure you're on the correct tab or sub-tab.
| | 01:45 | In this case I am on My
Institution, not the Notifications Dashboard.
| | 01:48 | And then I am going to click on Add
Module. Again, your institution may have
| | 01:53 | disabled the feature.
| | 01:54 | That's perfectly fine,
| | 01:55 | but if it's on, click on Add Module.
| | 01:57 | What you are going to do now is choose the
modules that you want to add to your page.
| | 02:04 | In this case, I am going to add the calculator.
| | 02:06 | Now, this screen may look a little
different than what you'll see on your
| | 02:10 | institution's version of Blackboard,
but the concept is still the same.
| | 02:14 | Find the module that you
want to use, or want to add--
| | 02:17 | in this case, I am going to add the calculator.
| | 02:20 | If you're using an older version of
Blackboard, you'll need to click the check
| | 02:24 | box to left of the module
and then click on Submit.
| | 02:26 | And then, once you've added the
module, you are going to back to the place
| | 02:31 | where you added it.
| | 02:32 | In this case, I am going to
go back to My Institution tab.
| | 02:35 | Now remember, we added this calculator
to My Institution, not to Notifications
| | 02:39 | Dashboard, and the calculator is right there.
| | 02:42 | If I wanted to move the Calculate
over to the right, I could; move the
| | 02:44 | Calculator over to left. I can.
| | 02:46 | Absolutely there.
| | 02:48 | So that's the good news.
| | 02:50 | You can customize the look and feel of
your Blackboard My Institution tab by
| | 02:54 | moving, collapsing, closing, or
adding modules, and this works on the
| | 02:58 | Notifications Dashboard,
and even on your Course homepage.
| | 03:01 | Now for the bad news:
| | 03:04 | your system administrator may need to
reset your modules back to the default
| | 03:08 | layout whenever there is a major
system upgrade, or the administrator needs to
| | 03:12 | add a new module in the same
place on everyone's screen.
| | 03:16 | Fortunately, if your layout gets reset,
it's easy for you to change it back.
| | 03:21 | You can even change the color scheme,
which we'll talk about in the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Personalizing the My Institution page| 00:00 | What we're going to do in this
movie is we're going to show you how to
| | 00:03 | personalize the My Institution page
by changing its color palette.
| | 00:07 | Right now, we've sort of got a muted
gray and red, but if I click on Personalize
| | 00:11 | Page, you're going to notice that
Blackboard has some pre-rendered color
| | 00:15 | palettes that you can choose from.
| | 00:17 | Let me scroll down here.
| | 00:18 | I am going to choose Sandstone.
| | 00:21 | So instead of being gray and red, we're going
to have something that sort of tan and teal.
| | 00:27 | So I have chosen Sandstone. I click on it.
| | 00:29 | I can actually see that Sandstone is
selected, because it says the current
| | 00:32 | selection is Sandstone.
| | 00:34 | I can scroll to the bottom of the page
or the top of the page and click on Submit.
| | 00:39 | And now I can see that, wow, my
color scheme is completely different.
| | 00:43 | Also notice that that top bar doesn't change,
the brand of your university or the color scheme,
| | 00:49 | you can't actually change that without
something called domains, and that's
| | 00:53 | actually a system administrator topic.
| | 00:55 | To change this back or change it
to some other color scheme, click on
| | 00:58 | Personalize Page again
and choose a new color scheme.
| | 01:02 | Usually, you'll have
something called Current System Theme.
| | 01:05 | That's the default color scheme for the system.
| | 01:08 | You might also have one named by
your system administrator after the name
| | 01:12 | of your institution.
| | 01:13 | So click either Current System
Theme or the name of your institution,
| | 01:18 | click on Submit, and you're
back to the original color scheme.
| | 01:21 | So there is some bad news. Just like
with the modules, your system administrator
| | 01:27 | may need to reset your color palette
back to the original color palette whenever
| | 01:32 | there is a major system upgrade.
| | 01:33 | Fortunately, if your palette gets to
reset, it's easier for you to change it
| | 01:37 | back--just click on personalize page.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Editing the My Courses module| 00:00 | To hide courses from appearing on your
My Courses list, click the flower icon in
| | 00:05 | the right-hand side of the My Courses
title bar and then uncheck both the
| | 00:10 | Course Name in column one and the
Announcements, column four, for the courses you no
| | 00:15 | longer want to appear under My Courses.
| | 00:18 | Let's slow down and show that again.
| | 00:20 | You may have noticed that I've been
cheating. My Courses list only has two
| | 00:26 | current semester courses, and that's
pretty, but it's not really realistic.
| | 00:30 | Let me log out and get into
a more realistic account.
| | 00:34 | This is a little more like
what you're going to see,
| | 00:36 | every course you've ever taught,
going back to the Cretaceous period.
| | 00:40 | This gets to be a little annoying and
downright confusing. Which one of these is
| | 00:45 | my current semester course?
It gets a little frustrating.
| | 00:50 | Well, it turns out you can customize
to My Courses module so that it only
| | 00:55 | displays the courses that you want to see.
| | 00:58 | If you click the flower icon, you're
going to see a list of all the courses in
| | 01:02 | which you're enrolled, but I'm going to
scroll down here and I'm going to choose
| | 01:06 | only those courses that I want to show up.
| | 01:09 | So what I'll do is I'll
uncheck the courses I want to hide.
| | 01:12 | I am going to uncheck both the course
name, column one, and the announcements for
| | 01:16 | the courses I no longer want to show up.
| | 01:19 | You're not deleting the courses.
| | 01:20 | They will still be there
for you on the Curses tab.
| | 01:23 | And you're not hiding the
courses from your students.
| | 01:26 | You'll still need to go to Properties in
your course's Course Management area to do that.
| | 01:30 | You're just cleaning up your My Courses list.
| | 01:33 | So in this case, let me uncheck just
all my 2009 courses--that was so long ago--
| | 01:39 | and we'll get rid of all the check
boxes, and then go to the top of the page or
| | 01:45 | the bottom of the page.
| | 01:46 | There is a Submit button in the
top-right or the bottom-right corner. In this case,
| | 01:50 | I'll click on Submit, and all
of my 2009 courses are gone.
| | 01:56 | Now let me give you a tip from
the early days of Blackboard 9.
| | 02:00 | When you go into My Courses, it's
actually a smart idea to uncheck everything.
| | 02:06 | The reason for that is, in the early versions
of Blackboard 9, if you unchecked just a
| | 02:13 | few things, you ended up getting
sort of a weird display in My Courses.
| | 02:18 | Now they've fixed that bug in later
versions, but the idea actually makes
| | 02:23 | sense to me, going through and just kind of
flushing the deck, clearing everything out
| | 02:28 | and then clicking on Submit, so you
start with a blank My Courses list, and then
| | 02:33 | going back and turning on
only those courses you want.
| | 02:36 | In this case, we'll turn on my
Instructional Design and Educational Technology course.
| | 02:42 | I am also going to have to
turn on Announcements for that.
| | 02:44 | That's the fourth column.
| | 02:45 | You don't see a column header;
| | 02:46 | you just kind of have to
know it's the fourth column.
| | 02:49 | Scroll back up and click on Submit.
| | 02:52 | Now, those other courses aren't gone.
| | 02:54 | I'm still in those other courses.
| | 02:57 | If I ever need to see them, I can
click on the Courses tab at the top of
| | 03:01 | any Blackboard page and there is that
course list of all the courses that I'm teaching.
| | 03:05 | All I did was I modified the My
Courses list to just show me the courses that
| | 03:11 | I wanted to see.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Navigating Your Course SiteUnderstanding the course layout and breadcrumbs| 00:00 | Now that you're familiar with
Blackboard's layout--the tabs and the modules--the
| | 00:04 | next step is for you to become
familiar with your course layout.
| | 00:07 | So let's access a course. Under My
Courses, I'm going to click on this
| | 00:11 | course that I'm teaching.
It's going to open up the page.
| | 00:14 | The first thing I want you to notice is
that at the very top of the screen, that
| | 00:19 | sort of red bar, that sort of stays
the same as what we've seen earlier.
| | 00:23 | Now, the one thing I want you to
notice here, down the left-hand side you've
| | 00:27 | got this course menu.
| | 00:30 | This course menu is actually one of
the most powerful tools, and we'll spend a
| | 00:34 | lot of time talking about this.
| | 00:37 | The big thing to remember here is
that it's completely customizable.
| | 00:40 | We'll talk about that next chapter.
| | 00:42 | But this is what the students click on
to access your course content, and for the
| | 00:47 | most part, this is what you click on to
add content, unlike earlier versions of
| | 00:53 | Blackboard where you had to go
to a control panel to add content.
| | 00:56 | In Blackboard 9 and 9.1, to add information
or content, click on where you want to put it.
| | 01:03 | So if I actually want to add content
to the course, I am going to click on
| | 01:06 | Content and then add the content there.
| | 01:09 | One other thing to notice about this
course menu is there are boxes here to the
| | 01:14 | right where it says Information and
Content and if I hold my mouse over it, it
| | 01:17 | says, "This link has no content,"
| | 01:20 | just to make sure that students aren't
seeing content areas that are empty.
| | 01:24 | As long as an area is empty, Blackboard
automatically hides it from the students.
| | 01:29 | However, once you add content to
one of these areas, Blackboard will
| | 01:33 | automatically make it available to the students.
| | 01:36 | So empty items are automatically
hidden from the students, and you can also
| | 01:40 | manually hide menu items under
Contents. We'll talk more about that at the
| | 01:43 | beginning of the next chapter.
| | 01:45 | One thing I want to show you at
the very top of the course menu. You've
| | 01:49 | got different views.
| | 01:50 | By default, we're in a list view,
but to the right of it there is a button and
| | 01:54 | if I click on it, it opens up a folder view.
| | 01:57 | This folder view will actually allow me
to expand or collapse a tree structure
| | 02:02 | and show me all the files that
are within my course site at once.
| | 02:05 | I can also click on this little button
here, which is Display Course menu in a
| | 02:09 | Window, and it opens it up in a pop-up menu,
and I can get in the information that way.
| | 02:14 | I usually spend most of
my time in the list view.
| | 02:19 | One other thing to point out--
let me click here on the Home Page.
| | 02:22 | So we've got the navigation, this
course menu on the left-hand side.
| | 02:26 | This right-hand side where it says Home
Page, that's sort of the content frame,
| | 02:30 | and this is where the content goes.
| | 02:33 | So if I click on Information, I've
got an information content frame.
| | 02:36 | If I click on Content, I've got a content frame.
| | 02:39 | Let me click back on the homepage, and
you might notice that in this case the
| | 02:44 | course home is our default course entry page.
| | 02:47 | Now your system administrator may change
that, and in fact, you can change that.
| | 02:51 | We'll show you how to do
that in the next chapter.
| | 02:54 | There are some modules on this page. Some of
them you've seen before, some of them are new.
| | 02:59 | I am going to scroll down and
actually see, there is a What's New module.
| | 03:03 | What's New shows you submitted
assignments, tasks, discussion board posts, and
| | 03:08 | there is a button here I want to point out.
| | 03:11 | Anytime you're in Blackboard and you
see a button with two downward-facing
| | 03:15 | chevrons, that always means either edit
or more--in this case more--and it shows
| | 03:21 | me that I have the option to expand or
collapse the list of the assignments,
| | 03:25 | tasks, or discussion board posts
that my students have turned in.
| | 03:28 | The other thing I want to point out is
there is a To Do module here, and this
| | 03:32 | one causes a lot of confusion.
| | 03:34 | The To Do module is for students only.
| | 03:38 | It will always be blank for instructors,
because To Do only shows you what you
| | 03:44 | need to do in order to
earn a grade in the class,
| | 03:48 | in other words, when you have to submit
an assignment or take a test or post a
| | 03:52 | discussion board post.
| | 03:53 | In other words, the To Do list is
always going to be blank for faculty
| | 03:57 | members and instructors,
| | 03:59 | simply because it only shows what you
need to do to earn a grade in your course.
| | 04:05 | As an instructor, you don't have
to do anything to earn a grade.
| | 04:08 | You don't have to take a
test or submit an assignment.
| | 04:11 | Therefore, your To Do module is
always, always going to be empty.
| | 04:16 | I can also, on this page, because
these are modules, I can move the modules
| | 04:20 | around, just like I could
on the My Institution tab.
| | 04:23 | I can add a course module.
| | 04:25 | I can actually change the custom
color on the page, the color palette.
| | 04:29 | This works just like the My Institution tab.
| | 04:32 | I also want to show you
that I've got something here.
| | 04:35 | I've got the name of my course, and
it shows me that I'm on the course home-
| | 04:39 | page, and this is called the breadcrumb trail.
| | 04:43 | The breadcrumb trails, as you
navigate deeper into your Blackboard course,
| | 04:48 | Blackboard is going to show you where you
are in your site with this breadcrumb trail.
| | 04:53 | And you can click on the links in this
breadcrumb trail to bounce up the chain.
| | 04:58 | Or in this case, if I click on the name
of the course on the far left-hand side of
| | 05:02 | this breadcrumb trail,
| | 05:03 | it takes me back to whatever
my default course entry page is,
| | 05:07 | in this case the homepage.
| | 05:08 | We're going to talk about the
Edit Mode switch in the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Toggling the Edit Mode| 00:00 | To see what your course looks like
from a student point of view, access the
| | 00:04 | course and then in the top right-hand
corner, click the Edit mode switch off.
| | 00:11 | To return to Instructor view,
click the Edit mode switch back on.
| | 00:15 | So, why would you want to do this?
| | 00:17 | Well, one of the most common things
that instructors wish they could do in
| | 00:20 | Blackboard is to see what their courses
look like from a student's point of view.
| | 00:25 | The Edit mode switch in the top-right corner
of your courses makes that possible, sort of.
| | 00:30 | When you click the Edit mode switch off
you're in a fake student mode.
| | 00:35 | You're not seeing it as a particular student,
but rather is a generic fake student.
| | 00:39 | What you see on your screen is almost
exactly what your students see, with
| | 00:43 | the exception of the Course Management
links in the bottom-left corner of the screen.
| | 00:47 | Notice, by the way, in our
Course menu, the menu is different.
| | 00:51 | The Information and Content sections,
which are empty, are missing, because those
| | 00:55 | were automatically hidden from
students until content is placed in them.
| | 00:59 | The other thing to remember is just as
your students cannot make any changes to
| | 01:03 | your course, when Edit
Mode is off, you're logged out.
| | 01:06 | You can't make changes.
| | 01:08 | However, click that Edit mode
switch back on and all of Blackboard 9's
| | 01:13 | instructor functions instantly become
available to you. Then notice in the
| | 01:16 | Course menu, Information and Content is back.
| | 01:19 | And if you find that you cannot make
changes in your course, make sure that the
| | 01:23 | Edit mode switch is on.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Hiding and unhiding the Course Menu| 00:00 | To temporarily hide your course menu,
click the Less Than sign on the right side
| | 00:06 | of your Course menu.
| | 00:07 | To restore your Course menu,
click the Greater Than sign.
| | 00:11 | So what does that mean?
| | 00:13 | Well, Blackboard 9 offers a feature that
lets you temporarily hide your course's
| | 00:18 | Course menu. This gives you some extra
space on the screen, and that's helpful if
| | 00:22 | you're on a netbook with a small screen.
| | 00:24 | Now one thing I can guarantee is that
one of your students will accidentally
| | 00:30 | hide the course menu and then complain
to you, but they're not going to say,
| | 00:34 | 'I accidentally hid the course menu.'
| | 00:36 | They're going to say, 'I can only see
what's new in the course. I can't see any
| | 00:40 | of the old content.'
| | 00:42 | Or, 'I can no longer access the course files.'
| | 00:45 | So be on the watch-out. This
absolutely is going to happen.
| | 00:49 | You need to be able to handle this situation.
| | 00:52 | Just remember, if you ever get into a
Blackboard course and you cannot see the
| | 00:57 | course's links or the course
menu on the left side of the page,
| | 01:01 | that usually signifies that your
course menu is hidden. Click the Show Course
| | 01:06 | Menu button to make your course menu reappear.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Touring the Control Panel| 00:00 | All of your courses' administrative
functions can be accessed by clicking the
| | 00:03 | control panel links under Course
Management in the bottom-left corner of your course.
| | 00:09 | Students do not see and cannot access this.
| | 00:13 | It's only available to instructors,
TAs, course builders, graders, and
| | 00:17 | system administrators.
| | 00:18 | The way this works is it's a
series of collapsible menu.
| | 00:21 | So if I click on Course Tools, I can expand
the course tools. Click on it again to shrink it.
| | 00:26 | Click on Evaluation.
| | 00:28 | So I have the ability to
expand and collapse the menus.
| | 00:31 | Anytime I see a button here with
the two downward-facing chevrons,
| | 00:35 | that usually means edit or more.
In this case, it means more.
| | 00:39 | So if I click on this, it shows
that there is more information.
| | 00:42 | I also want to show you that on the
right-hand side there are two sort of right-
| | 00:47 | facing chevrons, two Greater Than signs,
and that just means open it to the right.
| | 00:53 | Okay, so in this case if I can click on
Customization and I've got a whole bunch
| | 00:57 | of options under Customization, or if I
click on Go to Customization's Overview
| | 01:01 | Page, it opens up all those links
in its own window to the right.
| | 01:06 | This is available in some
places, but not everywhere.
| | 01:09 | So the first thing I want to talk
about is the Content Collection.
| | 01:13 | This is new in Blackboard 9.1, Blackboard 9.
| | 01:18 | The Content Collection allows you to
see all of the files that you've uploaded
| | 01:22 | to a particular course.
| | 01:23 | We'll talk more about this in a later
movie, but depending on whether or not
| | 01:26 | your institution has
licensed Blackboard's content system,
| | 01:29 | Content Collection may also contain links to
additional files shared across your institution.
| | 01:35 | So let me collapse this, and we
will get now into Course Tools.
| | 01:39 | Course Tools shows me really just
some tools that I can use inside of my
| | 01:44 | course, and I've got the ability to create
announcements, which I can share with my students.
| | 01:50 | Scroll down a little further.
| | 01:51 | Here's something called Blackboard Scholar.
| | 01:53 | Blackboard Scholar is a social
bookmarking tool, very much like Delicious.
| | 01:58 | It's a completely optional thing.
| | 02:00 | Blackboard does have a blog tool,
although this is an internal blog; it's not
| | 02:04 | something that you can share
outside of your Blackboard course.
| | 02:07 | For privacy and security reasons,
people outside of Blackboard can't see these
| | 02:12 | blogs, so we kind of internally
call them the BBlogs, Blackboard Blogs.
| | 02:17 | You've got Collaboration tools,
which is sort of live chats.
| | 02:21 | You've got the ability to enter
your own contacts, to create a calendar--
| | 02:25 | important dates that students need to remember.
| | 02:27 | There is a discussion board built into this.
| | 02:30 | You can create your own glossary.
| | 02:32 | You could have students
create and work on journals.
| | 02:35 | You can actually send your students
internal messages within Blackboard.
| | 02:38 | I don't recommend doing that, simply
because some students might not know where
| | 02:42 | to go pick up the messages.
| | 02:43 | Email is always going to be a
better way to communicate with students.
| | 02:46 | SafeAssign is a plagiarism-
detection service built into Blackboard.
| | 02:50 | Your campus may or may not be using this.
| | 02:52 | I am going to show you Send Email.
| | 02:54 | We've already talked about this,
but you have the ability here to send your
| | 02:56 | students email messages.
| | 02:58 | There is a way for you to create tasks, sort
of to-do items for your students to complete.
| | 03:04 | There's Tests, Surveys, and Pools, and
we'll actually spent a lot of time talking
| | 03:07 | about that, and Wikis.
| | 03:09 | For many of these items, I just
want you to notice that Blackboard has
| | 03:13 | build into it Help.
| | 03:15 | So I'm clicking here on Blogs, and there
is a link here that says More Help, and
| | 03:19 | if I click on More Help, it's going to
open up a quick little pop-up window
| | 03:23 | giving me some basic
information about that tool.
| | 03:26 | My recommendation is to learn more
about these tools, keep watching these
| | 03:29 | videos, or check with the Help that's built-in.
| | 03:32 | So let me collapse this.
| | 03:33 | Evaluation is actually where you go to
get information about student activity,
| | 03:38 | and it's the way you create reports.
| | 03:40 | This is an advanced topic,
but it is actually pretty helpful.
| | 03:44 | In earlier versions of Blackboard 9, the
Grade Center was actually under evaluation.
| | 03:50 | Later versions of Blackboard 9, the
Grade Center has been pulled out and put
| | 03:54 | onto the top level of this
Course Management control panel.
| | 03:58 | Grade Center is actually my grade book.
| | 04:00 | I click on that it opens up my grade
book in the far right-hand side of the page.
| | 04:04 | I also have the different views
where I can see the Full Grade Center,
| | 04:07 | Assignments, or Tests.
| | 04:08 | I want to just click on
Grade Center to smush this.
| | 04:12 | Users and Groups is where you can go and
create groups and manage groups.
| | 04:15 | You can also look at your roster and
| | 04:17 | maybe enroll students or un-enroll students.
| | 04:19 | We'll spend a couple movies talking about that.
| | 04:22 | Customization, we'll actually talk more
about Customization next chapter,
| | 04:27 | and we'll actually talk about features
that may be disabled by your institution,
| | 04:31 | but here is where you go to make a
course available, to change its default
| | 04:35 | language, and we'll spend a lot more
time next chapter talking about that.
| | 04:39 | Packages and Utilities really are
just copying and exporting tools and then
| | 04:44 | finally, at the bottom, Help, and in
this case, you got different types of help
| | 04:48 | that are built into the system.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
5. Customizing Your Course SiteRenaming, reorganizing, and deleting| 00:00 | Last chapter we focused on how
to navigate your course site.
| | 00:05 | This chapter we're going to show you
how to customize your course site to make
| | 00:08 | your course site yours.
| | 00:10 | And the best place to
start is with the Course menu.
| | 00:14 | This is what your students click on to
access your content, and for the most part,
| | 00:17 | this is what you click on to add content.
| | 00:20 | Unlike earlier versions of Blackboard, you
don't go to the control panel to add content.
| | 00:24 | To add Information, like say a syllabus,
you'd probably click on Information.
| | 00:29 | To add content like a PowerPoint
presentation, probably click on Content.
| | 00:33 | Now the menu names may be different on
your institution's version of Blackboard,
| | 00:37 | but the concept is identical.
| | 00:39 | How do you rename an item?
| | 00:41 | For example, I've got Information
here, and I might want to make the
| | 00:44 | word Information be--
I don't know--Syllabus.
| | 00:47 | To the right of the menu item's
name, click the button with the two
| | 00:51 | downward-facing chevrons. Remember,
| | 00:53 | in Blackboard buttons with two
downward-facing chevrons always mean either edit or more.
| | 00:59 | In this case, we've got more.
And we want to rename this,
| | 01:03 | so I am going to click in
Rename Link and type in a new name.
| | 01:07 | You want to type
something short but descriptive.
| | 01:10 | Don't get carried away. In this case, I'll just
type Syllabus. And notice to the right, I've got two options.
| | 01:17 | I can actually say, nope, I did it
wrong and cancel it, or I can click on the
| | 01:22 | green check box and it says Save.
| | 01:24 | In this case, I click on Save.
| | 01:26 | Now notice that it still says
Information here. What I have to do is I have
| | 01:30 | to reload the page.
| | 01:31 | If I click on Syllabus, it now says
Syllabus on the right-hand side.
| | 01:35 | Now we've got these two items,
Syllabus and Content. These are content
| | 01:39 | areas that are empty.
| | 01:41 | By default, Blackboard hides empty
content areas from the students. But if
| | 01:45 | I were to go in and add content to it,
these areas would be visible to the students.
| | 01:49 | Some other tools are always going to be
available, discussions groups, tools, help.
| | 01:54 | I can actually show you that's true by
turning Edit Mode off, and notice that I
| | 01:59 | am now in Student Mode.
| | 02:00 | Those tools show up.
| | 02:01 | But what if I'm going to be doing a
discussion and I decide that I don't want my
| | 02:05 | students to actually get into
discussions until week four of the course.
| | 02:10 | Well, you can hide a menu and its
contents from your students, but not from you--
| | 02:14 | you still have access to it.
| | 02:16 | What you want to do is, say
I want to hide Discussions.
| | 02:19 | I'm going to, to the right of the Discussions,
| | 02:21 | click the button with the
two downward-facing chevrons.
| | 02:23 | I am going to choose Hide Link.
| | 02:26 | Again, Hide Link doesn't delete it,
all it does is it hides the students from
| | 02:31 | being able to get into it until
I'm ready to make it available.
| | 02:35 | You can see that there is a
new icon here saying hide link.
| | 02:38 | This is different from
hidden because it's empty.
| | 02:40 | This is hidden because I say so.
| | 02:43 | I don't want anybody to see this
until I'm ready to turn it back on.
| | 02:47 | How do I turn it back on?
| | 02:48 | Well, I just click on the button with
the two downward-facing chevrons and
| | 02:51 | click on Show Link.
| | 02:53 | So we showed you how to rename a
link. We showed you how to hide a link.
| | 02:57 | Let's talk about deleting a menu item.
| | 03:00 | To the right of a menu item that you
want to delete--in this case I'm going
| | 03:04 | to delete Syllabus. I am going to click on
Syllabus, and I'm going to click on Delete.
| | 03:09 | Now, a word of warning: there is no undo.
| | 03:14 | If there is content in here,
that's going to go away.
| | 03:17 | Well, technically these files are
going to be in course files, but
| | 03:20 | everything else you create in here is going to
be gone, the links and other things like that.
| | 03:24 | So when I click on this, anything
that I've got that is in this folder and
| | 03:28 | anything that points to
this is going to be broken.
| | 03:31 | Probably I want to be very
careful in clicking on Delete.
| | 03:33 | In this case it's empty.
| | 03:34 | I don't have anything pointing to it.
| | 03:36 | So I click on Delete. It's going to
give you a message saying, 'You know, if you
| | 03:40 | just want to make it unavailable,
hide it. That's a better idea.
| | 03:43 | Are you really sure you want to delete it?'
| | 03:44 | Yeah, in this case I do.
| | 03:46 | It's gone, and there it is.
| | 03:48 | So I've now removed my Syllabus,
and we're back to the Course homepage.
| | 03:53 | One point that I need to point out:
don't delete the course entry page,
| | 03:58 | in other words, the page you first see
when you get into the course, usually
| | 04:02 | Course home or homepage.
| | 04:04 | You don't want to delete that yet.
| | 04:06 | Later in this chapter, I'm going to
show you how to change the first page users
| | 04:10 | see when they access your course.
| | 04:11 | Deleting the current course entry point
without first setting a new entry point
| | 04:16 | could cause the course not to work
the way you think it should work.
| | 04:19 | So hold off on deleting the
course entry point for now.
| | 04:22 | Let's also talk about
reorganizing our Course menu.
| | 04:27 | To reorganize any item on the Course
menu, click the up and down arrow to
| | 04:30 | the left of the item.
| | 04:31 | In this case, I want to have
Tools above Groups. Click on Tools and
| | 04:35 | just drag it to its new location,
kind of a Web 2.0 interface here.
| | 04:39 | Remember, this is your Course menu.
Your institution has a default look and feel,
| | 04:44 | but you can now customize
this to your heart's desire.
| | 04:47 | So that is how to rename, to hide, to
delete, and reorganize the Course menu.
| | 04:53 | In our next movie, we'll show you how
to add new items to your Course menu.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding new menu items| 00:00 | As I mentioned in the last
movie, this is your Course menu.
| | 00:03 | You can customize this
thing to your heart's content.
| | 00:07 | You may actually from time to
time want to add new items.
| | 00:11 | For example, in the last movie I renamed
Information as Syllabus, and then I deleted it.
| | 00:16 | Let's add Information back to our Course menu.
| | 00:19 | So to add a new Content menu item,
make sure Edit Mode is clicked on.
| | 00:24 | Remember, if Edit Node is off, you
are in Student Node, and just as students
| | 00:27 | can't make changes to your course,
| | 00:29 | when Edit mode is off, you are locked out.
But if Edit mode is on, you can proceed.
| | 00:34 | Make sure also that you are in
the list view here in the menu--
| | 00:38 | you can do that with the first button--
and click or hover your mouse over this
| | 00:44 | Plus sign in the top
left-hand corner of the Course menu.
| | 00:47 | You're going to see that
you have several options.
| | 00:49 | First one is to create a content area.
| | 00:52 | This is a top-level folder that
contains all of your course materials.
| | 00:56 | You can have multiple content areas.
| | 00:58 | In fact, I've seen people create course
content areas based on content type like
| | 01:03 | handouts, readings, assignments.
| | 01:06 | I have seen people create content
areas by subject, behavioral theories,
| | 01:09 | developmental theories, cognitive theories.
| | 01:11 | Just to remember, these content areas
are top-level folders, the sort of highest-
| | 01:16 | level folders you've got.
| | 01:18 | It's a way for you to organize your course
content, give you easy navigation to that content.
| | 01:23 | Less content areas is actually good idea.
| | 01:27 | You can add folders within a content
area to add future structure, and we'll talk
| | 01:31 | more about that later.
| | 01:33 | Also, note that you can create a new
content area today, now, or pretty much any
| | 01:39 | other menu item, and hide it from your
students until you're ready to show it.
| | 01:43 | In this case, let's create a new content area.
| | 01:46 | It's going to ask me for the name.
| | 01:47 | We will create a name of Information.
| | 01:49 | And do I want this to be visible
to the students yet? Yeah, sure.
| | 01:52 | I am going to click on Submit.
| | 01:55 | When I click on Submit, it goes and
adds it to the bottom of the Course menu.
| | 02:00 | I can then click on the up and down
arrows to the left of that item and drag it
| | 02:04 | to wherever I want to put it.
| | 02:06 | And that's how to add a new
content area, a new content folder.
| | 02:09 | I now have an Information content
folder in which I can start building content.
| | 02:14 | That goes along with the
content folder that was already there.
| | 02:17 | I also have the ability, if I want to, to go
and add additional things to my Course menu.
| | 02:22 | I can add a blank page.
| | 02:24 | Now a blank page is a single file so
important that you need it to appear not in
| | 02:31 | a content area but as a
clickable link on the Course menu.
| | 02:34 | That might be your syllabus or the
honor code or something like that.
| | 02:38 | A tool link is a link to a course
tool, like the announcements page, the
| | 02:43 | discussion board, the course calendar.
| | 02:46 | If you're going to be sending your
students lots of email, let me give you a tip.
| | 02:50 | I would add a link to
the Email tool and hide it.
| | 02:53 | It's going to be available to you but
not to your students, and it's going to
| | 02:56 | save you several clicks.
| | 02:57 | Let me show you that.
| | 02:58 | I will click on the Tool Link.
| | 03:00 | Now, I am just going to call this
Email, and I am going to choose Email.
| | 03:04 | And I am not going to make
this available to my users.
| | 03:07 | It is going to be available to me.
| | 03:09 | So, now any time I log in to my course,
there at the bottom of my Course menu
| | 03:14 | is a link to the Email tool.
| | 03:15 | It's going to save me a couple of clicks.
| | 03:17 | I also have the ability
here to add a course link.
| | 03:21 | A course link is a shortcut to an
existing item, area, or tool within your course.
| | 03:27 | So if I want a link to a folder in a
content area and I kind of want to make
| | 03:32 | that now a top-level folder, I can link to that.
| | 03:35 | An external link is a link to,
well, an external web site.
| | 03:39 | What you are going to do here is
you type in whatever the address is,
| | 03:43 | probably cut and paste it would be
a better idea. But I am going to do
| | 03:46 | lynda.com, type http://, and I am
going to see, do I want my users to be able
| | 03:57 | to click on this link today?
| | 03:58 | I click on Submit and say Yes.
| | 04:01 | I really strongly recommend that
your Course menu have at least one
| | 04:06 | customizable external link.
| | 04:08 | In fact, one of the things that I do in
my course web sites is I have a link to
| | 04:12 | the institution's honor code.
| | 04:14 | This is an idea that I got
from the University of Texas.
| | 04:17 | This is a great way for me to ask my
students, when they contact me and say,
| | 04:22 | "I can't get into any content in the course,"
| | 04:25 | it's usually because they
have hidden the Course menu.
| | 04:27 | I can say, okay, over on the left-
hand side of the page, do you see a link
| | 04:30 | to lynda.com, or in this case, do you see a
link to the honor code of the university?
| | 04:35 | When the students say, no, I say okay,
you've hidden the Course menu. Click on
| | 04:39 | the Greater Than sign and
that actually gets it back.
| | 04:42 | So it's a good troubleshooting tip there.
| | 04:44 | I have the ability also,
besides creating an external link,
| | 04:47 | I can create a module page.
| | 04:49 | Module page is really just a page
that has a whole bunch of modules.
| | 04:52 | In fact, your Course homepage is a module page.
| | 04:57 | When you create a new module page
though, you are creating a blank page.
| | 04:59 | You'll need to add the modules one by
one, and now you can see why I told you not
| | 05:04 | to delete your Course homepage menu quite yet.
| | 05:08 | A subheader is really just text.
| | 05:11 | It's not clickable,
but it's helpful information.
| | 05:14 | So, I can say, "Nice web site."
| | 05:19 | And it's basically just a little
subheader there under lynda.com that shows the
| | 05:24 | students what it is.
| | 05:25 | A much easier way I've seen a lot of
other people do this instead is instead of
| | 05:29 | having that little sort of
subheader is they create dividers.
| | 05:33 | A divider is a horizontal line that
could be added to group your menu items.
| | 05:38 | So I might want to add this horizontal
rule, and I am going to have a horizontal
| | 05:43 | rule here for Tools, Help, Email.
| | 05:45 | So, I am separating my content from
my help and other tools available, so
| | 05:50 | that's just a divider.
| | 05:52 | Remember, each time you add a menu item,
it appears at the bottom of the Course
| | 05:56 | menu, drag it to where you want to put it.
| | 05:58 | In the next movie, we will talk
about customizing the tools that are
| | 06:01 | available to your students.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Managing tools| 00:00 | By default, your Course
menu has a link to Tools.
| | 00:04 | If it doesn't, you can actually just go
in here and add a Tool link, but in this
| | 00:09 | case, I am going to click on Tools and
notice that Blackboard has a bunch of
| | 00:13 | tools and I might not need to use all
of these in my course this semester.
| | 00:18 | So, I can actually hide the tool
that I don't want to use this semester.
| | 00:23 | For example, if I don't want to use
Messages in this course, if I click on Hide
| | 00:28 | Link, what I am doing is I'm
hiding that link from the students.
| | 00:32 | It doesn't actually disable the
tool--the tool is still there.
| | 00:35 | We can still access it down
through the control panel.
| | 00:38 | All this does is hide the tool from the
students on this page, and students may
| | 00:43 | actually still be able to find that tool
somewhere else in the course. Let me show you.
| | 00:48 | So, I have got Journals, Messages, My Grades.
| | 00:50 | If I turn Edit Mode off, I get into
Student Mode and notice that Messages is now
| | 00:55 | disappeared from the page.
| | 00:57 | Turn it back on, Messages show up.
| | 00:59 | My recommendation is, go here and just
turn off the tools that you don't think
| | 01:04 | you're going to be using.
| | 01:05 | However, leave at least
two tools on at all times.
| | 01:09 | There is a colleague of mine who
reported that they had some problems when they
| | 01:13 | showed only one tool.
| | 01:14 | So, again, all we're doing is we're
hiding the tool from the students.
| | 01:19 | To manage a particular tool's
availability throughout the course, under Course
| | 01:24 | Management, under
Customization, click Tool Availability.
| | 01:29 | Now, for each of these
tools, there are four options.
| | 01:33 | Option number one is Available.
In other words, this tool can be used
| | 01:36 | anywhere in the course.
| | 01:38 | Unavailable means it can't be used by anyone,
including you, until you turn it back on.
| | 01:45 | So, making something unavailable is
actually a very powerful way to get rid of
| | 01:49 | the tool, but it can lead
to problems down the road.
| | 01:52 | You need to make sure that if you
uncheck this as being available, you
| | 01:56 | really want it unchecked.
| | 01:58 | Visible to Guests, well, you need to
check with your help desk to see what your
| | 02:02 | institution's policy on
guest access to your course is.
| | 02:06 | By default, many institutions
don't allow guests to get into
| | 02:09 | Blackboard courses,
| | 02:10 | so this column may be moved for you.
| | 02:12 | Your help desk would be able to tell you
whether or not that's a policy at your campus.
| | 02:17 | If your institution does allow guests
to come into courses, you can choose
| | 02:21 | what tools the guests can and cannot see.
| | 02:24 | Visible to Observers, observers
doesn't mean what you think it is.
| | 02:28 | It's not somebody observing your
course. Observers are someone assigned to
| | 02:32 | follow a specific user
without interacting with Blackboard.
| | 02:36 | Think a parent or an athletic
department staff member tracking a single
| | 02:40 | particular student's progress.
| | 02:41 | So, you get to decide what observers
can do, but it's not observers who are
| | 02:45 | participating in your course,
these are observers who are watching a
| | 02:48 | particular student.
| | 02:50 | And then Available on Content Areas.
| | 02:52 | For example, we've created an
information area or a content area. Do I want to
| | 02:55 | be able to add that tool
there, is all I am saying.
| | 02:58 | Now, I want you to notice that there
are some grayed-out check boxes here.
| | 03:03 | For example, the Adaptive Release,
| | 03:06 | you can't make this visible to guest.
| | 03:08 | That's actually have been
disabled by the system administrator.
| | 03:11 | Your system administrator can
tell you a little more about that.
| | 03:15 | The big thing to remember is turning
off tools here, system-wide, through the
| | 03:19 | entire course, causes some confusion,
because what might happen is you might
| | 03:24 | accidentally forget that you turned
off Announcements, and then you try to go
| | 03:28 | and make an announcement and it's
like, where do the announcements go?
| | 03:32 | My suggestion, only disable those
tools that you know you will never use and
| | 03:37 | when in doubt, leave it on.
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| Customizing a course | 00:00 | Besides letting you set tool
availability, under Course Management >
| | 00:04 | Customization, you can also control
how students can enroll in your course,
| | 00:08 | choose if guests or observers can
access your course, modify your course
| | 00:12 | properties, including the
availability and language, and even modify your
| | 00:15 | course's style, including the course
entry point in the entry point's banner.
| | 00:20 | Let's look at each of these one by one.
I want you to notice that here on the
| | 00:24 | menu, I have got a button with two
downward-facing chevrons. In Blackboard that
| | 00:28 | always means more or edit.
| | 00:29 | If I click on it, yup it's more.
| | 00:31 | But notice to the right, I have
got these two Greater Than signs.
| | 00:35 | And if I click on that, what it does
is it takes all of these links that show
| | 00:39 | here beneath Customization,
| | 00:41 | it kind of opens them up on the right
and makes it a little easier to see.
| | 00:44 | That's kind of nice.
| | 00:46 | So I am going to click on Enrollment Options.
| | 00:49 | Now, don't be surprised if this doesn't
appear on your version of Blackboard, and
| | 00:53 | don't be surprised if you can't change
anything on your version of Blackboard.
| | 00:57 | That's actually pretty customary.
| | 01:00 | It turns out that your Blackboard
very likely is going to be centrally
| | 01:04 | administered and supported, and
it's going to be using some sort of
| | 01:08 | automated course and user
provisioning system that's tied to your student
| | 01:11 | information system.
| | 01:13 | What that means is when a course is
created at your institution, a course is
| | 01:17 | automatically created in Blackboard.
| | 01:18 | You don't have to do anything.
| | 01:20 | When a user enrolls in the course in
the student information system, that user
| | 01:25 | is automatically enrolled
in the course in Blackboard.
| | 01:28 | There's nothing for you to do.
| | 01:30 | That's actually the first setting here,
Instructor/System Administrator. That's just
| | 01:33 | basically saying, you know, the system
administrator is going to take care of
| | 01:36 | it. The instructor may be able to
handle adding one or two students here and
| | 01:39 | there, but let's keep this automated.
| | 01:41 | Some institutions do allow you to have
the students contact you and say, can I
| | 01:46 | enroll in the course?
| | 01:47 | Very few do, though,
| | 01:48 | so don't be surprised if this is not available.
| | 01:51 | Self-enrollment is an option that
allows students to enroll in the course.
| | 01:55 | They would actually go into a
course catalogue and find it.
| | 01:59 | And then you can choose a start date
and end date and even creating an access
| | 02:03 | code that the students would need
to enter to enroll in the course.
| | 02:06 | Don't be surprised if all of these
features don't work on your system.
| | 02:10 | That's just because your system is
more tightly integrated in a student
| | 02:13 | information System than you had imagined.
| | 02:15 | Check with your help desk to see what
your institution's enrollment practices are.
| | 02:19 | Now, let's talk about Guest and
Observer Access and tell you why Guest and
| | 02:24 | Observer Access isn't what you think it is.
| | 02:27 | A guest is someone who is not
directly participating in the course.
| | 02:32 | Unfortunately, on Blackboard there's no such
thing as a guest student or guest instructor.
| | 02:37 | For a guest student to be able to get
into Blackboard and be able to do what a
| | 02:40 | student can do, they have to be a student.
| | 02:43 | For a guest instructor to get into
Blackboard and do what an instructor can do,
| | 02:46 | they need to be an instructor.
| | 02:48 | So my recommendation is, before you
change any of these, check with your
| | 02:52 | help desk to see what your institution's
practices are for having guests in your course.
| | 02:56 | There might be some process that allow
somebody to become a real guest student.
| | 03:01 | Guest is just someone who comes in
the course and can only see a few things
| | 03:05 | and not really interact with those things.
| | 03:07 | Observers have even fewer options.
| | 03:10 | Observers are someone who follows a
specific user in a Blackboard course without
| | 03:14 | actually interacting with Blackboard.
| | 03:17 | Observers observe a student, not a course.
| | 03:21 | Again, check with your helpdesk.
| | 03:23 | They might be able to tell you how
you can get guests in your course.
| | 03:26 | Guest and Observer Access is
just not the place to do it.
| | 03:28 | The next thing I want to talk about is Properties.
| | 03:32 | Now, I've got to be honest.
| | 03:33 | Many of these things in Properties are
also going to be disabled. You might see it.
| | 03:37 | But most institutions are not going to
allow you to change your course name.
| | 03:41 | They're not going to allow you to
reclassify your course. However, they will let
| | 03:45 | you make your course available or not available.
| | 03:48 | Right now, this course is available to
students, but if I click on No and then
| | 03:52 | scroll down and click on Submit,
| | 03:54 | I want you to see what happens.
| | 03:56 | I am going to go back to My
Institution homepage, and you are going to see
| | 03:59 | that my course is unavailable.
| | 04:01 | Unavailable doesn't mean
that I can't get into it.
| | 04:03 | It doesn't mean that the
course doesn't exist; it exists.
| | 04:06 | It's just not available to students.
| | 04:09 | Now, a lot of instructors choose to
hide Blackboard courses from the students
| | 04:14 | until the instructor is ready
to make the course available.
| | 04:17 | This gives you the time to prep the
course in private, and some institutions
| | 04:21 | also hide courses from their students
after the end of an academic term, or year.
| | 04:26 | So, to make a course available,
once it is unavailable, scroll down.
| | 04:30 | I am going to click on the
Customization, go over to the right, click on
| | 04:33 | Properties, and then I can
make the course available here.
| | 04:38 | Setting the Duration usually is done
automatically by your system. Same with
| | 04:42 | categorizing courses.
| | 04:43 | The last thing on this actually is
kind of cool, is a Language Pack.
| | 04:47 | Now, depending on what your system
administrator has done, there may be
| | 04:53 | different languages that are built into
Blackboard, and you can actually change
| | 04:58 | Blackboard so that it displays its
interface within your course in that language
| | 05:03 | instead of the default system
language, which is usually English.
| | 05:07 | So you could, if the language pack
exists on the system, change your course so
| | 05:12 | that all the menus and all the
instructions are in Japanese, or in Korean, or in
| | 05:17 | French, absolutely easy to do.
| | 05:20 | The big thing to remember is that if
you go in and add content, your content is
| | 05:25 | not going to be translated.
| | 05:26 | This only is going to translate the
interface, not the content that you have created.
| | 05:31 | I am not going to worry about course files.
| | 05:32 | I am just going to click on Submit.
| | 05:34 | So, that's Properties.
| | 05:35 | So, we have done Enrollment Options.
| | 05:37 | We've done Guest and Observer Access.
| | 05:39 | We've done Properties.
| | 05:40 | Let's talk really quickly about Style.
| | 05:44 | The big thing on the Style is the Style
lets you play around with the Course menu.
| | 05:48 | You can change it from being displayed
as text, which is sort of a preview right
| | 05:53 | here, or I can have a display as buttons.
| | 05:55 | There is a button library here.
| | 05:56 | I can choose different buttons
and I want to put onto the page.
| | 06:00 | I can, if I want to keep this as Text,
change the Background Color and the Text Color.
| | 06:04 | We are not just changing it for me here,
| | 06:06 | I am changing it for all students in the course.
| | 06:09 | When the students get into the Course
menu, the Course menu by default is
| | 06:12 | going to show it's a list view--that's
the view that we see here--but I could
| | 06:16 | make it so that it's going to be a
folder view as a default view, and I can allow
| | 06:20 | or not allow both views.
| | 06:22 | I usually leave this one alone.
| | 06:24 | The Default Content View, when I get
into a content area, do I want to have a
| | 06:28 | little icon on the left side of each
item, or do I just want to have text only?
| | 06:32 | That's completely up to you.
| | 06:34 | You can set this now if you want.
| | 06:36 | The Course Entry Point is the first page
that students see when they enter your course.
| | 06:42 | So let me give you an example.
| | 06:43 | We've got the Course Entry
Point here set as the Home Page.
| | 06:46 | If I go back now to the homepage of the
course, the course entry point, you are
| | 06:51 | going to notice that it's this
homepage with all these modules.
| | 06:54 | I can, if I want to, change
that to some other page.
| | 06:56 | So, the first page that students see
when they get into my course is not going
| | 07:00 | to be the homepage.
| | 07:01 | In fact, let me do something.
| | 07:02 | We are going to go create a new Tool link.
| | 07:04 | I am going to call it Announcements.
| | 07:06 | I am going to make it
available to users. Click on Submit.
| | 07:10 | I have now created a new Announcements page.
| | 07:12 | It actually is the Announcements
tool. You can drag this now up.
| | 07:15 | It could be anywhere on the Course menu.
| | 07:17 | Let's go back now to Customization
because I want to show you how you can change
| | 07:21 | the course entry point.
| | 07:22 | I am going to click on Style, I am
going to scroll down, and it's going to say,
| | 07:26 | okay, what is the entry point for your course?
| | 07:28 | And I can actually now make it Announcements.
| | 07:31 | So my recommendation is, if you want to
change your course entry point, before
| | 07:35 | you go and delete the homepage, create
a new entry point, be it Announcements,
| | 07:40 | be it some sort of tool,
don't point to the grayed center,
| | 07:44 | don't point to some external web site
because you don't know if that web site is
| | 07:49 | going to be up and running.
| | 07:50 | It's got to be something within
Blackboard that exists already.
| | 07:53 | Announcements is a pretty good alternative.
| | 07:55 | Most instructors choose
either Home Page or Announcements.
| | 07:58 | Last thing you can do here is you
can actually go and add a banner.
| | 08:02 | In fact, I've got a
banner in the exercise files.
| | 08:04 | I am going to browse My Computer and up
on the Desktop, in the exercise files, I
| | 08:09 | have got a banner image, and that banner
image is going to show up at the top of
| | 08:13 | the course entry point.
| | 08:15 | I am going to click on Submit.
| | 08:15 | It's going to upload those files.
| | 08:17 | And let me show you, if now go to my course
homepage, it's no longer the course homepage.
| | 08:23 | My course homepage is this page with a
banner that I just added to my web site.
| | 08:26 | Let me show it to you again.
| | 08:28 | We get into the course through My
Courses and instead of landing on the Home
| | 08:34 | tab, which is still there on the Home
Page, it opens up to Announcements.
| | 08:38 | If I ever want to change that back, in
fact, I'm going to right now,
| | 08:42 | go to Customization, click on Style, scroll
down and choose Home Page, and then click on Submit.
| | 08:49 | So, besides letting you set tool
availability, under Course Management >
| | 08:53 | Customization, you can control how
students can enroll in your course,
| | 08:58 | you can choose if students or
observers can access your course,
| | 09:01 | you can modify your course
properties, including the availability and
| | 09:04 | language, and you can modify your
course style, including the course entry
| | 09:08 | point and the entry point's banner.
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6. Managing UsersViewing the course roster| 00:00 | There are four ways that I'd recommend
to view your course roster in Blackboard.
| | 00:04 | You can go to Course menu > Tools,
and then roster, or down under Course
| | 00:08 | Management, if you scroll down, you could
actually go to Users and Groups and then
| | 00:12 | Users, or to Grade Center, or to
Evaluation and Performance Dashboard.
| | 00:16 | Now we talked about viewing rosters
back in chapter 1, but we went through
| | 00:21 | that kind of quickly.
| | 00:22 | It was a last-minute guide the
Blackboard 9. I want to go back over this one
| | 00:26 | more time, because it's going to
help you when it comes time for you to
| | 00:29 | manage your roster.
| | 00:31 | How can you tell who exactly is
involved in your Blackboard course?
| | 00:35 | Well, there are four-way that I
recommend. The first way, let's go to Tools,
| | 00:39 | scroll down, and I'll click on
Roster, and there is no one enrolled in my course.
| | 00:45 | Well, no, not exactly.
| | 00:46 | We haven't done the search yet.
| | 00:48 | We have to go and say Not Blank and
then click on Go, and that shows me the
| | 00:52 | first and last names of the
students enrolled in my course.
| | 00:56 | So the plus is it's just the first
and last names, and that might be exactly
| | 00:59 | what I'm looking for.
| | 01:00 | The minus is, and it's the big minus,
this information is coming from the
| | 01:05 | students' privacy settings.
| | 01:06 | I'm going to click on My Places and
click on Personal Information. I want to
| | 01:10 | scroll down now to the bottom of this
and click on Set Privacy options, and I
| | 01:15 | want to see that you and your students
have the ability to hide your name from
| | 01:21 | appearing on the roster.
| | 01:23 | Now, it's the roster under Tools > Roster,
not the real course roster, but you can
| | 01:28 | actually make yourself
private on a course roster.
| | 01:31 | That's the reason why I do not
recommend going to Tools > Roster to see
| | 01:36 | your course roster.
| | 01:37 | It's something your students can
look at, but in this case it's just not
| | 01:40 | something that I consider to be
robust enough for an instructor.
| | 01:43 | So Tools > Roster, let's throw that one out.
| | 01:46 | Second way, and actually I think one
of the more powerful ways, is under
| | 01:50 | Course Management, to click on Users
and Groups and then click on Users.
| | 01:54 | Now, this may not show up anything at first.
| | 01:57 | You might want to do
username not blank and do a go.
| | 02:00 | If that doesn't work, older versions of
Blackboard, you would need to search for
| | 02:04 | a wildcard character. So if you did
a username not blank and search for
| | 02:08 | percentage that would also get the
entire roster to show up. That was true in
| | 02:13 | Blackboard 9, but not 9.1.
| | 02:16 | So I've got here a little more information.
| | 02:18 | I've got the students'
username, I've got their first name,
| | 02:21 | I've got their last name. I'm sorting
here by last name by default, but I could
| | 02:25 | sort by username if I wanted to.
Click on Username and now I'm sorting
| | 02:28 | alphabetically by username, do the reverse
alphabetically by username. Go back to
| | 02:32 | searching by last name.
| | 02:33 | And this is going to show me the
students' first name, last name, username,
| | 02:37 | email, role, they're availability in the course.
| | 02:39 | That's actually kind of great.
| | 02:41 | The plus of this is that there
is a lot of information on page.
| | 02:45 | Another plus is I can see the roster,
whether the students want me to see them or not.
| | 02:49 | If they're enrolled in the course, I'm
the instructor--I get to see the roster.
| | 02:52 | Now there is a negative, and the
negative is that I can't download this.
| | 02:57 | There is not a real easy way to save this,
to take a copy of this off of Blackboard.
| | 03:02 | That where that third way comes in.
Let me get into the Grade Center.
| | 03:05 | I'm going to click on the click Grade
Center link here on the control panel.
| | 03:09 | If you're running Blackboard 9 instead
of 9.1, you'll have to go to Evaluation >
| | 03:13 | Grade Center. Blackboard 9.1 just pulls it out here.
| | 03:17 | So I've got the full Grade Center
showing up here at the top level, and I can
| | 03:21 | scroll up and down to see my entire roster.
| | 03:25 | This is showing me not only the
Username, Last Name, First Name, Username,
| | 03:29 | Student ID, Last Access, Availability,
| | 03:33 | it's also going to show me their grades.
| | 03:34 | The really great part about
this is I can download this.
| | 03:37 | I can work offline. I can download a
copy of this and carry it around with me.
| | 03:41 | I can do with this as I please.
| | 03:45 | Minus, there might be too much
information here. That might be a little more
| | 03:48 | information than what we're used to.
| | 03:51 | Let me show you one last thing,
a last way to view your roster.
| | 03:55 | It's under Evaluation, and if I
click on Performance Dashboard--
| | 03:59 | now the Performance Dashboard is an
activity report for all users, and the
| | 04:04 | positive for this is that it's a really
easy way for you to see which students
| | 04:10 | are and are not participating in your
course. I've got to tell you, this is an
| | 04:13 | advanced topic for Blackboard,
especially the early warning system, but there
| | 04:17 | are positives and minuses here.
| | 04:19 | Positive is that you can print it.
| | 04:21 | There is a print icon in the top right-
hand corner. And the negative here is that
| | 04:26 | it's not going to give you an
email addresses or student IDs.
| | 04:29 | So for the rest of this chapter, when we
talk about viewing our rosters, I think
| | 04:34 | the best way to go about this is under
Users and Groups, to click on users, and
| | 04:39 | then if I need to, I
would search for percentage.
| | 04:42 | But there are four different
ways that you can view your roster.
| | 04:44 | You can go to Course menu > Tools; you
can go to Course Management > Users and
| | 04:48 | Groups > Users; you can go to Course
Manager > Grade Center; and you can to Course
| | 04:51 | Management > Evaluation > Performance Dashboard.
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| Enrolling students and others| 00:01 | In your Course Management area, under
Users and Groups and in the Users link,
| | 00:07 | there may be as many as three different
ways for you to enroll a user into your course:
| | 00:12 | you may be able to click on Enroll User
and create a brand-new user; you may be
| | 00:16 | able to click on Enroll User and find a
user to enroll; and you may be able to
| | 00:21 | click on Batch Enroll Users.
| | 00:22 | However, this is probably the one movie
where I can pretty much guarantee that
| | 00:27 | what you see here on my screen is not
what you are going to see when you log in
| | 00:30 | to your version of Blackboard.
| | 00:32 | Some or all of these enrollment
options may have been disabled by your
| | 00:36 | institution, simply because your
institution is handling the enrollment for you.
| | 00:41 | This is particularly true if your
Blackboard is tied into your student
| | 00:44 | information system where when a
student enrolls in the course in the student
| | 00:47 | information system, they're
automatically enrolled in the course in Blackboard.
| | 00:51 | In that case, there's nothing for
you to do here--just move along.
| | 00:55 | Let me also point out something that is kind
of confusing, but I will show you what I mean.
| | 01:00 | You cannot enroll someone into your
course who is already enrolled in your course.
| | 01:05 | Olivia Anderson is here in my course.
| | 01:07 | Even worse, if Olivia Anderson were to
drop my course, and particularly if my
| | 01:13 | course is in the student information
system and she drops my course, she may
| | 01:17 | actually be blocked from getting into
my course, and there's nothing I can do to
| | 01:20 | add that student back, short of
sending Olivia Anderson to the registrar
| | 01:24 | saying, enroll in my course.
| | 01:26 | Let's go through each of these options,
but keep in mind, one, two, maybe all
| | 01:31 | three of these may not be
available on your version of Blackboard.
| | 01:34 | I am going to click on Enroll
User, and I am going to create a user.
| | 01:37 | Now, you are going to see a bunch of
fields that need to be filled out, and that
| | 01:43 | seems like a lot, but it turns out only
a few of these are absolutely required--
| | 01:48 | anything that has a star next to it.
| | 01:50 | So, I am going to do
Pamela, last name is Stuart.
| | 01:52 | Now, the Email address is not required,
but I strongly recommend putting in an
| | 01:58 | email address if your campus
allows you to create accounts.
| | 02:00 | It's just an easy way for you to
get in touch with the students.
| | 02:03 | So, I can go pastuart@example.com.
| | 02:08 | This is a fake address in this case.
| | 02:09 | I am going to scroll down, and now I
have to type in a Username and Password, P-A-
| | 02:13 | and her password.
| | 02:15 | And when I scroll down, I now have a
choice of how to add this student to my course.
| | 02:21 | Do I want to add the student
as a student, and that's default.
| | 02:24 | I could also add the
person as a teaching assistant.
| | 02:27 | The difference between a teaching
assistant and an instructor is a teaching
| | 02:30 | assistant has access to almost the
exact same sets of tools that you have as an
| | 02:35 | instructor, but cannot show up on
the list of who's teaching the course.
| | 02:40 | So when the students go to the course
homepage, under My Courses, sometimes the
| | 02:44 | instructors are showing up.
Teaching assistants don't show up.
| | 02:47 | Guest is one of those limited roles.
| | 02:49 | Don't do it, a guest doesn't
mean what you think it means.
| | 02:52 | A guest really can't interact in your course.
| | 02:55 | A grader is somebody who has access to
the grades but not necessarily to the
| | 02:59 | content, and a course builder is
someone who can access the course to add
| | 03:04 | content, but doesn't really
get access to the grade book.
| | 03:07 | In this case, we are going to
keep the student as a student.
| | 03:10 | Available is, can she log in? Yeah, sure!
| | 03:13 | When I click Submit, I
have now created this account.
| | 03:16 | Now, Pamela doesn't get a message.
| | 03:18 | I have to send her an email message
saying I've now created an account for you,
| | 03:21 | and she can then log in
using the password that I set up.
| | 03:25 | Don't be shocked if Create
Users is turned off on your campus.
| | 03:27 | Very, very few campuses allow you to do this.
| | 03:30 | Instead most user accounts are
created by the institution, not by the users.
| | 03:35 | However, if there is an account that
does exist, you may be able to manually
| | 03:39 | enroll it if the institution
has not disabled that feature.
| | 03:42 | What you can do is under Enroll
Users, click Find Users to Enroll.
| | 03:48 | And what I am going to do now is I am
going to type in the username for the
| | 03:52 | person. In other words, it's
their Blackboard login name.
| | 03:55 | But what if I don't know the
Blackboard login name for the person?
| | 03:58 | Well, there's a Browse
button here. If click on Browse,
| | 04:01 | it's going to open up a pop-up window.
| | 04:03 | I am going to scroll this over, and I
have now the option of choosing by First
| | 04:08 | Name, by Last Name, and by Email.
| | 04:10 | I am going to actually here choose
Last Name, and we will do Jones, see how many
| | 04:14 | Joneses as I have in my system.
| | 04:16 | And I've got three or four
Joneses that I can add to my system.
| | 04:21 | If I want to add, say, Chloe Jones,
| | 04:23 | I click the check marks next
to Chloe Jones and click Submit.
| | 04:27 | If we wanted to had Chloe
and Mia, I click Chloe and Mia.
| | 04:31 | Be careful when you're searching for
last names, because there are people out
| | 04:34 | there who have the same last names.
| | 04:36 | Make sure that you are selecting
the right person. Click on Submit.
| | 04:40 | I have got my two people here.
| | 04:42 | Notice that it put their usernames
separated by a comma, so if you wanted to add
| | 04:46 | more than one user at a time, you can.
| | 04:49 | You can choose a role.
| | 04:50 | In this case, instead of having a
horizontal button bar, it's a pulldown list,
| | 04:53 | but the same options we talked about earlier.
| | 04:55 | So, I am going to choose a role
of student and click on Submit.
| | 04:58 | Now, remember earlier I said that you
can't enroll somebody in the course who is
| | 05:04 | already enrolled in the course.
| | 05:06 | I want to show you what I mean by that.
| | 05:08 | I am going to take Olivia Anderson, I
am going to copy her username, and I'm
| | 05:13 | actually going to find her, and I am
going to try to find her in the system, and
| | 05:18 | actually, we will browse and search for her.
| | 05:20 | So, I am going to search by
Username > Contains, Olivia Anderson, and when I
| | 05:25 | click on Go, no users found,
but we know she exists.
| | 05:30 | Well, the reason why it's no users
found is these are users who are not yet
| | 05:34 | enrolled in your course.
| | 05:36 | If you ever want to see who is enrolled
in your course, you want to go and look
| | 05:39 | at your course roster.
| | 05:40 | I am going to click on
the breadcrumb trails here.
| | 05:42 | From Add Enrollments, I will click on
Users, and I can see that Olivia is already
| | 05:48 | enrolled in my course.
| | 05:49 | That's the reason why I couldn't find her.
| | 05:51 | By the way, if I were to go back here
and click on Find Users to Enroll and just
| | 05:55 | pasted her username and clicked on
Submit, I'll get a red error message saying
| | 06:00 | she is already enrolled.
| | 06:01 | So, remember, you cannot re-enroll
somebody who's already enrolled in your course.
| | 06:06 | The last function I will let you
explore on your own, and again, very few
| | 06:10 | institutions do this.
| | 06:11 | It's something called Batch Enroll Users.
| | 06:14 | Batch Enroll Users--and I will
click on More Help to get the pop-up menu
| | 06:18 | that shows you the help.
| | 06:19 | What you would do is you would create
a text file, a CSV file, that has in the
| | 06:24 | first field Username, Last Name,
First Name, Email, Password.
| | 06:29 | The things that are red are
absolutely required. Everything else is
| | 06:33 | completely optional.
| | 06:35 | Now, I want you to notice that this
is an example of what you would do.
| | 06:38 | If I wanted to add JS Smith to my
course using a CSV, I do Jsmith,Smith, which
| | 06:45 | would be the last name, first name.
| | 06:48 | If you are going to do that, I think
it's easier to just to go search for the
| | 06:51 | users and do Batch Enroll, but that's
the reason why Batch Enroll is usually
| | 06:55 | turned off on most campuses.
| | 06:57 | So, remember that in your Course
Management area, under Users and Groups, there
| | 07:02 | are three ways to enroll a user in your course.
| | 07:05 | You may be able to click
Enroll User > Create User.
| | 07:08 | Don't be upset if you can't see that.
| | 07:09 | That's not out of the ordinary.
| | 07:11 | You may be able to click on Enroll User >
Find Users to Enroll, or you may be
| | 07:16 | able to click on Batch Enroll Users.
| | 07:18 | Please remember, you cannot enroll
someone who's already enrolled in
| | 07:21 | your course, or you cannot enroll
somebody who has dropped your course
| | 07:26 | in your student information system
if you're Blackboard is tied in the
| | 07:29 | student information system.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Why not to unenroll| 00:01 | Depending upon how your
institution has configured Blackboard,
| | 00:04 | you may or may not have the option of
removing or un-enrolling a user from your
| | 00:09 | course by clicking on Users and then
clicking the name to the left of the
| | 00:15 | person and clicking Remove
Users from Course. Don't do this.
| | 00:19 | There are two reasons.
| | 00:21 | First, it erases all traces that that
person was ever enrolled in your course,
| | 00:27 | all the homework, all the assignment,
all the discussion board post. It's as if
| | 00:32 | this student never existed.
| | 00:34 | This is a horrible thing if
there's a grade challenge.
| | 00:38 | Going and removing the student
erases them from your course.
| | 00:42 | It's as if they've never existed.
| | 00:44 | That's a bad thing.
| | 00:45 | Second, if Blackboard is tied to your
student information system, erasing a
| | 00:50 | student or removing them from the course
will actually just remove them from the
| | 00:54 | course for a little bit, and the next time
that your student information system
| | 00:57 | pushes the student roster again,
the student is going to be back.
| | 01:01 | Many institutions actually disable the
Unenroll Users feature, just because it
| | 01:06 | causes such a nightmare with grade challenges.
| | 01:09 | However, if it's there on your
campus, I want to show you how to remove a
| | 01:13 | user from the course,
| | 01:14 | if you really want to do it. Again,
remember, you're causing some problems here.
| | 01:18 | But let's say that I want to
get rid of Olivia Anderson.
| | 01:21 | I want to get rid of her from my course.
| | 01:23 | I want to erase her.
| | 01:24 | I want it to be as if I've
never heard of her ever.
| | 01:28 | I click the check mark to left of
Olivia Anderson's username and click
| | 01:33 | Remove User from Course.
| | 01:35 | It is going to give me an error
message, or a warning message, here saying, are
| | 01:40 | you sure about this, because this
is final and it cannot be undone.
| | 01:45 | Once you delete a user, that user is
deleted; there is no way to get them back.
| | 01:51 | So if you're sure about it,
click on OK, and Olivia is gone.
| | 01:55 | It's as if she never touched my class.
| | 01:57 | I have no record that she was ever there.
| | 01:59 | Now, let me show you something else.
| | 02:01 | I'm going to scroll down here, and I
have got Nigel French here, and Nigel
| | 02:04 | French is a co-instructor.
| | 02:06 | So how do I remove a co-instructor?
| | 02:08 | And the answer is, you can't exactly yet.
| | 02:14 | Let me try to remove him right now.
| | 02:15 | So I'm an instructor.
| | 02:17 | I'm Patrick Crispen.
| | 02:18 | This is Nigel French.
| | 02:19 | If I click on Remove Users from Course,
it's going to give me that same message,
| | 02:23 | it's going to say this action
is final and cannot be undone.
| | 02:27 | By the way, when I remove an
instructor, it doesn't remove the
| | 02:30 | instructor's files.
| | 02:31 | The files stay, and they just say
that they were uploaded by the
| | 02:35 | Blackboard administrator.
| | 02:36 | I'm going to say OK, and it's going to
give me an error message at the top of
| | 02:39 | the page saying, "Cannot remove
instructor users from course. Only system
| | 02:44 | administrator users can remove instructor users."
| | 02:47 | Before you contact your system
administrator, there actually is a secret:
| | 02:51 | you can remove an instructor
from a course that you're teaching.
| | 02:55 | However, it takes two steps.
| | 02:57 | Step number one is you
have to demote the instructor.
| | 03:01 | To the right of the word Nigel, in
other words, his username, there is this
| | 03:05 | button with the two downward-facing chevrons--
remember that usually means edit or more.
| | 03:09 | I'm going to click on that, and I'm
going to change Nigel's role in this course.
| | 03:14 | I'm going to change him right now
from an instructor to a student.
| | 03:18 | That's perfectly fine. I can do that.
| | 03:20 | So I've changed Nigel from
an instructor to a student.
| | 03:23 | Now that he is a student,
| | 03:25 | I can remove him from the course,
and I won't get the error message.
| | 03:28 | So remember, you may have the option of
removing or un-enrolling a user from
| | 03:34 | your Blackboard course.
Don't do it, please don't do it.
| | 03:39 | However, if you have to, use the
Remove Users from Course button and if that
| | 03:43 | button is not available to you,
contact your institution's help desk and ask
| | 03:47 | them how they would
remove a user from your course.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
7. Adding and Managing ContentOrganizing content into folders| 00:00 | To add an empty content folder to a
content area within your Blackboard course,
| | 00:05 | click the content area and then
click Build Content > Content Folder.
| | 00:11 | Now, before you upload anything to your
Blackboard course that you want to give
| | 00:15 | to your students--it could be a
PowerPoint presentation, a Microsoft Word file
| | 00:18 | or Adobe Acrobat file--
| | 00:20 | please, please, please, take a
moment to figure out how you want to
| | 00:24 | organize that content.
| | 00:26 | From a student's point of view, nothing
is more frustrating than clicking on the
| | 00:31 | content area in a Blackboard course
and seeing a huge, completely unorganized
| | 00:36 | laundry list of files, a big
document dump from the instructor,
| | 00:40 | because it's almost impossible, from
students' point of view, to find the single
| | 00:43 | file that student needs to be
able to get ready for the next class.
| | 00:47 | In chapter 4, we showed you how to add
a new content area to the Course menu.
| | 00:52 | In this movie, we're going to look at
how to create folders within an already-
| | 00:56 | existing content area.
| | 00:57 | In this case, we're going to do
it in the Information content area.
| | 01:00 | So I click on Information, and what I
want to do is I want to click on Build
| | 01:04 | Content and I'm going click on Content Folder.
| | 01:07 | By the way, if you're running
Blackboard 9 instead of Blackboard 9.1, you'd click
| | 01:11 | on Build > Create Folder.
| | 01:13 | Here in Blackboard 9.1, it's Content Area >
Build Content, and then Content Folder.
| | 01:18 | So I'm going to click on that,
and it's going to ask me to type in a name,
| | 01:22 | and this is where I need to start thinking
about how I'm going to organize my content.
| | 01:27 | I can organize it by content type.
| | 01:29 | I could have a handouts folder, a
readings folder, an assignments folder,
| | 01:32 | an audio file folder.
| | 01:34 | I could do it chronologically,
week 1, week 2, unit 1, and unit 2.
| | 01:39 | I could do it by subject, by
behavioral theories, developmental
| | 01:42 | theories, cognitive theories.
| | 01:44 | It's really completely up to you.
| | 01:45 | In this case I'm going to do Week 1.
Just click Week 1 and let's scroll down here.
| | 01:50 | The name is required.
| | 01:51 | I can change the color of this name as
it appears on the page, but you know, OK,
| | 01:55 | wow, that's exciting.
| | 01:57 | The text box here, completely optional,
but I can say, "These are the Week 1
| | 02:03 | files," scroll down even further.
| | 02:06 | And now I've got a couple of options.
First of all, do I want my students to
| | 02:10 | be able to see this?
| | 02:11 | And the answer is almost always going to be yes.
| | 02:13 | You could create it now and say no,
make it available later, but now I think
| | 02:18 | in this case, yeah, I want my students to be
able to get into the folder and see the contents.
| | 02:22 | Do I want to track the number of views?
| | 02:24 | In this case, I want to say yes.
| | 02:27 | Blackboard has the ability for me to
go back later and see who viewed my
| | 02:31 | files, who viewed my folders, who
viewed my content, and get some really
| | 02:36 | detailed statistics.
| | 02:37 | This is actually really helpful if the
student wants to challenge a grade.
| | 02:40 | You can go back into Blackboard and you
can track how much the student actually
| | 02:45 | interacted with your Blackboard course site.
| | 02:47 | You also have the ability here to
do date and time restrictions, so you are
| | 02:50 | going to have this folder come up at a
certain date and time and disappear at a
| | 02:55 | certain date and time.
| | 02:56 | Always do these in pairs. If you're
going to have a Display After, always set
| | 03:00 | a Display Until. If you're going to have a
Display Until, always set a Display After.
| | 03:04 | In this case, this is course content,
so I'm not going to change this at all.
| | 03:08 | I'm going to just do Week 1
and leave it at that and click on Submit.
| | 03:12 | I've now created a Week 1 folder.
| | 03:15 | It says Enabled Statistics Tracking.
| | 03:17 | Well, it turns out it's only going to
show that for me if I actually turn Edit
| | 03:21 | Mode off. I'm in Student Mode, and you
can actually see what the students see.
| | 03:25 | Now, the folder right now is empty.
| | 03:26 | There is nothing in it, but I can go
back in the breadcrumb trail, get back to
| | 03:30 | the Information folder, turn Edit Mode back on.
| | 03:32 | Let me create a Week 2 folder just for fun.
| | 03:35 | So I'm going to build content, create a
new content folder, I'll call it Week 2,
| | 03:41 | and say, "These are the Week 2 files."
| | 03:47 | I do you want to turn on
the Track Number of Views.
| | 03:50 | I'm going to come back and get that
information later. Click on Submit, and I
| | 03:54 | have now created two folders
within the Information content area.
| | 03:59 | By the way, notice that the
Information content area is no longer hidden,
| | 04:02 | because there's content in it--even
though they are empty folders--that's now
| | 04:05 | been viewed by the students.
| | 04:07 | This content area here has no content, so
it's still being hidden from the students.
| | 04:12 | Two more things I want to show you.
Notice that to the left of this Week 2, in
| | 04:17 | the folder, there is just up-and-down
arrow. Just like with the course menu, I
| | 04:21 | can click and hold this and I
can actually reorganize this.
| | 04:24 | So I might want to think of putting
the Week 1 folder first in the first week
| | 04:29 | and then second week put the second
week folder and just keep reorganizing each
| | 04:32 | week--completely up to me. You can do that.
| | 04:35 | Last thing I want to show you is to the
right of each of these folders, there is
| | 04:39 | a little button with two
downward-facing chevrons.
| | 04:42 | In Blackboard, that always means
edit or more--in this case it is edit.
| | 04:47 | I'm going to click on this and if I
ever need to make a change, I can go back
| | 04:50 | here and choose Edit.
| | 04:52 | I can go back and see the statistics, so I
can actually view the statistics for this item.
| | 04:58 | I can see the users progress
through it. I can copy it. I can move it.
| | 05:01 | But if I ever need to edit, I'm going
to click the button with the two downward-
| | 05:05 | facing chevrons and then click Edit.
| | 05:07 | So remember, to create an empty
folder within a content area, within your
| | 05:12 | Blackboard course, click on Build
Content and then Content Folder.
| | 05:15 | Or if you're in Blackboard 9,
click on Build > Create Folder.
| | 05:19 | In the next movie, we're going to show
you how to put content within the folders.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Uploading files| 00:00 | To upload files from your computer
to Blackboard, access your course,
| | 00:04 | click on a content area--
in this case Information.
| | 00:07 | If you have any subfolders,
click on the subfolder.
| | 00:10 | Make sure Edit Mode is on and then click
Build Content and choose either Item or File.
| | 00:18 | Now I'd love to pretend that we're all
going to log in to Blackboard and create
| | 00:23 | brand-new content within Blackboard.
| | 00:25 | But the reality is we already have a
lot of files on our computer that already
| | 00:29 | exist and we are just going to upload
them from our computer to Blackboard.
| | 00:34 | If you are going to do that though,
there are some rules to remember.
| | 00:37 | See, the Internet has some
very specific file-naming rules.
| | 00:41 | On your computer, file names can
contain extra characters and spaces.
| | 00:45 | On a Mac, your files may
not even have any extensions.
| | 00:49 | Unfortunately, that's just
not going to work on the web.
| | 00:52 | On the web your file names
cannot have any special characters.
| | 00:55 | If you have to hit the Ctrl or Alt
keys to produce a particular letter or
| | 00:59 | character in the name of a file,
that almost always just won't work.
| | 01:05 | Also, shorter file names are
always better than longer file names.
| | 01:10 | And on a Mac, remember, before you
upload a file from your Mac to Blackboard,
| | 01:14 | or any web service,
| | 01:16 | make sure you have the file extension, the
.PPT or .PPTX, at the end of the file name.
| | 01:24 | Talking about file types and file
extensions, Blackboard out-of-the-box can
| | 01:29 | support most common file types: .DOC, .DOCX,
| | 01:34 | those are Microsoft Word documents;
| | 01:36 | .PPT, .PPTX, those are PowerPoint files;
| | 01:39 | .PDF is Adobe Acrobat file.
| | 01:42 | If you have a non-standard file type,
like say .MCS file--that's a MathCAD
| | 01:49 | file--that may not work on Blackboard until
you first speak to the system administrator.
| | 01:57 | The other thing to remember is just
because you can put a file on Blackboard
| | 02:01 | doesn't mean that your students are
going to be able to open that file.
| | 02:04 | Let me give you an example.
| | 02:06 | Let's say I upload a Microsoft Word
doc, a .DOC file, and a student downloads it,
| | 02:11 | but the student doesn't have Microsoft Word.
| | 02:13 | Well, that's not an example
of Blackboard being broken.
| | 02:17 | That's just an example of the student not
having the program necessary to open that file.
| | 02:22 | Finally, you do need to be aware that
many institutions limit the size of the
| | 02:28 | individual files you can upload to Blackboard,
and some limit the overall size of your course.
| | 02:33 | The reason for that is, let's
say I have a 100 MB movie file.
| | 02:37 | Well, that file is going to take
over 30 minutes to download over the
| | 02:41 | fastest DSL connection. That's just silly.
| | 02:44 | Keep your files small.
| | 02:46 | When in doubt, break it into chunks, or
post it somewhere else like a streaming
| | 02:50 | video server, and then
link to it from Blackboard.
| | 02:53 | And I strongly recommend you
should contact your help desk for
| | 02:58 | information about your
institution's individual file-size and course-size
| | 03:02 | limits in Blackboard.
| | 03:04 | Now, before we get started, I've got a
content area called Information over here.
| | 03:10 | I want to rename that.
| | 03:11 | That just doesn't seem to
make a lot of sense to me.
| | 03:14 | I am going to click Rename.
| | 03:16 | I am going to call this Course Documents and
click on the green check box. That saves it.
| | 03:23 | So now I have a Course of Documents folder.
| | 03:25 | I'll click on Course Documents and
I'm going to click into my Week 1 folder.
| | 03:31 | So we've changed the name of
Information to Course Documents, just to make it a little
| | 03:35 | easier. To upload a file from your
computer to Blackboard with Edit mode On,
| | 03:41 | click on the Content Area, click on the
subfolder, and then click on Build Content.
| | 03:46 | By the way, if you're on Blackboard 9,
you'll see just to Create Item button.
| | 03:51 | Blackboard 9.1, click
Build Content, and choose Item.
| | 03:55 | Now the first thing you need to
enter here is the name of your file.
| | 04:00 | In this case, I am just
going to call this Week 1 Files.
| | 04:07 | Scroll down a little bit. Now I can, if I want to,
change the color of this name so the Week 1 Files
| | 04:14 | appears in some different color.
| | 04:16 | That's completely up to you.
| | 04:18 | And then I have a text box here where I can
enter a description, instructions, a question.
| | 04:22 | In this case, I am going to give the
students some simple reading instructions
| | 04:26 | saying, "Please carefully review the
following files and be prepared to discuss
| | 04:31 | them during class next Tuesday."
| | 04:33 | And now I've got an option here.
| | 04:37 | If I want to, I can attach
files here in this text editor.
| | 04:41 | Down on the bottom row
I've got this button here--
| | 04:44 | it says Attach File.
| | 04:46 | And if I click on that button, you are
going to see that this process is similar
| | 04:50 | to the process of attaching
a file to an email message.
| | 04:53 | I am going to click Browse My Computer.
| | 04:55 | On my desktop, I've got an Exercise Files folder.
| | 04:58 | If you don't have this, you can
just use any file off of your computer.
| | 05:02 | And I am going to choose the
cognitive_art PowerPoint presentation.
| | 05:05 | Don't see the file extension here.
| | 05:07 | That's fine, because on my PC
the file extensions are hidden.
| | 05:11 | I am going to click on Open.
| | 05:12 | And it's going to say, okay, I'm going
to take the cognitive_art.pptx file,
| | 05:17 | I am going to upload that.
| | 05:18 | If you want to, you can
enter some alternative text here.
| | 05:21 | This is for people who are visually impaired.
| | 05:23 | They have a text-to-speech reader, which
is going to read pictures to them, the
| | 05:27 | text that goes along with those pictures.
| | 05:29 | In this case, we are just putting up words
on the page, so I don't need alt text here.
| | 05:33 | When the students click on this, do I want
this to open in a new window? Sure, why not?
| | 05:38 | I click on Submit. Now I'm not done.
| | 05:41 | There actually is one more step here.
| | 05:44 | If I close this window, click on X, I
haven't actually attached this file.
| | 05:48 | I have to click Submit one more time.
| | 05:50 | So it gives me a receipt
saying, hey! Guess what?
| | 05:53 | I'm about to upload this
thing, but I can't resize it--
| | 05:57 | it's just going to be a link. Is that okay?
| | 05:59 | Sure. Click on Submit, and I can now
add a link to my cognitive_art
| | 06:03 | PowerPoint presentation. Let me hit Enter.
| | 06:06 | I am going to do that one more time.
| | 06:08 | Let me just go and get one more file.
| | 06:10 | So I'll click on Attach
File, Browse My Computer.
| | 06:12 | I am actually I am going to go and I'm going
to open the results_chapter and click Submit.
| | 06:19 | Click Submit again.
| | 06:20 | Remember, that second Submit is very important.
| | 06:23 | I've now added this here.
| | 06:25 | So, one way to attach files in a
Blackboard course is in the text editor,
| | 06:31 | click on Attach File.
| | 06:33 | Another way to do this, and this is
actually the old-school way, you can scroll
| | 06:37 | down and under Attachments,
you can also attach it down here.
| | 06:41 | I'm going to click Browse My Computer.
| | 06:43 | Let's get a different file this time.
| | 06:45 | I am going to click on Desktop, go to
the Exercise Files, and I'll actually take
| | 06:49 | the descriptive_statistics.
| | 06:52 | Take that and it's attached it there.
| | 06:54 | I am going to browse my computer.
| | 06:55 | I am going to get one more file.
| | 06:57 | Notice if I wanted to, I can just keep
adding files left and right, up until I
| | 07:03 | reach the file-size limit of my institution.
| | 07:06 | So what's the difference between
attaching something here in the text box and
| | 07:11 | attaching something down here in Attachments?
| | 07:14 | Well, what you'll see in a minute is
that the things that we do in Attachments
| | 07:18 | actually show at the top of whatever we create.
| | 07:22 | And the links that we have here are
embedded within the instructions, or the
| | 07:27 | information, that we give our students.
| | 07:29 | It's completely up to you.
| | 07:31 | I am kind of used to the old-school way.
| | 07:33 | I still do Attachments.
| | 07:34 | I am not use to attaching it in the body.
| | 07:36 | Other people are absolutely comfortable
with putting things into the text box editor.
| | 07:40 | This is completely up to you.
| | 07:42 | It's just a matter of taste.
| | 07:44 | I am going to scroll down now and it says, do
I want to permit users to view this content?
| | 07:50 | That question is, do I want my students to
be able to see this file? The answer is Yes.
| | 07:55 | I could say no right now, which
means that students, when they get into
| | 07:59 | Blackboard, won't be able to see
anything in this particular item, all four
| | 08:03 | files, until I turn this on later.
But no, I am going to leave it on.
| | 08:07 | Do I want to track the number of views?
| | 08:09 | Sure, I'd like to come back later and
see how many students have seen this.
| | 08:12 | And then I could choose
date and time restrictions.
| | 08:15 | I can have it show up at a certain date and
time and disappear at a certain date and time.
| | 08:20 | The big thing to remember is when
you're playing around with the Date and Time
| | 08:23 | Restrictions always pair your
Display After and Display Until.
| | 08:27 | In other words, if you have a Display
After date, always set a Display Until date;
| | 08:31 | if you have a Display Until date,
always have a Display After date.
| | 08:34 | In this case, I am not going to do that.
| | 08:36 | These files are going to be available
throughout the entire length of my course,
| | 08:39 | so I am going to click on Submit.
| | 08:41 | And what you're going to see there,
you get to see the attached files.
| | 08:44 | So the attached files show up right
here under Week 1 files, and it shows the
| | 08:49 | Excel file and the PDF.
| | 08:51 | And then you get to see what we
added in the text editor down beneath it.
| | 08:56 | To see what this looks like from a
student's point of view, if you click Edit
| | 08:59 | Mode off, that's exactly
what the students would see.
| | 09:02 | Let me turn Edit Mode back on, because I
want to show you one other way to add files.
| | 09:06 | So we've went in, we clicked on Build Content.
| | 09:09 | If you got Blackboard 9, we
just clicked on Create Item.
| | 09:12 | Clicked on Item, and we did it through
the text editor, and we also did it by
| | 09:16 | Attach File, but I wanted to
see that in Blackboard 9.1,
| | 09:21 | there is a new option--it's called File.
| | 09:23 | If I click on File, what this is going
to do is this is going to take a file off
| | 09:29 | of my computer, put it onto
Blackboard, but it's not going to have any
| | 09:33 | comments or any instructions.
| | 09:35 | Let me actually do that.
| | 09:36 | I am going to browse my computer and
in this case, let's actually go and take
| | 09:42 | the JAWS_citylights, which is an MP3,
and yes, you can have PowerPoint
| | 09:47 | presentations, Adobe Acrobat files
--you can use whatever you want.
| | 09:51 | In this case, we'll do the JAWS_citylight.
| | 09:53 | Notice it didn't even ask me for the name of it.
| | 09:56 | This is what File does.
| | 09:57 | File is just going to take the file
off my computer and put it up there.
| | 10:00 | I can change the name if I
want to. I am not going to.
| | 10:03 | I can change the color of the name
or have it open up in a new window.
| | 10:07 | And then we get the standard options:
| | 10:08 | Do I want my students to be
able to see this right now? Sure.
| | 10:11 | Do I want to track the number of views? Yup!
| | 10:14 | Do I want to set Date
and Time Restrictions? Nope.
| | 10:17 | Click on Submit, and there it is.
| | 10:19 | I now have a link to that MP3.
| | 10:21 | It's not playing on the
page. It's not embedded.
| | 10:23 | The students actually have to
click on it and download it.
| | 10:26 | Now one thing to remember: we are not in this
case giving students access to your computer.
| | 10:32 | When you take these files and attach
them or put them up into Blackboard, we're
| | 10:36 | making a link to your computer.
| | 10:38 | What that means is that the files are safe.
| | 10:40 | You can now turn off your computer and
the students can still access the files.
| | 10:44 | But it also means that if you make a
change on your computer, you need to
| | 10:47 | re-upload the files back to Blackboard.
| | 10:50 | How do you go and do that?
| | 10:52 | Well, to the right of any of these
items that you've just uploaded, there is a
| | 10:56 | button with downward-facing chevrons.
Remember, in Blackboard, if you ever see a
| | 11:00 | button to downward-facing chevrons,
that always means More or Edit, and in this
| | 11:05 | case I can go back to Edit.
| | 11:06 | And if I click on Edit, it takes me back
to the Editing Mode, where I can go and
| | 11:10 | change whatever I want.
| | 11:11 | In this case, let me hit Cancel.
| | 11:13 | The last thing I want to show you is that I
have the ability now to reorganize this.
| | 11:19 | Do you see the arrow, the up-and-
down arrow to the left of any item?
| | 11:23 | If I click and hold my mouse and drag,
I can actually reorganize anything here.
| | 11:28 | So I don't have to choose a number
and say this is going to be first,
| | 11:31 | this is going to be second.
Just basically drag it to the order that you
| | 11:35 | want it on the page. So, that's it.
| | 11:38 | Remember to upload files from your
computer to Blackboard, access your course,
| | 11:42 | click on a content area, click Build
Content, and then click either Item or File.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Text Editor| 00:00 | Blackboard's text editor appears in
many locations within Blackboard, and it's a
| | 00:05 | way for you to add and format
text, equations, and multimedia.
| | 00:09 | Now, a few institutions disable this
tool, but it should be available in your
| | 00:13 | version of Blackboard.
| | 00:14 | What I am going to do is I
am in the Course Documents,
| | 00:17 | I am going to click on Week 1.
| | 00:19 | I want to give my students
something to think about prior to class.
| | 00:22 | I am going to click on Build Content
and Create Item, and instead of attaching
| | 00:26 | something this time, I am actually
going to have them think about some stuff.
| | 00:31 | So I am going to create some content
in Blackboard, and I am going to ask the
| | 00:35 | question in this case, "Question for next week."
| | 00:40 | Let me put some text in here and rather
than making look it how solidly I type,
| | 00:45 | I'll just paste some text.
| | 00:47 | So I have got this text here, and I
want you to notice that we've got this
| | 00:51 | text editor that looks an awful lot
like a word processor, and it turns out it
| | 00:55 | is a word processor.
| | 00:57 | The default text that we see here is
12-point left-justified Arial, but I can, if
| | 01:03 | I want to, change that.
| | 01:04 | So I can say I want to highlight chapter
2 and make it in a different font, so I
| | 01:09 | can choose Arial Black, and then I can
say for cognitive theories, I can go and
| | 01:14 | change that to oh, say Comic Sans.
| | 01:17 | However, friends do not
let friends use Comic Sans.
| | 01:21 | Notice that I have got the ability here to
go and change some of the formatting here.
| | 01:25 | I can go here and highlight the word 'large'.
| | 01:28 | I can make it bold.
| | 01:30 | I can make it italic.
| | 01:31 | I do not recommend underlining.
The reason why is if I were to go and underline,
| | 01:37 | the students are going to see
something that's underlined on their web
| | 01:40 | browser, they are going
to think it's a hyperlink.
| | 01:41 | They are going to try to click on it.
| | 01:43 | My recommendation in this case
is don't underline anything.
| | 01:47 | I've got the ability to strike through.
| | 01:48 | I can do subscript and superscript.
| | 01:51 | I can change the alignment--left, center,
right--pretty much like Microsoft Word.
| | 01:56 | If you've used Word, you've pretty much
got this. I've got the ability to change the
| | 01:59 | direction. I can add lists. I
can even do indents and outdents.
| | 02:04 | That really is the first row of the text editor.
| | 02:07 | Second row, there is a spell check,
there is a cut, there is a copy and a paste.
| | 02:12 | There is an ability for you to clear formatting.
| | 02:15 | So in this case, I can highlight
everything and clear the formatting.
| | 02:18 | It should take me back to the
original version that I had.
| | 02:21 | It sort of works, but I will show you
an example in just a minute where it
| | 02:25 | doesn't work as well as I hoped it would.
| | 02:27 | I've got the ability to undo and redo.
| | 02:29 | I can actually insert a hyperlink.
| | 02:31 | I will link to some place on the
Internet, can do a table, insert a line.
| | 02:35 | I can actually go here and let's
go and make chapter 2 bold again.
| | 02:40 | I can change the text color to say red--
click on Apply to make that happen.
| | 02:45 | I have got the ability, if I want to, to
pick a symbol. I can do a highlighting.
| | 02:50 | And if you play around with equations,
notice that Blackboard does have WebEQ
| | 02:56 | and MathML, and we will talk about
this HTML Toggle HTML Source Code.
| | 03:01 | If you know HTML, this is actually kind of
helpful for you to get into the HTML view.
| | 03:06 | There is also a Markup Validation.
| | 03:09 | Last row are the Attach features.
We'll I'll talk about that in an upcoming
| | 03:12 | movie, but I want to show you a
particular problem, and this isn't actually
| | 03:18 | Blackboard problem.
| | 03:19 | It's kind of an Internet problem.
| | 03:21 | It's the way the Internet works,
and it's a Microsoft Word problem.
| | 03:25 | I have got this paragraph here.
| | 03:26 | This in Microsoft Word.
| | 03:28 | This is from the Results chapter, which
is part of the exercise files, but if you
| | 03:32 | don't have it, you can use anything.
| | 03:33 | I am going to copy this.
| | 03:35 | I am going to go back now, and
I want you to notice something.
| | 03:40 | If I go here and I try
to paste, it may not work.
| | 03:44 | I might not have anything happen.
Or it might pop up a message saying, do you
| | 03:50 | give me permission to access your clipboard?
| | 03:53 | In this case, that's what it's doing.
| | 03:54 | That's not actually a Blackboard issue.
| | 03:56 | It turns out that the cutting and
pasting buttons in some web browsers just may
| | 04:01 | not work, and it's not really a Blackboard issue.
| | 04:04 | It's because your browser
doesn't have permission to access your
| | 04:09 | computer's clipboard.
| | 04:10 | Your operating system will actually put a
wall between your browser and your clipboard.
| | 04:15 | It's a security feature to keep you
from getting a virus on your computer.
| | 04:20 | So if you try to click on these
buttons and they don't work, that's not a big
| | 04:24 | problem, because it turns out the
keyboard shortcuts, and even the mouse
| | 04:27 | shortcuts, still work.
| | 04:29 | So I could write here, go click and
paste it, and it's going to paste it in.
| | 04:34 | So you may notice here that this
Microsoft Word pasted text just doesn't
| | 04:39 | actually look very good.
| | 04:41 | It doesn't match, and it turns out
what's going on--and if you click on the HTML
| | 04:46 | Source Code, you'd be able to see this--
is that the formatting is out of whack.
| | 04:51 | It's not really a Blackboard
issue, it's a Microsoft issue.
| | 04:55 | Microsoft Word will also include a
whole bunch of just weird HTML. It's true
| | 05:00 | across multiple browsers.
| | 05:02 | In fact, Dreamweaver has a
Cleanup Word HTML command.
| | 05:05 | There is a way here--and we
will try it, it may work,
| | 05:09 | it may not--where I can go
and try to Clear Formatting.
| | 05:13 | This case it works. Sometimes it doesn't.
| | 05:15 | Actually, in this case I have still got
double space, so it didn't completely
| | 05:18 | clear the formatting.
| | 05:19 | That's why I say that clear formatting
doesn't work as well as I hope it would.
| | 05:23 | But remember, when you are cutting and
pasting from Microsoft Word, it sometimes
| | 05:28 | presents a problem, and formatting is
going to be out of whack, and this is going
| | 05:31 | to be a problem when you start
cutting and pasting test questions.
| | 05:34 | We will talk about that in a minute.
| | 05:36 | My recommendation is, instead of
cutting and pasting from Microsoft Word
| | 05:40 | directly into Blackboard, go to
your computer's text editor first--
| | 05:46 | not Blackboard's text editor,
but your computer's text editor.
| | 05:49 | If you've got a PC, there is a
program on your computer called Notepad.
| | 05:54 | If you've got a Mac, you've got TextEdit.
| | 05:56 | Cut and paste from Microsoft Word into
Notepad or text editor and then cut and
| | 06:02 | paste from the text editor into Blackboard.
| | 06:05 | That will remove all the formatting
and make sure it looks absolutely
| | 06:08 | the way you want it to look.
| | 06:10 | So that's the text editor in a nutshell.
| | 06:13 | In our next movie we are going to talk
about how to insert a multimedia file
| | 06:17 | into your Blackboard course.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Inserting a multimedia file| 00:00 | Now, earlier in this chapter, we looked
at ways to upload files to Blackboard.
| | 00:05 | These files required students to
actually interact with them. For a student to
| | 00:09 | open up this Excel file, they have to
click on this link. Same thing for the
| | 00:13 | PowerPoint Presentations and this Word Document.
| | 00:16 | What if rather than having the
students download a file or click on it,
| | 00:21 | you'd rather embed a sound file or a movie or
a picture right into your Blackboard course?
| | 00:27 | Well, one way to do this is to go to
Build Content and click on Item. Or if you
| | 00:33 | are on Blackboard 9, just
click the Create Item button.
| | 00:37 | So let me click on Item and we are back
in the text editor, and this time we're not
| | 00:42 | going to attach any files.
| | 00:43 | We are actually going to
enter information directly.
| | 00:45 | Let me just do something here called Sound file.
| | 00:49 | And on the last row of the text
editor I'm not going to attach.
| | 00:53 | In this case, I've got buttons for me
to attach an image, to add an MPEG, to
| | 00:58 | add QuickTime content, to add audio
content--that's actually what I am going to
| | 01:02 | click on, but I want you to notice
that I can also add Flash/Shockwave, and I
| | 01:06 | can even add a Mashup.
| | 01:07 | We will talk about Mashups a little later.
| | 01:09 | In this case, I am going to click on Add
Audio Content. That's actually going to
| | 01:13 | open up a pop-up window, and it's going
to ask me, okay well if you are going to
| | 01:17 | add an audio file, where is the file?
| | 01:19 | I am going to browse My Computer, and on
the Desktop, in the Exercise Files folder,
| | 01:24 | there's a file here called
JAWS_citylights. It's an MP3.
| | 01:28 | I am going to click on Open.
| | 01:30 | If you don't have these files,
that's fine. You can use any audio file.
| | 01:33 | In fact, Blackboard will support
AIFF, ASF, MP3, MIDI, MOV, WAV, WMA.
| | 01:42 | If you've got a file format that's an
audio file, it should be able to upload here.
| | 01:46 | I am going to click on Open.
| | 01:47 | Now, it's going to ask me do
I want to put in alt text?
| | 01:51 | I am not going to do that here, but the
alt text is usually for people who are
| | 01:55 | visually impaired or blind,
and it will read that to them.
| | 01:59 | In this case, it's an audio
file, so we should be okay.
| | 02:03 | It's also going to ask me, do I want to
AutoStart, in other words start playing
| | 02:06 | immediately? I am going to say no.
| | 02:07 | Do I want it to loop? Nope. And I
am going to have the full controls.
| | 02:11 | Now when I click on Submit, I'm not actually
done yet. It's going to give me a preview.
| | 02:17 | In fact, it's going to open up QuickTime
and show me what this thing is going to
| | 02:21 | look like when I submit it onto the page.
| | 02:24 | In this case, I am going to click on
Submit, but I could right now click Play
| | 02:28 | and hear what it sounds like.
| | 02:29 | (Text-to-speech reader: Welcome to citylights.)
| | 02:30 | Yup, that sounds like a text-to-
speech reader, so I am going to click on
| | 02:34 | Submit, and there it is.
| | 02:35 | I've now added this to my text editor,
and I can put text before it or after it.
| | 02:40 | In this case, I'm just going to
scroll down, turn on Track Number of Views.
| | 02:43 | I'm not going to change the
Date and Time Restrictions.
| | 02:46 | I am going to click on Submit and if I
scroll down, now this JAWS_citylights was
| | 02:52 | actually a file that we attached.
| | 02:54 | We went to Build Content and we chose File.
| | 02:58 | But I want you to see that in this
case we actually embedded it here.
| | 03:02 | I am going to click on Play.
| | 03:04 | (Text-to-speech reader: Welcome to citylights.)
| | 03:05 | And I've now embedded this
within my Blackboard course.
| | 03:10 | So unlike adding a file where the
students have to download it, I can actually
| | 03:14 | embed a multimedia file.
| | 03:16 | So we did it one way by going into Build
Content and then creating an item, or in
| | 03:22 | Blackboard 9.0 just going and
clicking the Create Item button.
| | 03:26 | I want to show you something new that's
actually built into Blackboard 9.1, is Audio.
| | 03:33 | So under Build Content, I am going to
click on Audio, and I'm actually going to go
| | 03:38 | find that file again. I will browse my
files, and I will go to JAWS_citylights, and
| | 03:44 | I am going to type in a new
name for this, Sound File 2.
| | 03:50 | I have the ability to change the
color of the words Sound File 2.
| | 03:53 | It's completely up to me.
| | 03:55 | And notice that I have the
ability to include a text transcript.
| | 03:58 | They didn't have that earlier.
| | 04:00 | Its a really helpful feature if you
have students who have hearing difficulties,
| | 04:04 | or who are going to view your movie in
a really, really loud environment and
| | 04:07 | won't be able to hear their computer
speakers. Having a text transcript is
| | 04:11 | actually a really good idea.
| | 04:13 | You have the ability to have this
thing start playing when the page
| | 04:16 | loads--usually a bad idea--
| | 04:19 | have it loop and play over and over again, no.
| | 04:21 | Permit Users to View this Content, in
other words will students be able to
| | 04:25 | see this right now?
| | 04:26 | The answer is sure, why not?
| | 04:27 | If I set it to No, I have to
come back and set it to Yes later.
| | 04:32 | I can track the number of views, and I
almost always do. And then I can choose
| | 04:36 | the Date and Time Restrictions. I can
have this show up at a certain date,
| | 04:39 | disappear at a certain date.
| | 04:40 | Remember, always do these in pairs.
If you are going to set a Display After,
| | 04:44 | set a Display Until sometime in the future.
| | 04:47 | I am not going to do that here.
I am just going to click on Submit.
| | 04:50 | Notice that I don't have to
click Submit a second time.
| | 04:53 | What it does is it adds it at
the very, very bottom of the page.
| | 04:57 | And the difference between the two --
remember this is where I went in to Item,
| | 05:01 | but if I go and choose Build Content >
Audio, it not only embeds it, but gives
| | 05:07 | the students a link to download that file.
| | 05:10 | I also want you to notice that to the left, I have
got this up-and-down arrow. That means I
| | 05:14 | can rearrange this and move it
to someplace else on the page.
| | 05:17 | If I want, I can drag it up and
down. In this case, I am not going to.
| | 05:21 | And to the right, I've got the button
with the two downward-facing chevrons.
| | 05:25 | What does that mean?
| | 05:26 | Remember, always means edit or more. If I
ever need to go back, I can always edit this.
| | 05:32 | So we have added an audio file.
| | 05:34 | Let's now go and add an image.
| | 05:36 | I am going to click on Build
Content and choose an Image.
| | 05:40 | It's going to ask me to find the file.
In this case I've got a picture of the
| | 05:44 | Hollywood sign, which doesn't have a
lot to do with educational technology,
| | 05:48 | but it's a picture.
| | 05:50 | And I am going to type in Hollywood Sign.
| | 05:52 | So the alt text box here is
where I would add in extra text.
| | 05:56 | In this case, I want to do that.
If I have students in my course who are
| | 06:00 | visually disabled, I want their
computers to be able to read back to them what
| | 06:04 | I type in this box.
| | 06:06 | So I can have 'Photograph
of the Hollywood Sign' here.
| | 06:09 | If this were a really complex picture, I
might want to enter in a long description.
| | 06:14 | If you ever listen the PBS, there is a
descriptive audio channel, and you might
| | 06:18 | hear it where it says, "Queen
Elizabeth is standing at the top of the
| | 06:21 | stairway. She's wearing a blue
dress and tiara on her head and she's now
| | 06:25 | descending the stairway."
| | 06:27 | That's what the long
description is its just extra text.
| | 06:29 | In this case, Photograph
of a Hollywood sign is fine.
| | 06:32 | And then under Image options, I have two choices.
| | 06:36 | I can have this display at the
original size, or I can choose a custom size.
| | 06:41 | If it's a custom size, I have to
choose the width and height that I want it to
| | 06:44 | display on the screen.
| | 06:46 | When you're uploading images, you don't
want your images more than 600 pixels
| | 06:50 | wide, or the students are going to have
to scroll off to the right-hand side of
| | 06:53 | the page to view it.
| | 06:54 | So if it's big, resize it--choose Custom;
| | 06:57 | if not, Original is fine.
| | 06:59 | Do you want to put a border around this?
| | 07:01 | None, you can choose 1 pixel,
2 pixel. I'll choose None.
| | 07:04 | I can also make it where the students can
click on this picture and be taken to a web page.
| | 07:09 | I am not going to do that here, but in
that case, I would choose whether or not
| | 07:13 | I want that web page to open within
Blackboard or open up a new pop-up window.
| | 07:18 | And then finally, we are back to our
Standard Options. Do I want the students to
| | 07:21 | be able to see this right now? Yes.
| | 07:23 | Do I want to track the number of views? Sure.
| | 07:25 | Do I want to do date and time
restrictions? No, I do not.
| | 07:29 | So what sort of images can
you add to a Blackboard course?
| | 07:33 | Well, you can GIFs, JPEGs,
PINGs, TIFFs, and WMFs.
| | 07:39 | So, let me click on Submit, and you'll
scroll down and at the very bottom of
| | 07:44 | the page, you'll see a picture of the Hollywood
sign, taken from the Griffith Park Observatory.
| | 07:51 | Two down, one to go. We are going to click on Build
Content and we are going to add a video.
| | 07:54 | It's going to ask me, where is the
video, and again I am going to browse my
| | 07:58 | computer. I've got a picture here of
the Normandy American Cemetery.
| | 08:01 | I can type in Normandy American Cemetery.
| | 08:05 | I can change the color of the name.
By the way, if I just made a mistake and
| | 08:08 | I didn't actually want to upload this
video file, I can select a different
| | 08:12 | file. What sort of video
formats does Blackboard support?
| | 08:15 | Well, it does MPEG or AVI, QuickTime or Flash.
| | 08:19 | In this case, MP4 is perfectly fine.
| | 08:21 | So I am going to scroll down.
Again, just like with the pictures, I have the
| | 08:25 | ability to change the dimensions.
| | 08:26 | I can choose Original or Custom, and
again, AutoStart or Loop. I am going to say
| | 08:31 | No for both of those.
| | 08:32 | Do I want my students to be able to
see this at this very moment? Yes.
| | 08:36 | Do I want to track the number of views? Sure.
| | 08:38 | Do I want to set date
and time restrictions? Nope.
| | 08:41 | Click on Submit and that will now
upload the video, and that will be at the very,
| | 08:47 | very bottom of the page.
| | 08:49 | Remember, if I ever need to edit anything,
if I made a mistake here, I can click
| | 08:53 | on Edit to the right, that button
with the two downward-facing chevrons.
| | 08:57 | I can also click the up-and-down arrow
to left of any of these things to move
| | 09:01 | them to a new location.
| | 09:03 | Let me also show you what this looks
like from a student's point of view.
| | 09:07 | So I am going to turn the Edit mode
off, and we are now in Student Mode.
| | 09:11 | So this is what the students would see.
| | 09:12 | I'm going to scroll down.
| | 09:14 | We've got this in-line, or embedded, sound
file that we put in by going into Item,
| | 09:20 | and then we've got a sound file that
we went by clicking on Build Content >
| | 09:24 | Audio, Build Content > Image,
and then Build Content > Video.
| | 09:29 | Now, one word of warning: your
institution may actually limit the size of
| | 09:35 | individual files you upload to Blackboard,
| | 09:38 | and some institutions may even
limit the size of your course.
| | 09:42 | Keep your course files small. When in
doubt, post the file somewhere else, like a
| | 09:47 | video server, and then link to it.
| | 09:50 | Contact your help desk for more
information about for institution's individual
| | 09:54 | file-size and course-size limits.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Linking to an external web resource| 00:00 | To link from your Blackboard course
site to an external web site or URL, click
| | 00:05 | the content area--in this case Course Documents.
| | 00:08 | If there are any folders, click on
the folder in which you wish to go.
| | 00:11 | Make sure Edit Mode is on and then
click Build Content and click URL.
| | 00:16 | This is new in Blackboard 9.1 and
not available in Blackboard 9.0.
| | 00:21 | So, besides uploading files, you can
add hyperlinks from your course to
| | 00:27 | other Internet resources.
| | 00:29 | In others words, you can have it
where students click on a link, leave
| | 00:32 | your Blackboard course site, and go out on
to the Internet to a resource that you found.
| | 00:37 | Let me give you an example.
| | 00:38 | I've got this thing called the
Theory Into Practice web site, or it's a
| | 00:42 | database, by Greg Kearsley.
| | 00:45 | It's a collection of information on
about 50 theories of learning. Click on
| | 00:49 | the theories and you can see he's got
information like Cognitive Load Theory from Sweller.
| | 00:53 | It seems like a pretty decent
resource to share with my students,
| | 00:56 | so let me add a hyperlink to that.
| | 00:59 | I am going to go in here in the Week 1 folder,
| | 01:01 | I am going to click--and I
am not going to create an Item.
| | 01:04 | I am actually going to create a URL,
a link to that uniform resource
| | 01:08 | locator, that web site.
| | 01:09 | It's going to ask me to type in the name of it.
| | 01:12 | I've actually already entered it
before, so Theory into Practice.
| | 01:15 | It's going to then ask me for the URL.
| | 01:18 | Now, I could right now try to type the URL.
| | 01:22 | It's got to be the full URL,
http://. My recommendation;
| | 01:26 | go back to your web browser and open
up the resource and copy the web page
| | 01:32 | address from the address bar.
| | 01:34 | You know that that address works,
| | 01:36 | so when you paste it here, you
know it should work here as well.
| | 01:39 | I can now scroll down.
| | 01:41 | I can enter a description for my students.
| | 01:43 | The description is information that
can help them, questions, or instructions.
| | 01:48 | I can even attach a reader or something
that might help them as they go to that
| | 01:52 | web site and evaluate it.
| | 01:54 | I can do the same thing down here by
browsing My Computer. I am not going to.
| | 01:58 | Now we have seen most of these
options before, but there's a new one here:
| | 02:02 | Open in New Window.
| | 02:04 | By default, that's set as No.
| | 02:06 | If I do this and I link to this web
site and the students click on it, what's
| | 02:10 | going to happen is it's going
to open it within Blackboard.
| | 02:14 | You'll still see the red bar at the top
of the page, or whatever your institution
| | 02:18 | colors are, and the page
will be embedded within.
| | 02:21 | I am not sure I like that, but let
me show you what that looks like.
| | 02:24 | I am going to track the number of views.
| | 02:26 | I am not going to turn on date and time
restrictions, but if I did, I do it in pairs.
| | 02:29 | I always have an After and an
Until, or an Until and an After.
| | 02:34 | I am going to click on Submit.
| | 02:35 | It's going to add it to the very bottom
of my Course menu of my Week 1 folder.
| | 02:42 | So I'm actually going to drag this thing up.
| | 02:44 | I want to get it a little higher on the page.
| | 02:48 | So again, anything you add to your page,
as long as Edit Mode is on, you can
| | 02:52 | actually put it wherever you want.
I dragged it now into position number two on my page.
| | 02:58 | And let's actually show you what this
looks like from a student's point of view.
| | 03:01 | I am going to turn Edit Mode off, and you
can see this is what it looks like from
| | 03:05 | a student's point of view.
| | 03:07 | If I click on this link, remember, I
said don't open this in a new window.
| | 03:12 | So what it does is it
actually opens it within Blackboard.
| | 03:16 | I've still got the navigation bar at
the top. I've got the breadcrumb trail here
| | 03:19 | showing that I'm in Week 1. I can
actually go a little further into the
| | 03:23 | breadcrumb trail if we go back, and we get a
big red warning message saying guess what,
| | 03:28 | this information that you see below is
not coming from Blackboard--it's from
| | 03:32 | outside the Blackboard environment.
| | 03:34 | Let me go back and fix this.
| | 03:36 | I am going to turn Edit Mode back on.
| | 03:38 | I am going to back into Theory into Practice.
| | 03:41 | I am going to edit this.
| | 03:42 | Remember, anytime you see a button with two
downward-facing chevrons, that's the edit.
| | 03:46 | I am going to say Open in a
New Window and click on Submit.
| | 03:52 | Now, let's see what this looks like.
| | 03:53 | By the way, I don't need to be
in Edit Mode Off for this to work.
| | 03:57 | I can click on it right now, and what you
will see is it opens up in a new pop-up window.
| | 04:01 | It is completely up to you whether
or not to have the pages load within
| | 04:05 | Blackboard or load in a new window.
| | 04:07 | You can just do those in the Settings.
| | 04:09 | So to link to an external web site or
URL, click the content area, make sure
| | 04:15 | Edit Mode is on, and then
click Build Content > URL.
| | 04:20 | In our next movie, we are going to
show you how to link to an internal
| | 04:24 | course file.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Linking to an internal course file| 00:00 | To link from one part of your
Blackboard course to an area, tool, or item that
| | 00:05 | already exists within your Blackboard course,
| | 00:07 | make sure Edit Mode is on, click the
content area where you want to add the
| | 00:12 | link--in this case I am going to go into
Week 2--and then click Build Content, and
| | 00:17 | at the very bottom, click Course Link.
| | 00:20 | Let me explain what we are talking about here.
| | 00:22 | I'm going to go back into Course Documents.
You may remember in our Week 1
| | 00:26 | folder we've got a bunch of
items, and I have got Week 1 Files.
| | 00:30 | I have got the Theory into Practice
hyperlink. I've got a JAWS_citylights.mp3.
| | 00:36 | I want a link from my Week 2
folder back to my Week 1 Files.
| | 00:41 | In other words, I want my students in
my Week 2 folder to see a hyperlink.
| | 00:45 | They are going to click on it, leave
the Week 2 folder, and come into the Week 1
| | 00:50 | folder and see the Week 1
files. So, let's try that.
| | 00:54 | I am going to go into the Course
Documents--I am going to use the breadcrumb
| | 00:56 | trail here--I am going to go into my
empty Week 2 folder, I am going to click on
| | 01:01 | Build Content, and at the very bottom,
I am going to click on Course Link.
| | 01:05 | By the way, this is not something that
you will see under Create Item if you
| | 01:10 | are using Blackboard 9; you have to be on
Blackboard 9.1 to see this menu. Click Course Link.
| | 01:17 | And I am now going to browse for that
item, and I am going to choose the Week 1
| | 01:22 | files in my Week 1 folder.
| | 01:25 | And what I am doing now is I am in
effect creating a hyperlink, but it's
| | 01:29 | a hyperlink that's not taking me
outside of my course, but to something
| | 01:34 | else within my course.
| | 01:36 | So the location here is going to be Course
Documents/Week 1/Week 1 Files. I can scroll down.
| | 01:42 | There's a description here.
| | 01:44 | I can say, do I want my students
to see this now? Yes. Or later? No.
| | 01:48 | Do I want to track the number
of views? I always say Yes.
| | 01:52 | I am going to click on Submit.
| | 01:56 | And what I have now is a link from my
Week 2 folder that when I click on, takes
| | 02:04 | me to my Week 1 folder and that
content there. It just keeps you from having to
| | 02:09 | re-upload the files over and over again.
| | 02:11 | So if you have content in one area of
the course that you want to link to from
| | 02:15 | another, all you need to do is go into
the area where you want to add the link,
| | 02:20 | click Build Content, and create a course link.
| | 02:24 | There are some problems with this.
| | 02:26 | Problem number one, if you link to a tool
or item that is no longer available at
| | 02:31 | its original place--in other words,
something that's hidden from the students--
| | 02:36 | it's not going to be visible here either.
| | 02:39 | And you can't link from course to course.
| | 02:42 | You can't have a student say, oh, I want to
have it link from this course to another course.
| | 02:46 | Blackboard is kind of a walled garden.
| | 02:48 | You have to stay within your course.
| | 02:50 | You can't go link to another
course on the Blackboard course site.
| | 02:54 | I do want to show you one other alternative.
| | 02:57 | There is a way besides doing these sort
of internal hyperlinks that allows you
| | 03:02 | to use content that you've already
uploaded again and again in the course,
| | 03:08 | without you having to upload it
again and again in the course.
| | 03:12 | So I am going to click on Build Content.
| | 03:14 | I am going to create an item.
| | 03:15 | I will come back and enter the name
in a minute, even though it's required.
| | 03:21 | And instead of browsing my computer for
a file I am going to browse my course.
| | 03:27 | This is going to show you a list of
files that you've already uploaded.
| | 03:34 | You might actually see the same file
over and over and over again because
| | 03:38 | you've uploaded it multiple times.
| | 03:40 | For example, in my Week 1 folder I
uploaded the JAW_citylights three times.
| | 03:45 | So I have got that file
three times in my course site.
| | 03:49 | But in this case, let's actually just
link to the descriptive statistics file.
| | 03:53 | So what I'm doing now is the file
already exists in Blackboard. I don't
| | 03:58 | have to upload it again.
| | 04:00 | It's there in what we are going to
talk about a little later, called the
| | 04:03 | Content Collection or Course Files, depending
on what version of Blackboard you are running.
| | 04:07 | So I can link to a particular file that
already exists on my course site that I
| | 04:12 | have already uploaded.
| | 04:13 | I am going to click on Submit, and now I'll
have to go up here and type in the name,
| | 04:17 | which would be Descriptive,
Descriptive Statistics, and I can scroll down.
| | 04:26 | Again, I have got the ability
here to track the number of views.
| | 04:29 | I could go back up here, add some
more information here in the text edit.
| | 04:33 | I can add a question. I can add a prompt.
| | 04:35 | I can add extra instructions.
| | 04:37 | I can attach other files from my
computer or the course, but in this case we are
| | 04:40 | just going to link to the
descriptive_statistics excel spreadsheet.
| | 04:44 | I am going to click on Submit,
and now I've added a link to that file, and I
| | 04:50 | didn't have to upload it because
it's already there on Blackboard.
| | 04:54 | Remember that once I've added this here,
I can always move items up and down by
| | 04:59 | clicking the up-and-down arrow on the
left side of the item. And if I ever need
| | 05:03 | to go back and edit anything, remember
that if you see a button with downward-
| | 05:07 | facing chevrons that means Edit or More.
I am going to click on Edit, and I will
| | 05:11 | be able to get this.
| | 05:13 | And finally, let me just show you what this
looks like from a student's point of view.
| | 05:16 | Turn Edit Mode off.
| | 05:17 | I'm in the Student Mode, and this
is what this link looks like from a
| | 05:21 | student's point of view.
| | 05:22 | If they click on this, they
go back to the Week 1 folder.
| | 05:25 | If they click on this, they
will actually download the file.
| | 05:28 | So Browse Course is actually a neat
introduction to what we're going to be
| | 05:35 | talking about in the Content Collection.
| | 05:38 | So when we were here and we were,
instead of browsing our computer, we were
| | 05:44 | browsing our course.
| | 05:46 | In fact, this whole concept of
browsing course files rather than browsing
| | 05:50 | your computer is a great
introduction to something called the Content
| | 05:54 | Collection, or Course Files.
| | 05:56 | We are going to talk about that in two
movies, but first let's talk about making
| | 06:00 | content available to students.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Making content available to students| 00:00 | I'm here in the Week 2 folder, and I am
going to do something we haven't done before:
| | 00:04 | I am going to take an item and I am
going to hide it from my students.
| | 00:07 | I am going to make it so that not a
single student in the course will be able to
| | 00:10 | see the Descriptive Statistics.
| | 00:12 | So let me click here and go to Edit.
| | 00:14 | I am going to scroll down and down in
the last part, where it says, "Permit users
| | 00:20 | to view this content,"
| | 00:21 | it's set to Yes right now.
| | 00:23 | That means the students can see it.
| | 00:24 | But if I click it to No, I want you
to see what happens. Well, nothing.
| | 00:31 | It's still there, but actually, no, it isn't.
| | 00:33 | The availability now says
the item is not available.
| | 00:37 | I can still move it around.
| | 00:39 | I can still, if I want to, move it back
down to where it came from. I can click it.
| | 00:47 | I can go and edit it again. But let me
show you this from a student's point of view.
| | 00:51 | If I turned Edit Mode off, I'm
in Student Mode, and it's gone.
| | 00:57 | The Descriptive Statistics does
not show up, and will never show up.
| | 01:03 | So if you say Permit users to view this
content, and you say No, that means that
| | 01:09 | the item is available to you
but is not available to the students.
| | 01:14 | They will never ever see it.
| | 01:17 | What you need to do to make sure that
you haven't accidentally hidden files from
| | 01:22 | your students that you really want them to see,
| | 01:25 | every now and then turn Edit Mode off.
| | 01:27 | Just make sure all the files are there.
| | 01:30 | And if they are not, chances are it's
because you've said Permit users to view this
| | 01:35 | content to No for certain items.
| | 01:37 | You can tell because it says
Availability, Item is not available.
| | 01:40 | To make it available again, click
the button with the two downward-facing
| | 01:44 | chevrons--that's always meaning Edit.
| | 01:46 | I am going to scroll down, and Permit users to
view this content, click Yes and click Submit.
| | 01:54 | And the file is now available to the students.
| | 01:57 | I can prove that by clicking Edit
Mode off, and there is the file again.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Content Collection| 00:01 | To access your course's Content
Collection or Course Files, under Course
| | 00:04 | Management, click Content Collection,
and then click the name of your course.
| | 00:10 | Now, we are going to go through this
pretty quickly, and the reason why is this
| | 00:13 | topic could rapidly become
an entire course unto itself.
| | 00:16 | But out of the box Blackboard gives
you a repository of all of your files for
| | 00:23 | any particular course.
| | 00:25 | Now, we've uploaded a
handful of files in this chapter.
| | 00:28 | We've placed them in multiple locations.
| | 00:30 | The Content Collection has all of
those files in one course folder.
| | 00:35 | Think of this as your course's file server.
| | 00:37 | The way you are going to see it is
click on Content Collection--or by the way,
| | 00:41 | there might be something here
that says Course Files instead--
| | 00:45 | and then click on the name of your course.
| | 00:48 | So if you ever get to a point where
you're going, where is that file, I know I
| | 00:51 | uploaded it into Blackboard, where is it?
| | 00:53 | Well, if you know it's in the course,
if you're going to the Content Collection,
| | 00:57 | or Course Files, you will see a list of
every file that you've ever uploaded to
| | 01:02 | this particular course,
including when you've uploaded it.
| | 01:06 | Now, let me scroll back up to the top of
the page, because I want you to see, we've
| | 01:10 | got a list for you right now, but I
can also click on View Thumbnails.
| | 01:14 | If I click on View Thumbnails, it
actually shows me thumbnails for all the items.
| | 01:19 | I can actually zoom in and zoom out on the
thumbnails and make them a little bigger,
| | 01:23 | so the Hollywood sign is now
getting bigger and smaller.
| | 01:25 | I am going to stick in the list view though.
| | 01:28 | And when you delete a file from
Blackboard--say I go into one of my Course
| | 01:33 | Content areas and I delete a file--
| | 01:36 | it turns out you're not actually
deleting the file from Blackboard. The file
| | 01:40 | will stay in your Course Content.
| | 01:43 | Now this is only true
for things that you upload.
| | 01:48 | If you delete a user, if you delete an
announcement, if you delete a task, a
| | 01:53 | Grade Center column, those things are gone.
| | 01:56 | Blackboard only keeps an emergency
backup of the files that you upload.
| | 02:01 | Now, you can, if you want to, upload
files directly here, if you didn't want to
| | 02:06 | go into the Course Content area and upload
files, and that certainly is an option for you.
| | 02:11 | You can also upload a file, just
an individual file, or a Package.
| | 02:15 | A package is just a zip file, and
Blackboard will automatically unzip it.
| | 02:20 | You also have the ability, if you want to, to
take all of the files that you've uploaded--
| | 02:24 | I am going to click on this check
box in the top left-hand corner--and
| | 02:27 | download this as a Package.
| | 02:29 | In other words, it's going to create a
zip file and download it to my computer.
| | 02:34 | And again, this is all of your files.
| | 02:38 | One key thing to remember: when
you're downloading the package, you're
| | 02:42 | downloading all of your files,
| | 02:44 | the files that you put on Blackboard.
| | 02:46 | It's not downloading your student work.
| | 02:49 | We'll talk about that a little later.
| | 02:51 | You also have the ability here in this
Course Content, or the Course Files, area
| | 02:56 | to create folders and
move your items into folders.
| | 03:00 | By the way, if you do that, it's not
going to break the links to these files.
| | 03:03 | Blackboard automatically updates that.
| | 03:06 | You can also click on Set Up Web Folder.
| | 03:08 | This opens up something called WebDAV,
and it allows you to upload and download
| | 03:12 | multiple files at the same time.
| | 03:15 | We've only scratched the surface of the
Content Collection, or Course Files, but
| | 03:19 | I just wanted that you know the essentials here.
| | 03:22 | The essentials are to remember that
you can go to the Content Collection, or
| | 03:27 | Course Files, click on the name of your
course, and there you'll find a copy of
| | 03:31 | every file that you've ever
uploaded into this particular course.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Copying and moving content| 00:01 | To copy or move a file in Blackboard,
locate that file within your course--
| | 00:05 | in this case, I am going into the Week 1 folder--
| | 00:08 | and then click the button with the two
downward-facing chevrons to the right of
| | 00:12 | the file, and choose either Copy or Move.
| | 00:17 | So one of the better-kept secrets in
Blackboard is that it's pretty easy for you
| | 00:22 | to copy or move content from one place
in your course to another, and you can
| | 00:26 | even copy content between courses.
| | 00:29 | Let's copy this JAWS citylights.mp3 from
this Week 1 folder over to my Week 2 folder.
| | 00:36 | So I am going to click on the button
with the two downward-facing chevrons,
| | 00:39 | I am going to scroll down, and
I am going to click on Copy.
| | 00:43 | It's going to say, what is the course?
| | 00:45 | I am not going to change the course.
| | 00:46 | I am going to browse for the destination folder.
| | 00:50 | In this case, I am going to copy it
over to Week 2 and click on Submit.
| | 00:54 | And you can't really tell much
different here; however, let's get back to my
| | 01:00 | Week 2 folder, and there is the file.
| | 01:03 | It's already been copied.
| | 01:04 | So it's now in two locations.
| | 01:06 | It's there in Week 1 and in Week 2.
| | 01:08 | Let me try something a little different.
| | 01:11 | I am going to go back to Course Documents.
| | 01:12 | I am going to go back to Week 1, and instead
of copy, let me show you how to move a file.
| | 01:18 | So I am going to take the
Question for the next week,
| | 01:19 | I am going to move that.
| | 01:21 | So instead of Copy, I choose Move.
| | 01:25 | I am going to browse this over to my Week 2
folder and click on Submit, and it's now gone.
| | 01:32 | It's no longer there in my Week 1 folder.
| | 01:35 | Let me hop on over to Week 2, and it should be
at the very bottom of the list, and there it is.
| | 01:40 | So remember, you can copy and you can move.
| | 01:43 | The difference between copy and move:
| | 01:45 | copy makes a duplicate,
| | 01:47 | move deletes the item
from its original location.
| | 01:50 | By the way, you can also copy or move folders.
| | 01:54 | So if I have this Week 2 folder, I
can actually move the Week 2 folder to
| | 02:00 | another location within my course.
| | 02:02 | I can actually put it in a
different content folder.
| | 02:04 | Or, I can, if I want to, go and copy it to
another course altogether. So let me do that.
| | 02:11 | I'm actually going to copy my Week 2
folder to my Instructional Design course.
| | 02:15 | I have to choose a folder in which to put it in.
| | 02:19 | That was a mistake.
| | 02:21 | And that's actually a good mistake to make.
| | 02:22 | It will tell you, if you are
going to copy it, guess what,
| | 02:25 | you need to have a destination.
| | 02:27 | In this case, I am going to choose the
Information folder and click on Submit.
| | 02:31 | And now it's successfully moved those files.
| | 02:34 | Now, a couple of things couldn't be copied.
| | 02:37 | That's fine, but we'll see what
those look like when we get over there.
| | 02:40 | So I am actually going to get out of course,
get over to the Instructional Design course,
| | 02:44 | get into the Information, and there is
my Week 2 folder and the Week 2 files, and
| | 02:49 | it copied over perfectly.
| | 02:51 | So remember, you have the ability
within your course to copy files or folders
| | 02:57 | from one location to another
within your course, or between courses.
| | 03:03 | Now, there are some problems with this.
| | 03:05 | First of all, this is great for one
or two files, or maybe even one or two
| | 03:09 | folders, but it really gets
burdensome for more than that.
| | 03:12 | Solution, use Course Copy,
and we'll talk about that later.
| | 03:15 | This also only works for
things that you've uploaded.
| | 03:18 | Once you start throwing in discussion
board links, quizzes, Copy won't work the
| | 03:24 | way you think it should.
| | 03:25 | And some campuses are running versions
prior to Blackboard 9.1 Service Pack 5,
| | 03:31 | and they've had problems with the Copy tool.
| | 03:34 | Some campuses have even temporarily disabled it.
| | 03:37 | Look for an update from your
Blackboard administrator or help desk on when
| | 03:41 | they will be upgrading to a later
version of Blackboard--the Copy tool
| | 03:45 | should be restored then.
| | 03:47 | So to copy or move a file, locate the
file within your course, make sure that
| | 03:52 | the Edit Mode is on,
| | 03:54 | click the button with the two downward-
facing chevrons to the right of the file,
| | 03:58 | and then choose either Copy or Move.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
8. Using the Grade Center: The BasicsExploring how students view course grades| 00:01 | Before we talk about posting student
grades to Blackboard, I wanted to see what
| | 00:05 | Blackboard grades look like
from the student point of view.
| | 00:08 | I'm here in a course as an instructor.
| | 00:10 | I'm actually logged into
Blackboard as an instructor.
| | 00:13 | You can see it's my name up here at the
top and it says Courses you are teaching.
| | 00:18 | I am going to click on the second
course, the Instructional Design course.
| | 00:21 | I am going to scroll down.
| | 00:22 | Notice that I have access to the Edit mode.
| | 00:25 | I've got my Course Management area and
to the right of the word Grade Center.
| | 00:28 | I am going to click on the button with
the two greater than signs that actually
| | 00:32 | opens it up on the right-hand side of the page.
| | 00:35 | If you're using Blackboard 9.0, go
to Evaluation, then Grade Center.
| | 00:39 | And here is my Grade Center.
| | 00:40 | Here are all my students in my course.
| | 00:43 | I've got their term paper grades.
| | 00:45 | I've got their grades that have been
entered for everything. Their total grade.
| | 00:49 | Grade columns are a
little out of order right now.
| | 00:51 | We'll show you how to fix
that in an upcoming movie.
| | 00:53 | But notice that Olivia got an 85
in Term Paper 1. Anjoli has a 74.
| | 00:59 | Sofia has an 89 on that paper.
| | 01:01 | Now I have the ability as an instructor
to see everything. This is my course.
| | 01:07 | I get to see the grade book.
| | 01:08 | I am going to switch out of Internet Explorer.
| | 01:09 | I am going to go over to Firefox,
and I'm no longer Patrick Crispen.
| | 01:14 | I'm Olivia Anderson, and you can notice
that I'm no longer teaching a course.
| | 01:19 | I'm enrolled as a course.
| | 01:20 | Now let me get into that same
Instructional Design course we were in just a
| | 01:24 | moment ago, and notice I
don't have an Edit mode.
| | 01:27 | I don't have a Course Management area.
| | 01:29 | I have none of that.
| | 01:30 | Now let me show you how Olivia views her grades.
| | 01:35 | If she goes under Tools and clicks on My
Grades, she can also do this by the way
| | 01:39 | in your course if you haven't turned
it off in the Tools area. She can then
| | 01:43 | click on My Grades. Either way it works.
| | 01:45 | But if she goes in and clicks on My
Grades, she'll see a list of all the courses
| | 01:51 | in which she's enrolled.
| | 01:53 | And if she clicks on the Instructional
Design course, notice that Olivia sees
| | 01:58 | her grades and only her grades.
| | 02:03 | In other words, she has not
seeing anyone else's grades.
| | 02:08 | The way she did this, she
went and click down My Grades.
| | 02:10 | By the way only students
can use the My Grades tool.
| | 02:14 | If you click on My Grades tool, you'll
receive an error message telling you that
| | 02:18 | users with your role, in other words
instructors, don't have personal grade.
| | 02:22 | You get into the Grade Book to enter grades.
| | 02:24 | But when Olivia clicks on My Grades,
she sees her grades and only her grades.
| | 02:30 | Students can not see other
students grades, only their own.
| | 02:34 | So she can see that she got on the
first paper an 85. If she clicks on Details,
| | 02:40 | there might be a few
little extra notes here for her.
| | 02:42 | Sometimes there might even be some hyperlinks.
| | 02:44 | For example, this Take-Home Midterm was
something where she turned in a paper.
| | 02:49 | If she clicks on the hyperlink, she
sees the paper that she has submitted and
| | 02:54 | the grade and if I've returned any files she'd
see that here or any comments from me as well.
| | 02:59 | There's also an icon legend.
| | 03:01 | When she gets into her grade she might
see a checkbox saying you did it or an
| | 03:05 | exclamation mark saying the
instructor still needs to grade it.
| | 03:09 | Just wanted to show you that this is available.
| | 03:11 | But the big thing to remember is that
when a student gets into Blackboard and
| | 03:16 | gets into your course and clicks on My
Grades, if you haven't turned that tool
| | 03:20 | off from the Tools panel or if the
student goes to My Institution and clicks
| | 03:25 | on My Grades, the student is going to
see their grades and their grades only.
| | 03:30 | No one else's. And they can't make any changes.
| | 03:34 | And last thing I want to show you,
remember I said that if you click on My
| | 03:38 | Grades, you get an error message.
| | 03:39 | Let me kind of back that up. I am
back now as Patrick Crispen. I've got the
| | 03:43 | courses that I'm teaching.
| | 03:44 | Let me click on My Grades and it's
going to say, "You can use My Grades to see
| | 03:48 | your grades after you are enrolled in
a course and the instructor has made
| | 03:51 | your grades available."
| | 03:53 | In other words, you are not enrolled as
the student, so you can't see any grades.
| | 03:57 | However, you can see the grades if
you go into the course's grade book.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Optimizing the Grade Center| 00:01 | Before we open up the Grade Center and
start entering grades, I want to give you
| | 00:05 | a quick heads up about a few things.
| | 00:07 | First, Blackboard's Grade Center isn't
really a web page or at least not a web
| | 00:12 | page as you and I know.
| | 00:14 | It's a full-fledged web spreadsheet program.
| | 00:17 | I describe it as kind of like a
simplified version of Microsoft Excel for the web.
| | 00:22 | Just as Microsoft Excel takes a few
extra seconds to load on your computer, so
| | 00:26 | too will Blackboard's Grade Center.
| | 00:28 | In fact, it's probably going to
be the slowest page in Blackboard.
| | 00:31 | Be prepared for the Grade
Center to take a while to load.
| | 00:35 | Particularly if you have a lot of
students or a lot of score columns.
| | 00:39 | Blackboard 9 is the first version of
Blackboard that pushes a lot of its
| | 00:45 | computing resources from Blackboard
servers to the end user's computer.
| | 00:51 | If you're running an older computer,
if you have a computer with a bunch of
| | 00:55 | windows open, or if you're running an
older web browser or just have a slow
| | 00:59 | Internet connection, Blackboard's Grade
Center is going to be downright poky.
| | 01:05 | To make the Grade Center run as fast as possible,
| | 01:07 | closes many open programs
on your computer as possible.
| | 01:11 | Close any extra browser windows or tabs.
| | 01:14 | Use an up-to-date web browser-- and
that's not Internet Explorer 6, folks.
| | 01:19 | And use of very, very fast
Internet connection if ones available.
| | 01:22 | That should speed things up a bit.
| | 01:24 | But with that said, remember, the
Blackboard Grade Center is a full-fledged
| | 01:29 | web spreadsheet program, and it's
probably going to be the slowest page in Blackboard.
| | 01:34 | Sorry about that!
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| Changing the default letter grading schema| 00:00 | Blackboard's Grade Center uses a
letter grading schema that may not match
| | 00:05 | what you're used to.
| | 00:06 | Before you enter any letter grades in
Blackboard, take a moment to review the
| | 00:11 | schema and update it if you need to.
| | 00:13 | To access your Grades Center, click
the name of your course, scroll down and
| | 00:18 | under Course Management click the two
greater than sign to the right of the word
| | 00:23 | Grade Center. If you're running Blackboard
9.0 and it would be under Evaluation and
| | 00:27 | then Grade Center. We are 9.1 Service Pack 5,
| | 00:29 | so I am just going to click here.
| | 00:31 | That opens up the Grade Center.
| | 00:33 | Now remember that page may
take a little while to load.
| | 00:36 | It's not just a web page.
| | 00:37 | It's a full-fledged program.
| | 00:38 | But in this case what I want to do,
is I want to go to Manage and click
| | 00:42 | on Grading Schemas.
| | 00:44 | You are going to see that
there is one default schema.
| | 00:46 | Your institution might've created others.
| | 00:49 | But I'm going to click the button with
the two downward facing chevrons to the
| | 00:52 | right of the word Letter, and click Edit.
| | 00:55 | Remember, if you see a button with
two downward facing chevrons, that
| | 00:58 | always means Edit or More.
| | 00:59 | I am going to click on that and
let me explain what's going on here.
| | 01:03 | This is the schema mapping and what
that means is that if I give a student a
| | 01:08 | grade on Blackboard, a numeric grade
and the grade is anywhere between 97% and
| | 01:14 | 100%, Blackboard counts it as an A+.
| | 01:18 | If I give a student anywhere between 94%
and 96.99999%, it's going to count as a
| | 01:25 | solid A. Anything between 90
and 93.9999 will count as an A-.
| | 01:32 | Now here is the good news.
| | 01:34 | If you were not going to use any
letter grades on your Grade Center,
| | 01:37 | if all you're going to use are
just numbers, who cares about this?
| | 01:42 | This default grading
schema doesn't apply to you.
| | 01:45 | However, if you are going to use letter
grades, you probably want to modify this.
| | 01:50 | What we are going to do is
let's enter new grade values.
| | 01:53 | In fact, I want to get rid of the whole
plus/minus and I just want to have solid
| | 01:57 | A, B, C, D and F in my course.
| | 01:59 | So what I am going to do is I am going
to say anything between 90 and 100 is
| | 02:05 | going to count as a solid A. Anything
between 80 and 90 will count as a B. 70 to
| | 02:14 | 80 is a C. I am going 0 to less than 60 is an F.
| | 02:22 | And now what I am going to
do is for everything else,
| | 02:25 | I am just going to delete the row.
| | 02:27 | So I don't need any of these other ones,
because I am doing just solid letter grades.
| | 02:31 | So here we go, Delete Row.
I actually want to go to the bottom.
| | 02:41 | And now we have
absolutely calculated everything.
| | 02:45 | We've basically said anything between
90 and 100 is going to be an A, 80 to 90
| | 02:50 | is a B. I've created it. So that's great.
| | 02:52 | When I enter a number, it will
convert it into a letter grade.
| | 02:57 | But what happens if I go into the
grade book, and I don't enter a number or a
| | 03:03 | percentage, but I actually type a letter grade?
| | 03:06 | We need to tell Blackboard how to
convert that letter back to a number.
| | 03:12 | So I might want to say that if I type a
letter A that's not going to calculate
| | 03:17 | as 100. I might want to say it's worth 95%.
| | 03:21 | If I give the students a
B that might be worth 85%.
| | 03:23 | If I give the students a
C that might be worth 75%.
| | 03:29 | If I enter a letter D that might be worth 65%.
| | 03:33 | Now that I've set it, so that anything
that I enter, if I type a letter F, it's
| | 03:37 | going to count as a 0%.
| | 03:39 | D is going to count as a 65%.
| | 03:41 | So what I've done is I've kind of
cleaned up what was a relatively complex
| | 03:45 | plus/minus grading schema mapping, to
make it much more realistic and much more
| | 03:51 | like what I want to use.
| | 03:53 | So I am ready to click on Submit and we're done.
| | 03:55 | And I have now completely updated my
schema. And go back now and edit it.
| | 04:00 | If I wanted to add more rows to this,
I can Insert Rows. So I can go back and
| | 04:04 | put plus/minuses at points that I
wanted to. In that case I'm not going to.
| | 04:09 | Just remember, Blackboard's Grade
Center uses a letter grading schema that may
| | 04:15 | not match what you're used to.
| | 04:17 | Before you enter any letter grades in
Blackboard, take a moment to review that
| | 04:21 | schema and update it if you need to.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating score columns| 00:00 | To create a new Grade Center score
column, access your Grade Center.
| | 00:04 | That's down there in
your Course Management area.
| | 00:06 | If you have Blackboard 9.1,
| | 00:08 | you'll see Grade Center with these two greater
than sign to the right. You can click on that.
| | 00:13 | If you've Blackboard 9.0, you'll
click on Evaluation Grade Center.
| | 00:17 | Remember your Grade Center
might take a few seconds to load.
| | 00:19 | It is a full-fledged web program.
| | 00:22 | And this is the Grade Center.
| | 00:24 | Let me give you a quick tour.
| | 00:26 | We've got some buttons across
the top, we can create a column.
| | 00:29 | We can create a calculated column
and there are those two downward facing chevrons.
| | 00:33 | It looks like, yup!
| | 00:33 | There is more stuff there.
| | 00:35 | Average Column, Minimum Maximum Column.
| | 00:37 | I can go to the Management tools.
| | 00:39 | We actually showed you how to go
and change the grading schema, using
| | 00:42 | Manage Grading Schemas.
| | 00:43 | There are also some reports.
| | 00:46 | There's filters and I can even work offline.
| | 00:49 | As I scroll down, I am seeing all of my
students right now sorted by Last Name,
| | 00:54 | but I can sort by First Name.
| | 00:56 | Also notice that as I'm hovering over
these columns, it showing me the column
| | 01:02 | name in this Grade Information Bar up here.
| | 01:05 | See Student ID. I can see Last Access.
| | 01:08 | So what I am seeing right now
are a type of column called student
| | 01:13 | information columns.
| | 01:14 | So these things come pre-
rendered into the program.
| | 01:17 | Last Name, First Name, Username,
Student ID, Last Access, Availability.
| | 01:21 | Next thing you are going to see are
calculated columns like Weighted Total and Total.
| | 01:26 | That's the final grade.
| | 01:28 | And as we start adding more columns,
we'll start seeing grade columns.
| | 01:32 | These two columns over here, the Last
Name and First Name, are frozen columns.
| | 01:36 | What that means is as we scroll left
and right, those first two columns will
| | 01:40 | always stay the first two columns.
| | 01:42 | So they're frozen in time, frozen in place.
| | 01:45 | So we've got these default
columns already build-in.
| | 01:49 | As you go through your Blackboard
and start creating assessments, tests,
| | 01:52 | surveys, self assessments,
| | 01:53 | those will automatically create columns.
| | 01:56 | We'll talk about these
tools in the later chapters.
| | 01:58 | And Assignment is going to
create an automatic column here.
| | 02:02 | Created discussion forums and threads,
created blogs, journals and wikis.
| | 02:06 | But for most of the time you are going to
have to manually create your own columns.
| | 02:12 | And the way you do that is you click on
Create Column up here at the top of the page.
| | 02:17 | So I am going to click on Create Column.
| | 02:19 | First thing it's going to do is going
to ask me to enter the name of my column.
| | 02:25 | In this case I am going to
create a column for the midterm.
| | 02:29 | Okay, so I need to create a brief
descriptive name for this column.
| | 02:35 | Don't go crazy with the naming,
because it's actually becomes the column
| | 02:39 | header in the Grade Book.
| | 02:40 | You really only want to use 14 or 15
characters or fewer than that if possible.
| | 02:45 | In this case I'll just type in Midterm.
| | 02:48 | Now I could also put in a
Grade Center Display Name.
| | 02:51 | The Grade Center Display Name is
what the students see in My Grades.
| | 02:56 | If I don't put anything here,
Midterm is going to be what shows up.
| | 02:59 | In this case Midterm is perfectly fine.
| | 03:01 | The description is also something that
students can see when they get into their My Grades.
| | 03:06 | And then Blackboard is going to
ask me the grades that I enter.
| | 03:10 | Am I going to enter a Score, in
other words, it's going to be a number?
| | 03:14 | Is it going to be a Letter, in other
words A, B, C, D or F and in the last movie
| | 03:20 | we showed you how to convert those back
into numbers using the grading schema.
| | 03:24 | Text is meaningless. Text is
just letters. Those don't count.
| | 03:28 | There is no grade for a text.
| | 03:30 | You can enter a Percentage.
| | 03:31 | Or you can actually have Complete/
Incomplete, which could be a checkbox or
| | 03:35 | just an empty cell.
| | 03:36 | In this case I am going to choose Score.
| | 03:38 | I am not going to change anything.
| | 03:39 | Now I also have the option
of doing a Secondary Display.
| | 03:43 | To the right of My Score on my display
as an instructor, students don't see this,
| | 03:49 | I can actually have this show up
as a Letter, as a Percentage, or as
| | 03:53 | Complete/Incomplete.
| | 03:54 | The Letter uses the grading schema
that we've talked about in the last movie.
| | 03:58 | Or I can choose Percentage.
| | 03:59 | We usually do Percentage.
| | 04:01 | Normally I enter grade as scores
with a Secondary Display of Percentage.
| | 04:05 | It will automatically calculate that.
| | 04:07 | We'll talk about Category later.
| | 04:09 | For now let's enter the Points
Possible. Notice there is a star there.
| | 04:13 | That means it is required.
| | 04:14 | So I'll go 100 points.
| | 04:17 | I can actually create a due date here.
| | 04:19 | We'll talk about that in an upcoming movie.
| | 04:21 | And then finally I've got three
options and this is really kind to confusing,
| | 04:27 | but let me explain what they're saying here.
| | 04:29 | Include this column in Grade
Center Calculations is very simply,
| | 04:34 | does this counts to the
student's final grades, yes or no?
| | 04:37 | If you say no, it doesn't count.
| | 04:38 | It's not going to be calculated.
| | 04:40 | I am going to say yes,
this counts, this matters.
| | 04:42 | I wouldn't create a Grade Center
column if I didn't want the grades to count.
| | 04:47 | Do I want my students to
be able to see this column?
| | 04:49 | Now they are not going to see the entire
column. They are just going to see their grades.
| | 04:53 | So really what they're saying here is
do you want your student to be able to
| | 04:57 | click on My Grades and
see their individual grades?
| | 05:00 | Yes or no, completely up to you.
| | 05:02 | Last one is do you want the students
to be able to see the average and median
| | 05:07 | for this particular item?
| | 05:09 | I usually keep this as No, because I've
got grades where I might enter a grade
| | 05:14 | today and have half the class graded
today, half the class graded tomorrow, and
| | 05:19 | the students are going to get a bad
idea of what the average and median is if
| | 05:23 | they come in while I'm in
the middle of my grading.
| | 05:26 | So normally I leave that set to No.
| | 05:28 | And I click on Submit and I've added the
Grade Center column... and it doesn't show up.
| | 05:35 | Where is it? What's going on?
| | 05:38 | Well, it turns out that
Blackboard's Grade Center,
| | 05:41 | when you add a new grade column
adds it to the far right-hand side.
| | 05:45 | Remember I said we could scroll.
| | 05:46 | So we've actually got the Weighted Total,
the Total, and then the Midterm shows
| | 05:51 | up over here on the far right-hand column.
| | 05:53 | By the way if I ever need to go back
and edit this thing, remember the button
| | 05:57 | with the two downward
facing chevrons? Well, it's here.
| | 05:59 | Click on it and I can go
Edit Column Information.
| | 06:03 | It takes me back into the column
settings, so I can always change this later.
| | 06:07 | How do I move the Midterm column from
the far right-hand side to someplace else?
| | 06:11 | Well, we're going to talk
about that in the next chapter.
| | 06:15 | For now what I'd like you to do,
this is actually your homework assignment,
| | 06:19 | I'd like you to create a handful of
columns to play around within your course.
| | 06:24 | Create four term paper columns,
four quiz columns, and a final column.
| | 06:29 | So in effect, you're going to have 10 columns.
| | 06:32 | 4 term papers, 4 quizzes, and
the midterm that we just created.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Entering grades| 00:00 | To enter grades in a Blackboard
course, access the course's Grade Center.
| | 00:04 | It's under the Course Management area.
| | 00:06 | I am going to click to the right of
the Grade Center. You'll see two greater
| | 00:10 | than signs. I am going to click on that.
| | 00:11 | If you've got Blackboard 9.0
you'll go to Evaluation Grade Center.
| | 00:15 | Remember your Grade Center is a
program so it might take a little while to load.
| | 00:18 | Be patient.
| | 00:20 | I am going to scroll to the right a
little bit. I am going to look for
| | 00:23 | my Midterm column.
| | 00:24 | Here is my Midterm column.
| | 00:26 | I am going to click on it and I can
start entering grades. Just type them and
| | 00:30 | hit Enter or Return on my keyboard.
| | 00:32 | Now, let me give you a tip.
Before you do anything, check the Grade
| | 00:36 | Information Bar.
| | 00:37 | Here it says that the Grade Type is Grade,
Points Possible are 100, Displayed As
| | 00:42 | a Score, Visible to Users Yes.
| | 00:45 | The Points Possible is really important.
| | 00:47 | What this is telling me is that this
is a score column and what I type here
| | 00:52 | has to be a score.
| | 00:54 | I am not going to put a percent sign.
I am going to give a raw score and the
| | 00:58 | score can be only up to 100 points.
| | 01:01 | Actually it could be higher if
I wanted to give extra credit.
| | 01:04 | But anything above 100 points is beyond
an A. So when I type in my grade, I need
| | 01:09 | to make sure that I'm
typing in the correct unit.
| | 01:12 | If this is actually a 30-point paper
and I give the student 100 points, they've
| | 01:18 | just basically hit the ball
out of the park on 3 papers.
| | 01:22 | So in this case, I want to type in an 88.
| | 01:25 | Now, if I go and click my cursor or my
mouse on the next cell, Blackboard is
| | 01:31 | going to yell at me.
| | 01:32 | It's going to say, "You know, you just
entered a grade. You probably do want to save that."
| | 01:37 | So, yep, you are right.
Probably should've done that.
| | 01:40 | Let me show you how to avoid
that and speed up the process.
| | 01:43 | Type in a grade. I'll give this person
89 and then press the Enter or Return
| | 01:49 | key on your keyboard.
| | 01:51 | Unless you hit the Enter or Return key
you're going to get that error message
| | 01:54 | and that is going to slow you down.
| | 01:56 | The other thing to remember is
you don't have to wait between saves.
| | 02:00 | Let me type in 89. Kind
of waiting for it to save.
| | 02:03 | I can actually shotgun through this thing.
| | 02:05 | Let me actually give everybody else 99s.
| | 02:08 | Sometimes it might need to go back, but
most of the times it should catch up and
| | 02:13 | save as you're typing.
| | 02:15 | So it's actually a pretty good
way to speed-enter your grades into
| | 02:18 | your Blackboard courses.
| | 02:20 | By the way, what happens if I make a
mistake, if it turns out this student
| | 02:23 | didn't actually get an 88, he got an 89?
| | 02:26 | What do I do?
| | 02:27 | I am going to just type in 89 and press Enter.
| | 02:30 | Blackboard will automatically do it.
| | 02:32 | Turns out that Blackboard not only
change the grade. Blackboard created
| | 02:36 | a history of that.
| | 02:37 | We are going to talk about that in
the next movie and how you can see the
| | 02:41 | grade histories.
| | 02:42 | But if you ever make a mistake,
you can go in and correct it.
| | 02:45 | We'll give this student a 90.
| | 02:47 | Now I want to show you something else
and this is the common point of confusion.
| | 02:52 | I've got Jayden. She's got an 89 in the
class. I am going to click on her name.
| | 02:57 | And I want you to notice at the very
top of the Grade Center here there is a
| | 03:00 | button that says Email and
I can email selected users.
| | 03:05 | Boy, that sure does look like I'm being
able to send an email to Jayden telling
| | 03:09 | her what her grade is!
| | 03:11 | That's absolutely not what this does.
| | 03:13 | Email selected users does not
email the students their grades.
| | 03:19 | Grades are actually private, non-
directory information that you can't send in
| | 03:23 | email because email is not secure.
| | 03:26 | When you Email Selected Users from
the Grade Book, it just opens up the
| | 03:29 | Email tool and you can send an email
message to them, but it doesn't include
| | 03:34 | their grade information.
| | 03:36 | So don't click on Email Selected Users
and think you are going to be Emailing
| | 03:40 | your students their grades.
| | 03:41 | I want to show you one last thing.
| | 03:44 | This isn't going to make a lot of
sense right now, but the Total column,
| | 03:48 | it's got this little
checkbox. That's the external grade.
| | 03:52 | External doesn't mean
it's let out of the system.
| | 03:54 | It just means this is the final column.
| | 03:57 | This is the grade that counts.
| | 03:59 | But the grade here is actually a raw score.
| | 04:03 | It's a raw score, in this
case out of a thousand points.
| | 04:06 | I've got 10 columns each worth a hundred points.
| | 04:09 | This could get a little confusing
because a student might have 270 points and
| | 04:13 | what the heck does that mean?
| | 04:15 | Well you can click on the button with
the two downward facing chevrons to the
| | 04:19 | right in the Total column and you can
actually go edit the column information,
| | 04:24 | and in this case you can now scroll
down and you can have the display be a
| | 04:29 | score, in other words a raw number.
You can have it show up as a letter.
| | 04:34 | Using Blackboard's grading schema it will
convert that raw score into a letter.
| | 04:38 | Text I wouldn't do, because text doesn't count.
| | 04:41 | You can do it as a
percentage or Complete/Incomplete.
| | 04:44 | My recommendation is leave it as
Score but have a secondary display
| | 04:48 | of Percentage.
| | 04:49 | That way as that number gets higher
and higher and higher that raw score will
| | 04:53 | actually make sense to you.
| | 04:55 | I am going to scroll down and click on
Submit and you'll see now that there is a
| | 04:59 | second part of this.
| | 05:00 | This student has 89 points.
| | 05:03 | That's actually worth 89%.
| | 05:04 | If I go in for Term Paper 1 and give the
student 100 points, the student has 189
| | 05:11 | points which is actually a 94.5%.
| | 05:15 | That's why I recommend going to
the Total column and adding the
| | 05:17 | secondary display now.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Viewing grade histories| 00:00 | To view a report of every grade
change that has ever been made to your
| | 00:04 | Blackboard Grade Center during a certain
period of time, including who made that
| | 00:08 | change, access your course's Grade
Center, you'll find it under Course
| | 00:12 | Management > Grade Center with the two
greater than signs. So I'll click on that.
| | 00:16 | If you're running Blackboard 9.0, you
go to Evaluation > Grade Center, and under
| | 00:22 | Reports click on View Grade History.
| | 00:25 | Now if you've got a course with
multiple TAs or multiple instructors, this is
| | 00:30 | actually a good thing to check every
now and then, just to make sure they are
| | 00:33 | not accidentally overwriting your grades.
| | 00:36 | This is a good way to ensure
that your grades aren't changing.
| | 00:40 | What's going on is Blackboard keeps a
running history of every grade and every
| | 00:45 | grade change, so you know who did it and when.
| | 00:49 | At the top of this there are three
buttons: Disable Grade History, Clear Grade
| | 00:53 | History, and Download.
| | 00:55 | Your institution very likely has
disabled the first two buttons, Disable Grade
| | 01:00 | History and Clear Grade History, so
when you get into your grade history don't
| | 01:04 | be shocked if those are turned
off. The default is to turn them off.
| | 01:08 | We left them on, just to show you that
they are here at some institutions.
| | 01:12 | Most institutions however turned them off.
| | 01:14 | The other thing I want to show you
is let me get into the Grade Center.
| | 01:17 | That report is kind of helpful, but
let's go and actually look at a particular grade.
| | 01:21 | We'll go to Jayden Brown and to
the right of Jayden's grade there is a
| | 01:26 | button with two downward facing
chevrons. Remember that always means edit or more.
| | 01:29 | I'm going to click on View Grade Details.
| | 01:33 | When I click on View Grade Details
it's going to show me that Jayden's grade
| | 01:37 | currently is 100 out of 100 and if I
click on Grade History I can see that I
| | 01:44 | actually entered a grade of 89 at 4:51
on June 24th and Paul Stuart, who happens
| | 01:51 | to be my TA, Paul Stuart accidentally went
in and gave the student a grade of 100.
| | 01:56 | So I probably I want to have a
chat with Paul Stuart. But again just
| | 02:00 | remember, the Blackboard keeps a history of all
the changes that happened on your Grade Center.
| | 02:06 | To view a report of every grade change
that has been made to your Grade Center
| | 02:10 | during a certain period of time,
including who made that change, go to Reports
| | 02:16 | and click View Grade History or to the
right of a particular grade click on the
| | 02:22 | button with the two downward facing
chevrons and click View Grade Details.
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|
|
9. Using the Grade Center: Beyond the BasicsCreating text columns| 00:00 | To create a new Grade Center score
column that contains text, words, rather than
| | 00:05 | numbers, go to the Grade Center in your course.
| | 00:08 | In this case I'm going to go into my
Educational Technology course, scroll down
| | 00:11 | to the Grade Center, click on the
two greater than signs to the right.
| | 00:15 | Remember that if you are running
Blackboard 9.0 you go to Evaluation Grade Center.
| | 00:19 | And you're going to create a new column.
| | 00:23 | Make sure that the Primary Display is
set to Text, the points are zero, and you
| | 00:27 | exclude this from counting.
| | 00:29 | So let me explain that a little slower.
| | 00:32 | Besides first names and last names,
you may want to create a Grade Center column
| | 00:37 | that contains non-grade information,
something like the students' preferred name
| | 00:43 | or the section of the students
enrollment or maybe their year in school.
| | 00:48 | If you're teaching a class with
undergraduate and graduate students you probably
| | 00:52 | want to have a column that tells you
which ones are the undergraduates, which
| | 00:55 | ones are the graduate.
| | 00:57 | These are the things that you're going
to have to enter. This is going to be
| | 01:00 | manually entered by you.
| | 01:01 | It doesn't count towards a student's grades,
but it also doesn't come from the institution.
| | 01:06 | So let's actually do this.
Let's create a Grade Center column
| | 01:10 | that's just plain text.
We're not going to count anything.
| | 01:13 | It's a box in which I can type whatever
I want, and in this case I'm going to go
| | 01:18 | in and type Preferred Name, so this
doesn't actually count for any points.
| | 01:23 | I am not going to have a display name,
scroll down, and I'm going to choose the
| | 01:28 | Primary Display here, not
as Score and not as Letter.
| | 01:32 | Remember a letter is A, B, C,
D, F. That's letter grade.
| | 01:36 | In this case I want it to count as Text only.
| | 01:39 | I am not going to have a secondary
display because this is just text, and the
| | 01:43 | key point, make Points Possible 0.
This doesn't count. There are no grades here.
| | 01:50 | We're just going to be entering a text column.
| | 01:52 | I am going to scroll down.
And do I want to count this?
| | 01:56 | No, this is not a grade.
| | 01:59 | Do I want my students to be able to see this?
| | 02:01 | No, this is just for me, and obviously
there's not going to be any statistics here.
| | 02:06 | I am going to click on Submit.
| | 02:07 | Now what you'll see is if I scroll down
a little bit and I now scroll, it added
| | 02:14 | that column and it actually added it
to the far right-hand side. You can see
| | 02:18 | that this actually
doesn't count and isn't visible.
| | 02:21 | I hold my mouse over it and it
says Column Not Visible to Users.
| | 02:25 | That's what that circle
with the red line in it is.
| | 02:28 | And notice in the Grade Information Bar
it says Preferred Name, Grade Type here.
| | 02:32 | It says Grade, but that's not a
problem, and Points Possible is zero.
| | 02:36 | I can go in here and now start typing.
So Jayden actually prefers to be called
| | 02:41 | Jay, so I just type Jay.
| | 02:43 | So I now have the ability in
this column to type anything I want.
| | 02:47 | It's going to be short
text box, but I can type anything.
| | 02:50 | Now you're going to notice that this
text column is on the far right-hand side
| | 02:54 | of the screen. How do I move that column?
| | 02:57 | Well that's a topic for our next movie.
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| Managing columns| 00:00 | So far we've added a bunch of columns
to our Grade Center and those columns all
| | 00:04 | appear on the right-hand side of
the Grade Center, if I scroll over.
| | 00:08 | I want you to notice that we have all
the columns that we added including the
| | 00:10 | preferred name that we added in the last movie.
| | 00:12 | Now let me kind of scroll back and I
want you to notice that while the columns
| | 00:17 | on the right are changing, Last Name
and First Name they're staying frozen.
| | 00:22 | They're always showing up.
| | 00:23 | I'm going to show you why in just a minute.
| | 00:25 | How do we go and change the order of the
columns that appear on our Grade Center?
| | 00:30 | Well, what you're going to do
is go to Manage and then go to
| | 00:33 | Column Organization.
| | 00:35 | When you do that what happens is each
of the columns is turned into our row on
| | 00:40 | this page and it actually is
displaying in two different tables.
| | 00:44 | The first table is the user information.
| | 00:47 | Now I want you to notice there is this
thing that says Everything above this
| | 00:52 | bar is a frozen column.
| | 00:54 | That's the reason why Last Name and
First Name are always showing up and
| | 00:59 | they're always showing up on the left-hand side,
is because they're frozen in the Grade Centre.
| | 01:04 | If I drag the Username above the frozen line
now Username is going to show up all the time.
| | 01:11 | Again, I'll have to click
on Submit to save the change.
| | 01:14 | In this case, I don't actually want to do that.
| | 01:17 | The other thing I want to show you is
that I can't take the username information
| | 01:23 | which is in table one and drag it
down to the grading information.
| | 01:27 | These two are kept separate.
| | 01:29 | So we've got the user information First
Name, Last Name, Username, Student ID,
| | 01:33 | Last Access, Availability,
those are always kept separate.
| | 01:38 | One last thing and then
we'll move on to the Grades.
| | 01:40 | I've the ability right now, if I
want to, to hide certain columns.
| | 01:46 | I can make it so that these columns
don't actually show up on my Grade Center.
| | 01:49 | Now remember that when I do this, I'm
checking Student ID, Last Access, and Availability,
| | 01:56 | if I try to hide a column on the screen
I don't hide it from the students.
| | 02:01 | I'm just hiding up from showing
up for me on my Grades Center.
| | 02:04 | So I'm going to click on Hide
Selected Columns and it's going to be hidden.
| | 02:09 | Remember I have not hit Submit.
| | 02:11 | So I've not saved my changes yet.
| | 02:13 | Let me scroll down.
| | 02:15 | The second table are things
that are not grading period.
| | 02:19 | Actually, a little later
we'll talk about grading periods.
| | 02:22 | But how do I go and move something
from one column location to another?
| | 02:27 | Well, you don't click Hide.
| | 02:31 | You basically just click-and-drag it,
and just like we've done this before I
| | 02:34 | want to click the Preferred Name and
I'll put the Preferred Name at the top.
| | 02:38 | I'm going to take the Weighted Total.
Put the Weighted Total at the very bottom.
| | 02:42 | I am actually going to do
the Total, the external grade.
| | 02:45 | By the way, an external grade doesn't
mean it's going to be external to Blackboard.
| | 02:49 | So I've now reorganized everything.
| | 02:51 | I've got my Midterm.
| | 02:52 | Actually, I probably want to take
the Midterm and drop it next to the Final.
| | 02:56 | So now I've got an organization where
I've got my four term papers, got my 4
| | 03:00 | quizzes, Midterm, Final,
Weighted Grade, and Total all set up.
| | 03:05 | What I need to do now is I need to
click Submit and what you're going to see,
| | 03:12 | it doesn't look like I've done anything
yet, but I scroll all the way over and I
| | 03:16 | want you to notice that several other
things that were here when I first came
| | 03:21 | into the Grade Center are now hidden.
| | 03:23 | I don't see the Last Access Date.
I don't see Availability. I've got my Preferred
| | 03:27 | Name, which I added in the last movie now
showing up here, because I dragged it over.
| | 03:32 | In this case, my final grades, the Total
and Weighted Totals, are now showing up
| | 03:37 | on the far right-hand side,
because that's where I put them.
| | 03:40 | Now a common request from faculty is, how do
I hide a column from showing up to my students?
| | 03:47 | For example, I don't want my
students to see their total grade.
| | 03:51 | They can see there raw grade, but
I don't want them to see the total.
| | 03:54 | Well, you don't go to Manage
Column Organization and hide it there.
| | 03:58 | That just hides it from you.
| | 03:59 | What you do to the right of the column
that you want to edit or hide, click the
| | 04:04 | button with the two downward facing chevrons.
| | 04:07 | Remember, that always mean more options
or edit. And in this case I'm actually
| | 04:12 | going to go into Edit Column Information.
| | 04:14 | Now I'm actually going to go scroll all
the way down and I'm going to say do I
| | 04:20 | want my students to be able to see this?
| | 04:23 | I'm going to say Show
this Column to Students and set it to No.
| | 04:26 | So if you ever want to hide a particular
column including the Total and Weighted
| | 04:30 | Grade, what you want to do is go and
hide by going to Edit Column Information.
| | 04:37 | So remember to move a
column go to Column Organization.
| | 04:41 | To hide a column from student you're
going to Edit Column Information, and when
| | 04:46 | you're going to manage column
organization, don't forget to click Submit.
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| Creating grading periods| 00:00 | We're back in our Grade Center.
| | 00:01 | I'm going to scroll over the
far left and scroll up the page.
| | 00:05 | To create a new grading period, what
we're going to do is go to Manage > Grading
| | 00:10 | Periods, and then click Create Grading Period.
| | 00:14 | What exactly is a grading period?
| | 00:16 | Well, you may have a long class, a class
that spans several months, and during
| | 00:22 | those several months, you may have lots
and lots and lots of score columns over
| | 00:28 | a really long period of time.
| | 00:30 | It's going to be the same Grade Center.
| | 00:32 | It's going to be the same students.
But what you want to do is organize your
| | 00:36 | Grade Center, you want to
chunk it, by time periods.
| | 00:39 | You might want to have the first half
of your term or the second half of the
| | 00:43 | term or if you're teaching in a 180-
day academic year, you might want to do
| | 00:48 | first nine weeks, second nine weeks.
| | 00:50 | What this allows you to do is you
can filter the Grade Center view.
| | 00:55 | So instead of seeing the entire Grade
Center, you can see a grading period.
| | 00:59 | You can also, if you want to,
calculate grades just for that period or just
| | 01:04 | create a report for that period.
| | 01:06 | So let's go and set up a grading period.
| | 01:09 | I'm going to go to Manage > Grading Periods,
and I want to create a grading period.
| | 01:16 | I'll just call it First Half.
| | 01:20 | You could call it first
nine weeks, second nine weeks.
| | 01:24 | I'm just going to call First Half.
| | 01:26 | This is a note for me.
| | 01:27 | I can, if I want, set the grading period dates,
the start and end date in a certain range.
| | 01:34 | In fact, I can actually set the range
and then say anything that has a due date
| | 01:38 | that falls within that range
is automatically associated with that grading period.
| | 01:42 | In this case, I'm going to do it None.
| | 01:44 | I kind of like adding column
to grading periods by hand.
| | 01:47 | It just seems to make a little more
sense to me. I like having the control.
| | 01:51 | So I've now created the grading period.
| | 01:55 | By the way, once I've created a
grading period, if I want to go and edit it,
| | 01:58 | remember I've got the button with
the two downward-facing chevrons I can
| | 02:01 | click on, edit at anytime.
| | 02:04 | Let me get back into the grading center.
| | 02:06 | Now that I've got a grading period, I
want to list which of the particular score
| | 02:11 | columns fall within that
particular grading period.
| | 02:15 | So what I will do now is I'm going to
go back now to Manage and I'm going to go
| | 02:20 | to Column Organization.
| | 02:22 | And you're going to notice that the
Column Organization window is changed a bit.
| | 02:29 | I'm going to scroll down and we
have the user information. We have the
| | 02:35 | grade information. We've got a new table
here in the middle which is called First Half.
| | 02:39 | That's the grading period, and what
I can do now is I can start dragging
| | 02:45 | particular score columns from down
here in the regular grade area up to that
| | 02:51 | particular grading period.
| | 02:52 | So in this case, I know the Term Paper
1 is part of the First Half assignments.
| | 02:58 | Term Paper 2, Quiz 1, Quiz 2 and that's it.
| | 03:07 | So I've now created a grading period.
| | 03:10 | So any grades that show up in Term
Paper 1, Term Paper 2, Quiz 1, Quiz 2,
| | 03:15 | automatically get associated with the
first half of the course, that grading period.
| | 03:19 | Now remember, any time I make changes
into Manage Column Organization, those
| | 03:25 | changes don't take effect
until I click on Submit.
| | 03:29 | In fact, it says at the very top of the
page, Changes have been made but not saved.
| | 03:33 | Click Submit to save the changes.
| | 03:36 | So I am going to click on Submit and
very likely you're not going to notice
| | 03:43 | much of a difference.
| | 03:44 | Things are kind of out of order now.
| | 03:46 | We've got Term Paper 1, Term
Paper 2, Quiz 1, Quiz 2.
| | 03:50 | Preferred Name is over there
at the far right-hand side.
| | 03:52 | I can move that over here.
| | 03:55 | Preferred Name, then Term Paper, Term Paper 2.
| | 03:59 | So it is a little confusing,
but I want to show you now,
| | 04:01 | I am going to scroll back up to the top.
| | 04:04 | Now that I've created that particular
grading view, I can now go and click
| | 04:11 | on Filter and if I click on Filter,
I have the ability to view not only my
| | 04:16 | full Grade Center, but I can view just
those grades from the First Half, from
| | 04:21 | that grading period.
| | 04:24 | It ends up making my grade book
much easier to understand and navigate.
| | 04:28 | Remember though that I'm now stuck in
the First Half until I go back and choose
| | 04:33 | the full Grade Center.
| | 04:35 | One thing about organizing your columns and
this is something that you might run into.
| | 04:40 | I'm going to go back into Column Organization.
| | 04:48 | Let's say that my midterm is actually going to
be in grading period 1 and 2. Well guess what?
| | 04:56 | That can't happen.
| | 04:57 | You cannot associate a column
with more than one grading period.
| | 05:01 | That's just something to remember.
| | 05:04 | So remember, what we did in this
case was we created a grading period.
| | 05:08 | First step we did, we went to Manage
and then created a grading period and
| | 05:13 | you can create as many as you want, you can edit them.
| | 05:15 | Once you've managed the grading
periods, you've created them, you can then start
| | 05:20 | dragging columns into the
particular grading period by going to Column
| | 05:25 | Organization and want something
integrating period, click on Filter and you can
| | 05:29 | change the view to view just the
grades from that grading period.
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| Creating categories| 00:00 | To view a list of Blackboard's default
Grade Center categories, open your Grade
| | 00:04 | Center and then go to
Manage and then Categories.
| | 00:08 | In the last movie, we showed you how
to assign columns to a grading period.
| | 00:13 | It's a great way to organize your content.
| | 00:16 | In this movie, we're going to show you
how to assign categories to those columns
| | 00:19 | and you can have a column that is
both a grading period and a category.
| | 00:23 | This is helpful if you want to
automatically drop a student's lowest score.
| | 00:27 | Say I have four quizzes and I
want to drop the lowest quiz score.
| | 00:31 | I need to tell Blackboard what are
quizzes or I want to drop the lowest test score.
| | 00:35 | I've got to say this is a test.
| | 00:37 | So what we are going to do is we are going
to get into Manage and go into Categories.
| | 00:45 | If you want to, you can create your own.
| | 00:48 | In Blackboard 9.0 or 9.1
it's actually really simple.
| | 00:51 | We are going to create a category.
| | 00:53 | In this case I am going to create
one called Classroom Participation.
| | 01:04 | That lovely 10% column that
we all have in our grade books.
| | 01:09 | I can go back and edit anything that I've added.
| | 01:12 | I can also delete anything I've
added, although I can't edit or delete
| | 01:16 | the default categories.
| | 01:18 | So if you don't like the names of these,
just ignore them and create your own categories.
| | 01:23 | So, now that we've got these
categories, let's go and start using them.
| | 01:28 | Let's go and tell Blackboard's Grade
Center which particular score columns
| | 01:31 | belong in which categories.
| | 01:33 | There are two ways to do this.
| | 01:34 | One is you can do it
when you create the column.
| | 01:37 | In this case we've created a classroom
participation category, but we don't have a
| | 01:42 | column for that yet, so let me create that.
| | 01:44 | We are going to type in Class Part.
| | 01:49 | I am not going to type the whole
participation. Remember you want to keep your
| | 01:52 | column names to be between
less than 13-14 characters.
| | 01:57 | So class participation. I am
just going to do Class Part.
| | 02:01 | Scroll down, do a score. In this
case I'll make it worth 100 points.
| | 02:08 | And here's where we get the interesting part.
| | 02:11 | I can now categorize it when I create
it and notice that my new category shows
| | 02:17 | up here on the page.
| | 02:18 | So we've got the built-in categories,
but we've got my category that I just
| | 02:22 | created. I am going to click
on Classroom Participation.
| | 02:25 | Scroll down. Does it count? Yes.
| | 02:28 | Do I want the students to see it? Yes.
| | 02:30 | Do I want statistics? Nope.
| | 02:32 | click on Submit.
| | 02:34 | So that's one way to go and
categorize a particular column.
| | 02:39 | You could also go click on the button
with the two downward facing chevrons to
| | 02:43 | the right of a particular column.
| | 02:45 | Edit the column information for an
existing column and then scroll down and
| | 02:50 | categorize it there, but
there's a much quicker way.
| | 02:53 | Let me get back into the Grade Center.
| | 02:54 | I am going to go to Manage.
| | 02:57 | I am going to go back to Column Organization.
| | 03:00 | So Column Organization not only allows
you to move things around on the page.
| | 03:05 | For example, I've got my Preferred
Name showing up here. I might want to try to
| | 03:11 | drag this up here. Let's see what happens.
| | 03:13 | So now it's at the top of the First Half.
| | 03:15 | It's the first thing that shows up.
| | 03:17 | Notice that I can't drag the columns
from the First Half or the grades up to
| | 03:23 | the user information.
| | 03:24 | Even if it's something that I
created, and in this case just did it.
| | 03:28 | I'm able to drag Preferred Name up to the User
Information because it's not a graded category.
| | 03:35 | It's a text category.
| | 03:37 | So it's going to be sticking up there.
In fact I am going to put it actually
| | 03:39 | next to the First Name and Last Name.
| | 03:45 | So I've got the ability to reorganize.
Remember I haven't made any changes yet.
| | 03:49 | Changes have not been saved.
| | 03:51 | I have to click on Submit to save the changes.
| | 03:53 | But let's go down here and
start categorizing things.
| | 03:57 | So I want to take my term
papers. I've got four of them.
| | 04:01 | So I've got two of them in the
first half, two of them currently not in
| | 04:06 | any grading period.
| | 04:07 | And I want to change these from being
basically no category to some other category.
| | 04:14 | So let me actually go to the top or the
bottom. I am going down to the bottom to
| | 04:18 | do this, and I am going to change the
category and now I can re-categorize that.
| | 04:23 | These are assignments.
| | 04:25 | So I am going to click on
Assignment, and it's made the changes.
| | 04:29 | Again the changes haven't been saved yet.
| | 04:31 | I am going to click on
Quiz 1, Quiz 2, Quiz 3, Quiz 4.
| | 04:36 | I am going to change those categories to Test.
| | 04:41 | So I've now changed all four term papers
from no category to Assignments.
| | 04:46 | I've changed the quizzes to Tests.
| | 04:48 | I am going to go and click on Submit.
| | 04:50 | Now you are not going to
notice anything different here.
| | 04:57 | Categories only show up when you want
to start dropping and weighting grades.
| | 05:02 | We'll do that in the next couple of movies.
| | 05:04 | But to sum up, if you want to you can
use Blackboard's default categories.
| | 05:11 | There are some built-in, four in
Blackboard 9, 9 in Blackboard 9.1.
| | 05:15 | Just go to the Grade Center > Manage and then
Categories. You can create your own categories.
| | 05:21 | Then when you're ready to go assign
a column to a category, you can do it
| | 05:26 | when you create the column or you
can better still go to Manage > Column
| | 05:30 | Information and do it that way.
| | 05:33 | Once you've set up the categories
and you've assigned the columns you are
| | 05:36 | ready to drop scores and add weight
and we'll start talking about that in the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Dropping scores in the Grade Center| 00:00 | So we have got a Grade Center with four
quizzes, four term papers, a midterm and
| | 00:04 | final and class participation. We are
going to talk about dropping scores and
| | 00:08 | since that can get kind of confusing I
actually went through and cleared out the
| | 00:12 | Grade Center, so there is
no grades in here right now.
| | 00:15 | What I am going to do right now though
is for jabrown I want to give him some scores.
| | 00:19 | So it turns out that Jay never
actually showed up for quiz number 1, so
| | 00:24 | he doesn't have a score for that.
| | 00:26 | We will leave it blank for now.
| | 00:28 | For Quiz number 2, well, he showed up
but didn't do very well. He got a 50.
| | 00:33 | I am going to scroll over to the right
and he on Quiz number 3 did much better.
| | 00:40 | Actually hit the ball out
of the park. He got 100.
| | 00:43 | Scroll over a little further and
quiz number 4 he got 100 as well.
| | 00:48 | So those are his grades.
| | 00:51 | Let's just say that for the sake of
argument I've decided that for all the
| | 00:55 | students in my class I'm going to
allow them to drop the lowest quiz grade.
| | 01:00 | So I have got four quizzes.
I want to drop the lowest quiz grade.
| | 01:04 | It turns out that dropping scores,
dropping them well, is a four-step process.
| | 01:10 | Step number 1 is you need to create
categories in your Grade Center or use some
| | 01:15 | of the categories that are already built-in.
| | 01:17 | We talked about that in a previous movie.
| | 01:20 | The next thing you need to do is assign
your grade columns to those particular
| | 01:26 | categories, and we actually
did that in a previous movie.
| | 01:29 | What you need to do now is we need
to create a new score column which is
| | 01:36 | going to add up all the quiz scores
and do the sort of arithmetic necessary
| | 01:42 | to drop the lowest grade.
| | 01:44 | You might be tempted to click on Create
Column. Don't do that. Create Column is
| | 01:48 | where you enter grades.
| | 01:50 | We want to have
Blackboard figure this out for us.
| | 01:52 | So I am going to click on Create
Calculated Column and I am going to create
| | 01:56 | a new total column.
| | 01:57 | In this case, I can going to
call it-- let's call it CUMQUIZ.
| | 02:05 | Make a note for myself. 3 highest quiz scores.
| | 02:13 | Primary Display of Score.
Secondary Display of let's say Percentage.
| | 02:18 | I am not going to assign it to a grading period.
| | 02:21 | Now right now we were creating a
column and this column is going to create a
| | 02:25 | sort of total for everything in the
course and we don't want to do that.
| | 02:29 | We only want the quizzes.
| | 02:30 | So in this case, I am going to choose
Selected Columns and Categories. I am
| | 02:34 | going to scroll down.
| | 02:36 | I could if I wanted to go and take
Quiz 1, I am going to Shift+Click Quiz 2,
| | 02:41 | Shift+Click Quiz 3, Quiz 4, and move those over.
| | 02:45 | But the reason why I had to do
categories is I want you to notice if I scroll
| | 02:49 | down and click on Test, it already has
Quiz 1, Quiz 2, and Quiz 3 and Quiz 4.
| | 02:55 | So I can just click and move that over to
the right. I click on the greater than sign.
| | 03:00 | So I don't have to manually choose
individual columns. If I have done categories,
| | 03:04 | it just makes it a little easier at this step.
| | 03:06 | So it's now going to ask me, okay, am I
going to be playing around with grading periods?
| | 03:10 | Nope. And I've got two choices. I can
drop grades or I can only use the lowest value,
| | 03:17 | if you want to penalize your students,
or calculate just the highest value.
| | 03:21 | In this case, I'm going to drop grades.
| | 03:24 | I don't want to drop the highest
grades. Again, I don't want to penalize my
| | 03:27 | students. In this case, I
want to drop the lowest grades.
| | 03:31 | I am not dropping the three lowest
grades. I'm only dropping the one lowest
| | 03:36 | grade, but I could do any
number here if I wanted to.
| | 03:39 | So if I had 16 quizzes I could
drop five of the lowest quizzes.
| | 03:44 | So far so good, so what I've done is
I've chosen the columns. In this case, I
| | 03:49 | did it through Categories. Scroll down.
| | 03:52 | And now let's talk about this Calculate
as Running Total, because this can get
| | 03:56 | a little confusing.
| | 03:59 | You remember that Jay has four
grades. Actually he only has three.
| | 04:03 | He has nothing for the first test,
which you and I would consider to be zero.
| | 04:07 | He's got a 50, 100 and 100.
| | 04:09 | Because that first score column is empty,
Calculate as Running Total, if it's set
| | 04:16 | to Yes, doesn't count it.
| | 04:19 | It is if the student
never needed to take the test.
| | 04:23 | So when we go to drop Jay's lowest
quiz scores we are not dropping the
| | 04:29 | lowest four quiz scores. We are dropping only
those scores that have grades in them right now.
| | 04:36 | So he has nothing for
the first one. It's empty.
| | 04:38 | He is got a 50, 100 and 100.
| | 04:41 | If I have Calculate as Running Total
as Yes, Jay is going to have 100 because
| | 04:46 | it's going to drop the 50 and its
going to take the 100 and 100, average them
| | 04:51 | together, and Jay's grade is
going to be 100 for all the quizzes.
| | 04:56 | That could be a problem for some people.
| | 04:59 | My recommendation is say No.
| | 05:03 | No means that all the columns count.
There is no such thing as an empty
| | 05:08 | column being forgiven.
| | 05:10 | If the student doesn't have a grade it
counts it as a zero if I set it as No.
| | 05:14 | And in this case zero and 50 and 100
and 100, if I drop to 0, 50 plus 100 plus
| | 05:21 | 100 divided by 3, that's an 83%.
| | 05:23 | Again, if I set this as Yes,
Jay's got 100% average on the quizzes.
| | 05:30 | However, if I set it as No, he's
going to have an 83 because it counts that
| | 05:35 | first column as a zero because it's empty.
| | 05:37 | I am going to scroll down a little further.
| | 05:39 | It's going to say, Include this Column
in the Grade Center Calculations? Sure.
| | 05:43 | Show it to students? Sure.
| | 05:45 | And then Show Statistics, Yes or No.
| | 05:48 | I am going to click on Submit.
| | 05:51 | So step number one, create or find a
category for the Grade Center column.
| | 05:56 | Step number two, assign the columns.
Step number three, create a new calculated column.
| | 06:02 | You are not going to create a column;
you are going to create a calculated
| | 06:04 | column, in this case, a total column.
| | 06:06 | You have to choose what particular
columns are going to be calculated. You have
| | 06:11 | to decide whether or not you are
going to allow excused absences.
| | 06:14 | Now it almost looks like
we are done, but we are not.
| | 06:18 | There is one more step.
| | 06:21 | It's a huge step. I'm actually going to
scroll over and I want you to see something.
| | 06:27 | It sure does look like the Total
column is right, but it's wrong.
| | 06:31 | It's absolutely quite wrong, because
the Total column is counting the quizzes
| | 06:37 | twice and that's a problem.
| | 06:41 | What I need to do is I need to tell the
Total column no longer count those four
| | 06:47 | quizzes. Count the CUMQUIZ column instead.
| | 06:52 | So what I am going to do is I am going
to go in to the Total column. I am going
| | 06:56 | to click on Edit Column Information.
| | 06:58 | I am going to scroll down and instead
of having the Total column count every
| | 07:05 | column in the Grade Center, I'm only
going to have it choose specific columns.
| | 07:12 | In this case, I'm only going to
include the CUMQUIZ column. I am going to
| | 07:17 | include the Midterm. I am going to
include the Final. I am going to include
| | 07:25 | Classroom Participation. I'm also
going to include the four term papers.
| | 07:33 | I'm not including the quizzes.
The reason why is the quizzes already count in
| | 07:39 | the CUMQUIZ category.
| | 07:41 | So that fourth step, going back here
and modifying the total column, if you
| | 07:46 | are going to be dropping scores remember
you don't want to count these grades twice.
| | 07:50 | So you want to go and exclude the
columns that are no longer being counted and
| | 07:54 | use the new Total column.
| | 07:56 | Calculate as Running Total? In this case No.
In other words, if you didn't do it you get a zero.
| | 08:02 | Include it in the grade columns?
| | 08:04 | Do I want to show this to students?
| | 08:06 | We actually turn this off
earlier in an earlier movie.
| | 08:09 | I will turn it back on here so the
students can see their final grade.
| | 08:12 | I am going to click on Submit.
| | 08:18 | And now everything is fine.
| | 08:20 | If I want to move that CUMQUIZ to
another place, I can go and do Manage
| | 08:24 | Column Organization.
| | 08:25 | So when we are talking about
dropping scores, dropping them well,
| | 08:29 | it's a four-step process. Step number one,
| | 08:32 | create or find a category for the grades
center columns you wished to drop. Step number two,
| | 08:38 | assign the columns to that
category. Step number three,
| | 08:42 | create a new calculated score column,
figure out which columns you are going to
| | 08:46 | count, which grades you are going to drop,
whether or not an empty cell count is
| | 08:50 | zero or is just ignored.
| | 08:53 | And then finally, modify the total
column to include this new column, the new
| | 08:59 | calculated column, rather than the old ones.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Weighting grades in the Grade Center| 00:00 | The easiest way to weight your
class's final scores is to access the Grade
| | 00:04 | Center and then you will see a
column that's titled Weighted Total.
| | 00:09 | It's a default column.
| | 00:11 | Blackboard automatically creates
this when it creates the Grade Center.
| | 00:14 | What you are going to do is click on
the button with the two downward facing
| | 00:17 | chevrons to the right of Weighted
Total and choose Edit Column Information.
| | 00:23 | Now so far we've got four quizzes,
four term papers, a Midterm, a Final and
| | 00:28 | Class Participation.
| | 00:30 | Let's do a normal distribution.
| | 00:31 | We are going to say the quizzes are
worth 25%, term papers worth 25%, midterm's
| | 00:37 | worth 15%, final's 25% and
participation is worth 10%.
| | 00:43 | For this to work all of the
columns have to exist now.
| | 00:49 | You can't go and weight your grades now
and then come and add new columns later.
| | 00:53 | You have to set up the columns, they have
to exist, then you can go and weight them.
| | 00:58 | So if you haven't done that,
stop, go back, create the columns.
| | 01:01 | Once the columns exist you can scroll
down and in this case, we need to choose
| | 01:07 | which columns we want to grade.
| | 01:11 | Remember earlier we actually created
some categories, so we actually have a
| | 01:17 | Classroom Participation category.
| | 01:21 | We have an Assignment
category, which are those term papers.
| | 01:24 | Now this is where things get a little confusing.
| | 01:29 | We do have a Test category, but you
remember in the last movie we actually
| | 01:34 | created a new score column, where we took
the four quizzes and drop the lowest one score.
| | 01:41 | If we want that to count, we are not
going to do the category. We have to choose
| | 01:46 | the particular column here.
| | 01:48 | So I am going to choose the CUMQUIZ.
| | 01:50 | Remember, if you already dropped
scores don't use the individual columns.
| | 01:55 | Use the new total column.
| | 01:57 | We've also got a Midterm and a Final.
I didn't actually categorize those, so
| | 02:01 | I will click on the Midterm first, pull
that over, and I am going to choose my Final.
| | 02:10 | And this should get everything.
| | 02:11 | I mean we've basically now have our
ouizzes, our Midterm, our Final, our
| | 02:17 | Assignments, I am going to scroll
down a little further, and I have got my
| | 02:21 | Classroom Participation.
| | 02:23 | So as I said our idea was that our
quizzes were going to be worth 25%.
| | 02:28 | That's pretty simple. We just type in 25%.
| | 02:31 | Down in the bottom corner it says Total
Weight 25%. Your Total Weight at the end
| | 02:36 | of this has to equal 100%.
| | 02:37 | Next thing we have to do is we are going
to do the Midterm. Remember we said the
| | 02:43 | Midterm was going to be worth 15%.
| | 02:48 | We said that the Final was going
to be worth 25%, so far so good.
| | 02:53 | Now we've got the Assignment and
notice that with the Assignment we have
| | 02:59 | multiple columns and in fact, we are
going to be pulling in four term papers,
| | 03:03 | Not only do we have to figure out what
percentage the term papers are going to be worth--
| | 03:08 | in this case, it's going to be worth 25%--
| | 03:11 | then we have to decide, well how are
we going to weight that? Do we want to
| | 03:15 | weight it equally, do we
want to do it proportionally?
| | 03:18 | We can drop the grades here if we want
to. Remember we haven't actually dropped
| | 03:22 | any assignment grades. I could do that.
| | 03:24 | But in this case, all of the
assignments are going to weighted equally. I could
| | 03:29 | do Proportionally, in which case I have
to choose by the total points possible.
| | 03:34 | In this case Equally is fine, and then
finally we have got 90% so far. Classroom
| | 03:40 | Participation is worth 10%.
| | 03:44 | So what I did was I basically chose the
columns that are going to count towards
| | 03:49 | my weighted score, my final weighted score.
| | 03:52 | Is this going to Calculate as Running Total?
| | 03:54 | In other words, if a score is blank is
it ignored or is it counted as a zero?
| | 03:59 | Ignored I say yes. No means zero, and I like No.
| | 04:03 | I am going to scroll down and click on Submit.
| | 04:07 | So I am going to scroll over and my
Weighted Total in this case is 20.83%.
| | 04:19 | Why is the student's grade so low?
| | 04:22 | And the answer is because we decided
that we set the Running Total to No,
| | 04:28 | meaning that because the student has
not taken the final the student has a zero
| | 04:33 | on the final. Because the student has
not taken a midterm, the student has a
| | 04:37 | zero on the midterm.
| | 04:38 | That's why the students
failing in the class right now.
| | 04:41 | But as I start entering grades for the
student, in our term paper and we will
| | 04:46 | just start entering. We will
give the student 90s on everything.
| | 04:51 | And now Jay has a B in my class.
| | 04:53 | But wait a minute, a B? You gave him
90s in the hundreds, we dropped lowest Quiz score.
| | 04:58 | Why is it a B? Aha!
| | 05:01 | Notice that the Class Participation is
still empty. I haven't given him a grade
| | 05:04 | for Class Participation yet.
| | 05:06 | That's 10% of his grade.
| | 05:08 | I go in here and it turns out this is worth a
hundred points and gave him a hundred points.
| | 05:13 | Then he finally gets the A
that he deserved in my class.
| | 05:17 | So what's the difference between the
Weighted Total and the Total column?
| | 05:21 | The Total column is just the arithmetic mean.
| | 05:24 | It's basically adding up all the scores,
all the raw scores, and dividing them by
| | 05:29 | the points possible.
| | 05:30 | That's not what's
happening in the Weighted Total.
| | 05:33 | The Weighted Total is actually-
it's a pretty complex algebra.
| | 05:37 | So if the numbers aren't the same,
it's because we've added different weights
| | 05:41 | in different areas.
| | 05:42 | So remember, the easiest way to weight
your class's final scores is to access
| | 05:48 | the Grade Center, click the Weighted
Total column, click the button to the right
| | 05:54 | of the Weighted Total column and choose
Edit Column Information, and then enter
| | 05:59 | the columns and the
percentages that you want to include.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Downloading grades and editing in Excel| 00:00 | To download a copy of Blackboard's
Grade Center to your computer access your
| | 00:04 | Grade Center and then in the top right-
corner click Work Offline and then choose
| | 00:09 | Download, and you can
follow the on-screen prompts.
| | 00:12 | Before I do that, let me tell you a
few things that you need to keep in mind.
| | 00:17 | When you're doing this you're
downloading a copy of your students' grades.
| | 00:22 | Those grades are considered to
be non-directory information.
| | 00:26 | They're actually protected here in the
United States under a federal law called
| | 00:29 | FERPA, the Family
Educational Rights and Privacy Act.
| | 00:33 | You need to make sure that you are
a good data steward for that file.
| | 00:37 | You don't want to be posting it online
or posting it in a place where somebody
| | 00:42 | kind of get into it and see it.
| | 00:44 | Student grades are considered to
be private privileged information.
| | 00:48 | You need to be very careful if you
download this file to your computer.
| | 00:52 | One of the benefits still of
downloading your Grade Center is it's really easy
| | 00:56 | for you to enter your grades inside
that file and then upload it again.
| | 01:01 | You can open up the file in Excel.
| | 01:03 | My recommendation is before you do this
| | 01:06 | create the score columns in Blackboard.
| | 01:09 | Don't try to create the score columns in Excel.
| | 01:12 | What ends up happening is the file
you're about to download is a text file with
| | 01:17 | unique identifiers and these columns,
| | 01:20 | if you create a column in Excel and try
to upload it, it's going to upload not
| | 01:25 | as a score column, but as a
text column worth zero points.
| | 01:29 | In other words, it's not going to count.
| | 01:31 | You can edit that after you
upload it, but why waste your time?
| | 01:34 | Let's actually go through and download this.
| | 01:37 | I've got my score columns already.
| | 01:38 | I am ready to work offline.
| | 01:40 | I've got a whole bunch of
student grades I want to enter.
| | 01:42 | So I am going to click on
Work Offline and click Download.
| | 01:46 | Realistically, I usually
just take the full Grade Center.
| | 01:49 | I don't want to take part of it, but I
could choose just grades for a particular
| | 01:52 | grading period or particular
column or just user information.
| | 01:56 | I am going to scroll down.
| | 01:58 | By default this is going to
download it as a tab-delimited file.
| | 02:03 | This is actually something that
Blackboard recommends and the reason why is,
| | 02:07 | well, the technical reason is that
the tab doesn't need the quote signs in
| | 02:13 | the delimited file.
| | 02:14 | Don't worry about that.
| | 02:15 | The easiest way to think about this
is tab-delimited almost always works
| | 02:19 | straight out of box with Microsoft Excel.
| | 02:21 | You could have problems with comma. So use tab.
| | 02:25 | And do I want to include hidden information?
| | 02:27 | In other words, if I've hidden columns from me
or my students do I want them to show up here?
| | 02:32 | Sure. Actually, I do in this case.
| | 02:34 | Now I've got to choose
where I want to download this.
| | 02:37 | This gets a little confusing,
because I might say, okay, well.
| | 02:41 | I want to download this to my computer.
| | 02:43 | Let's browse to where I want to save it.
| | 02:45 | That's not the Browse button
to save it to your computer.
| | 02:49 | That's the Browse button to save it
to the course files or the content
| | 02:52 | collection area of your course.
| | 02:54 | If you click on Browse it is going to open
a pop-up menu and say, okay, where in your
| | 02:58 | course do you want to save this?
| | 03:00 | That's actually a bad idea.
| | 03:02 | In fact, it's kind of a dangerous idea,
because some people might actually be
| | 03:05 | able to see the grades who don't
have reason or rights to see that.
| | 03:10 | So click My Computer,
but don't click Browse yet.
| | 03:12 | We will do that on the next screen.
| | 03:14 | Now it's going to say okay,
we are now ready to save the file.
| | 03:18 | I am going to click on the Download
button and Microsoft Internet Explorer or
| | 03:23 | whatever web browser you're using is
saying, okay, what do you want to do?
| | 03:26 | Do you want to open the file?
Do you want to save it?
| | 03:28 | in this case, I am going to save it.
| | 03:30 | I am going to save it to
my desktop. There it is.
| | 03:37 | So now I can go to my desktop and there
is the Excel file. It's a big long list
| | 03:43 | of characters in the name.
| | 03:45 | And it's actually an XLS file, but not really.
| | 03:49 | I can double-click on it.
| | 03:50 | It will open up a Microsoft Excel, but
Microsoft Excel is going to kind of warn
| | 03:54 | me that hey, this
doesn't look like an Excel file.
| | 03:58 | Remember, we are downloading it is a
tab-delimited file and that's what's
| | 04:03 | causing Microsoft to say, "Wait this
doesn't look like an .xls file ,"and it's
| | 04:07 | like yeah, you are right.
| | 04:08 | It's a tab-delimited file. We knew that.
| | 04:10 | I am going to click Yes and now I've got
my Grade Center here on my screen.
| | 04:15 | I can actually scroll over in
no longer see the student IDs in
| | 04:19 | scientific notation.
| | 04:20 | I want you to notice now in this first row,
| | 04:23 | I've got Last Name,
| | 04:25 | I've got the First Name, Username,
Student ID, but once I start getting into
| | 04:29 | the score columns, I've got the name of the
colums and I've got these special characters.
| | 04:36 | It's a pipe and the number 7.
| | 04:39 | The header for each score column
contains the column's name, a horizontal line
| | 04:44 | called a pipe, and some
sort of column identifier.
| | 04:50 | This is new to Blackboard 9.
| | 04:52 | It wasn't there in previous versions.
| | 04:54 | The pipe and the column identifier
are absolutely required if you intend to
| | 05:00 | upload this back to
Blackboard sometime in the future.
| | 05:03 | My recommendation is leave this first row alone.
| | 05:07 | Don't change anything here.
| | 05:09 | Don't change a word.
| | 05:10 | Don't change a number.
| | 05:11 | Don't remove the pipe in
the number. Leave that.
| | 05:14 | You need it.
| | 05:16 | The other thing is, and
I mentioned this earlier,
| | 05:18 | you really want to create your
score columns inside of Blackboard.
| | 05:22 | The reason why is when you do
that it gets the unique identifier.
| | 05:26 | If you go in right now and create a
score column, a new column, when you try to
| | 05:31 | upload that from here to Blackboard,
Blackboard is actually going to take that
| | 05:35 | column and upload it not
as numbers, but as text.
| | 05:40 | You can then go in and actually edit that
after you upload, but why waste of time?
| | 05:45 | Before you download it, go and
create the column in Blackboard.
| | 05:49 | One last thing I want to show you.
| | 05:51 | Now this isn't actually doing it here,
but in some cases, I've got in this case
| | 05:59 | four or five Joneses in my course.
| | 06:02 | It's a common last name.
| | 06:04 | I want to talk about
something called the dual sword issue.
| | 06:08 | Sometimes when Blackboard downloads
its Grade Book it's going to show the
| | 06:13 | students' name here alphabetically, but
it's not going to the second sort here.
| | 06:18 | So I might actually have Anthony
Jones show up above Aiden Jones here.
| | 06:25 | That can cause some confusion.
| | 06:26 | So if you are working offline and you're
entering grades, don't just rely on the last name.
| | 06:33 | Make sure that you're entering the
name for the right student as well.
| | 06:37 | This is a known issue in Blackboard
that sometimes with common last names--
| | 06:42 | you get lots of students with the same
last names, Jones, Smith, Garcia, Dwayne--
| | 06:48 | you might see this not ordered
properly or the student's first name might not
| | 06:54 | show up exactly in the
order that you're expecting.
| | 06:57 | So this could cause you to
accidentally give somebody the wrong grades.
| | 07:03 | So let's say on Quiz 1 Aiden actually
got a 50 and Anthony got 100, but if I'm
| | 07:10 | not paying attention or if this is not
sorted properly, I could actually go and
| | 07:15 | accidentally give Aiden 100 and Anthony a 50.
| | 07:20 | I could actually enter the wrong scores.
| | 07:23 | So you've got to be really careful.
| | 07:24 | When you enter scores in your
Blackboard Grade Center, make sure that you're
| | 07:28 | looking not just at the last name, but
the first name and the first name may
| | 07:32 | not actually be in the order
that you think it's going to be.
| | 07:35 | Let's get back to Blackboard.
| | 07:36 | I just want to show you one last time
to go and download your Grades from your
| | 07:40 | Blackboard Grade Center.
| | 07:42 | Access the Grade Center top right-hand
corner, click on Work Offline, and click
| | 07:47 | Download, and then follow the on-screen prompts.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Uploading student grades| 00:00 | In our last movie, we
downloaded the Blackboard Grade Center.
| | 00:03 | What I've done for the past couple of
minutes is I've actually added scores for
| | 00:06 | all my students for Quiz #1 and just
to be dangerous, I created a new column.
| | 00:11 | Remember that if you create a new
column here in Excel instead of Blackboard,
| | 00:16 | when you upload it, Blackboard
is going to create a text column.
| | 00:19 | So this is actually not
going to be a score of 90.
| | 00:21 | It's going to be text of 90.
| | 00:23 | It's not going to count.
| | 00:24 | I'll show you how to fix that, but
the best way to fix it is to create the
| | 00:28 | column in Blackboard in the
first place and download it there.
| | 00:30 | But if you want to live life on the
edge, let me show you how to fix it.
| | 00:34 | And when I do, Internet
Explorer is going to yell at me.
| | 00:36 | It's going to say, "You keep calling
this in Excel file and you really need to
| | 00:40 | stop doing that, because this is
really just a tab delimited file.
| | 00:44 | Stop saying it's an Excel file!"
| | 00:45 | I said no, I'm going to keep calling
this an Excel file even though it's tab delimited.
| | 00:50 | Again, this is a file that
I've downloaded from Blackboard.
| | 00:53 | I'm now going to go to Blackboard and,
oh no, over on the left-hand side,
| | 00:58 | my Course menu is gone.
| | 00:59 | Blackboard is broken!
| | 01:01 | No. Remember, if you are ever in your
Grade Center and needs some extra room, you
| | 01:05 | can hide your Course menu.
| | 01:06 | To get it back, just
click on the Show Course menu.
| | 01:09 | So if you're in the Grade Center and
you don't see a menu on the left-hand side,
| | 01:12 | don't panic.
| | 01:13 | That's normal.
| | 01:14 | In this case I'm going to scroll over.
| | 01:18 | Click on Work Offline and now I'm
going to upload my Grade Center.
| | 01:22 | Click on Upload.
| | 01:23 | It's going to ask me to browse for the
file. Remember the second Browse box
| | 01:28 | allows me to search either the content
collection or course files area, but this
| | 01:33 | is actually on my computer.
| | 01:35 | So I'm going to click on the first
Browse button and attach a local file.
| | 01:38 | It's up on my desktop.
| | 01:39 | So there's the file.
| | 01:40 | I'm going to click on Open.
| | 01:42 | Because I downloaded the file from
Blackboard, made the changes in Excel, saved
| | 01:47 | it and uploaded it, Blackboard is
actually going to recognize all of the columns
| | 01:51 | except for that new one.
| | 01:53 | In fact, when I go and click on this,
it's going to say, "Oh look, I've got a
| | 01:56 | whole bunch of new grades
here and hey, I got a new column."
| | 02:00 | It's not going to make any other changes.
| | 02:02 | It's just basically saying I'm
going to change the Quiz 1 column and
| | 02:05 | the NEWCOLUMN.
| | 02:06 | Blackboard is smart enough to read that
file and say "Oh, I see new values here"
| | 02:11 | and it's actually going to create a new column.
| | 02:13 | So when I click on Submit, it'll
actually upload it and then take me to
| | 02:18 | the Grade Center.
| | 02:21 | Since I added a new score column, new
score columns are always added to the
| | 02:25 | far right-hand side.
| | 02:26 | First of all, we can see all the
grades correctly uploaded. It shows you the raw
| | 02:31 | score and because we have the
display settings here to show percentage,
| | 02:34 | it's showing that as well.
| | 02:35 | I want to keep scrolling all the way
over and there is the NEWCOLUMN and it sure
| | 02:42 | does look like it gave
my students a score of 90.
| | 02:45 | But no, it actually gave
the students the word 90.
| | 02:48 | It doesn't count towards the students grades.
| | 02:51 | In this case, it won't count in the
weighted total until I go and add it to
| | 02:54 | the weighted total.
| | 02:55 | It will show up in the Total column now.
| | 02:57 | In this case, I'm going to go and
click on Edit Column Information.
| | 03:02 | Remember how I said that when you
create a column outside of Blackboard and
| | 03:07 | uploaded it, it's going to come in and say Text?
| | 03:09 | Well that's what I'm showing you right here.
| | 03:11 | I'm going to change this from a Text
to a Score and I can try to choose the
| | 03:18 | Secondary Display as Percentage,
but it may not actually do that.
| | 03:22 | Let's give it a shot.
| | 03:24 | when I submit, I might actually get an
error message and now I have to say how
| | 03:28 | many point this is worth.
| | 03:30 | So it's worth 100 points.
| | 03:34 | Scroll down and then click on Submit
and it's going to say, "You know, I'm about
| | 03:40 | to do some conversions for you.
| | 03:43 | If I can't convert it, I'm
just going to display to 0."
| | 03:45 | In this case, since we're just
transcoding the word 90 into the number 90.
| | 03:50 | That's perfectly fine
It should work fine.
| | 03:55 | And yeah, it did.
| | 03:56 | So 90.00.
| | 03:58 | So to upload a Blackboard Grade Center
file from your computer to Blackboard and
| | 04:03 | it's a Grade Center file you've already
downloaded, get into your Grade Center,
| | 04:07 | click on Work Offline, and then click Upload.
| | 04:11 | Blackboard will automatically enter
the scores and if you created any new
| | 04:15 | columns, Blackboard will create the column.
| | 04:18 | However, it's going to create
that new column as a text column.
| | 04:22 | You need to go into Edit Column
Information and change the display from Text to Score.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Changing grades| 00:00 | The easiest way to change your grade
on a Blackboard Grade Center page is to,
| | 00:05 | well, just change the grade.
| | 00:07 | For example, Jay on the first quiz,
he got a 90. I want to give him a 95.
| | 00:13 | So what I do is I click on the score
and just type in a new score, 95, and then
| | 00:17 | press Enter or Return on my keyboard.
| | 00:19 | Remember, I don't want to type 95 and
then click somewhere else. Blackboard will
| | 00:23 | throw up that message saying,
"don't forget to click OK."
| | 00:26 | Now you can enter grades or change
grades for almost anything that you see on
| | 00:32 | your grade book, Grade
Center, with a few exceptions.
| | 00:36 | If it is a weighted total, if it's a
calculated total, those things you won't
| | 00:41 | be able to edit.
| | 00:42 | I'm clicking on this and it's not
allowing me to change it because it's a
| | 00:45 | weighted total. Blackboard figures out
that grade, you can't change it yourself.
| | 00:49 | For the Total, you can't change that.
| | 00:52 | However, I could change Classroom Participation.
| | 00:54 | Let me go back and I want to show you
something else, a couple other options
| | 01:00 | that are built in here.
| | 01:01 | For example, let's go and choose
William Jones, and not only can I enter a grade,
| | 01:07 | but I want to you notice to the
right of his particular grade there's a
| | 01:12 | button with two downward facing chevrons.
| | 01:14 | That means Edit or More. And I've
the option here of exempting the grade.
| | 01:20 | Exempting the grade means
that this doesn't count.
| | 01:23 | It's not included in William Jones' final grade.
| | 01:27 | It's sort of in this case a true excused grade.
| | 01:30 | I'm just going to wipe it out,
whatever the weight is, doesn't matter. He's not
| | 01:34 | going to be penalized for this grade.
| | 01:37 | I can exempt the grade.
| | 01:38 | When I do that, you see this little
blue box here that says the grade has been
| | 01:43 | exempted for this user.
| | 01:44 | If I decide, oops,
| | 01:45 | that was a mistake, I can actually
clear the exemption if I wanted to.
| | 01:50 | One another option I can do is by
clicking on the button with the two downward
| | 01:53 | facing chevrons. I can
click on View Grade Details.
| | 01:58 | View Grade Details shows me a couple
things including the ability to clear a
| | 02:03 | grade, so I can completely
erase it as if it was never done.
| | 02:07 | If this were an assignment or a test,
we'll talk about those in a later chapter.
| | 02:11 | I can actually clear the attempt.
| | 02:14 | I can also edit the grade. So if I
want to I can just go type another grade here.
| | 02:18 | This just seems like extra steps
considering you can enter the grade on
| | 02:22 | the Grade Center, but you can give
him some feedback, some individualized,
| | 02:26 | personalized feedback. When he goes to
his My Grades he can click on the grade
| | 02:32 | and he will see your notes.
| | 02:34 | That's up to you.
It's completely optional.
| | 02:36 | You do that by clicking on the
button with the two downward facing
| | 02:38 | chevrons. Click on Save.
| | 02:40 | So you have the ability to clear a grade,
to Eeit a grade, you can also view the
| | 02:47 | history or finally, you can
manually override a grade.
| | 02:51 | There are going to be some grades in
Blackboard that are automatically graded,
| | 02:55 | like tests. You can if you want to
override the grade. You're going to say I
| | 03:00 | want my grade to count.
| | 03:01 | I don't care what Blackboard is saying.
I prefer to give this student an 88.
| | 03:05 | In this case, I can give the feedback to
the user if I wanted to, click on Save.
| | 03:11 | So regardless of what Blackboard
said, I can override the grade.
| | 03:15 | If I ever need to I can always
revert back to the original grade.
| | 03:19 | So again, if you ever need to
change your grade, just go into the Grade
| | 03:23 | Center and change it.
| | 03:25 | You can either type in a new grade or
you can click on the button with the two
| | 03:28 | downward facing chevrons and
choose some of the options there.
| | 03:32 | Remember, that you cannot
change weighted total, total or any
| | 03:35 | calculated columns.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Changing a final grade| 00:00 | In the last movie I mentioned that you
cannot change a weighted total, total or
| | 00:04 | calculated score columns. But what if
you really, really, really want to change
| | 00:09 | your student's final grade in Blackboard?
| | 00:11 | Well, there are actually three ways to do it.
| | 00:14 | This total column with a green checkbox,
that is the final grade. If you see that
| | 00:19 | checkbox that just means final grade.
| | 00:21 | Blackboard calls that the
external grade. I'm not quite sure why.
| | 00:24 | It's not actually external to Blackboard.
| | 00:26 | I can make any total be the final total grade.
| | 00:30 | So I've got the green checkbox here,
but if I go to Weighted Total, click on
| | 00:33 | the button with the two downward facing
chevrons, I can say no, this is actually
| | 00:37 | going to be my final external grade.
| | 00:41 | I can also go back and change
it back to the Total column.
| | 00:43 | So I've got this Total column here, let
me set it as the external grade, and it
| | 00:49 | turns out that we're at a fake
campus, State University, and that State
| | 00:53 | University at 93.33 is an A minus.
And you know Jay, I picked on him enough this
| | 00:59 | semester. I want to give him a 94, give
him a solid A. Well if I click on this,
| | 01:04 | I can't change it. I can't modify this.
| | 01:07 | One of the ways that I can raise
Jay's score is just go back to one of the
| | 01:11 | grades that comprises his score
and just give him some points.
| | 01:15 | So he has 90 in Term
Paper 3, let me give him 100.
| | 01:19 | See what happens? Scroll over and now he
has 94, so I've given him a solid A.
| | 01:27 | So he first way to change your final score
is to add points to student scores that
| | 01:33 | comprise that final grade.
| | 01:35 | The other way you can do this is you
can add a zero point extra credit column.
| | 01:41 | If you're going to do this and
you've modified the total or weighted
| | 01:45 | total, remember that you have to add
this column to the total or weighted
| | 01:49 | total calculations.
| | 01:51 | Let me go here and I'm going to create
a new extra credit column. I'm actually
| | 01:56 | going to call it Curve.
| | 02:00 | These are just extra points
that I'm going to give my students.
| | 02:02 | I'm going to scroll down, have it
display as Score, and the Secondary Display
| | 02:07 | of Percentage, and here's the key point.
I've got to put the Points Possible as zero.
| | 02:15 | What this means is that any score
that I add here is going to be extra for
| | 02:19 | the students.
| | 02:20 | If I've a Points Possible here, it's
actually going to be an assignment and if I
| | 02:24 | set Points Possible to anything other
than zero and I forget to enter a score
| | 02:29 | for a student it's actually going
to decrease the students' grades.
| | 02:33 | That's not what we want to do.
| | 02:34 | We want to curve grades up.
| | 02:36 | So in this case have the Points
Possible here be zero. I'm going to scroll down
| | 02:42 | and click on Submit.
| | 02:43 | Now you remember in previous movies I
went into both the Total and Weighted
| | 02:48 | Total columns and actually
went and modified those.
| | 02:52 | So they're not calculating all the
columns but only specific columns.
| | 02:56 | So I've got to go here to Edit Column
Information. I'm going to scroll down and
| | 03:06 | take the Curve column and add that over.
| | 03:09 | So remember if I don't include the
Curve column, it's not going to count.
| | 03:14 | If you would set this so it says All
Grade Columns, you don't have to do this.
| | 03:18 | We're only doing this, because
we've modified this earlier, so I click
| | 03:21 | on Submit.
| | 03:22 | Now let me show you what happens here.
| | 03:24 | I'm going to go here. I'm going to
take Jayden's Classroom Participation.
| | 03:28 | I'm going to remove that 100 and hit Enter.
| | 03:32 | I've now cleared his grade or nulled it.
And now he drops down to an 84%, but
| | 03:38 | let me show you what happened. If I go back
here and type in Curve and give him 100
| | 03:42 | points, he back to the 94.
| | 03:45 | Notice that the other students aren't
getting penalized. Now their grades are so
| | 03:48 | low because we chose not to calculate
this as a running total. But I'm able to
| | 03:53 | curve Jayden's score by creating a zero
point column, making sure it's counting
| | 03:59 | in the total, and I'm able to
give Jayden some extra points here.
| | 04:03 | The last thing you can do, this is
actually a kind of smart idea, is if you
| | 04:07 | don't want to go through all of this,
creator a brand-new column. Call it Final Grade.
| | 04:18 | Scroll down. Have the Primary
Display as Text. Not Number, not Letter.
| | 04:25 | Text.
| | 04:26 | Scroll down again. Have the
Points Possible be 0 points.
| | 04:31 | Scroll down. I'm not going to
calculate this, but I am going to show it to
| | 04:36 | my students.
| | 04:41 | I now have a new column at the far right
-hand side of my grade book in which I
| | 04:46 | can now type whatever final grade I
want to give my students. I've just created
| | 04:51 | a Final Grade column.
| | 04:52 | It's a fake column. Everything is good.
| | 04:55 | If I wanted to I could actually go and
take that Total column and I could hide
| | 04:59 | the Total column from the students by
going to Edit Column Information and
| | 05:04 | choosing not to show it to the students.
The students the when they get in my course
| | 05:08 | would see this new final grade
and I can actually have whatever I want.
| | 05:11 | I can type in A here. I can type a 90
here. I can type a Good here. I keep
| | 05:24 | forgetting to hit Enter.
| | 05:26 | I can type Needs Improvement. I can
type whatever I want and I have the ability
| | 05:31 | now to give the students the final
grade that I want to give them, not the final
| | 05:35 | grade that Blackboard is calculating.
| | 05:38 | So remember, if you really want to
change your students final grades, there are
| | 05:42 | three ways to do it.
| | 05:43 | You can add points to the students score
that comprise that final grade, you can
| | 05:47 | add a zero point extra credit column,
make sure that column counts in your Total
| | 05:52 | or Weighted Total column, or you can
create a new non-calculated text column,
| | 05:58 | call it Final Grade,
| | 05:59 | make it 0 points, not include it in
the calculation, and just enter the final
| | 06:04 | grade you want to give your students.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
10. Collecting Papers and Assignments from Your StudentsCreating assignments| 00:00 | To create an assignment in the
Blackboard course, access a content area.
| | 00:04 | In fact, the best practice is to create
a new content area for your students
| | 00:09 | called Assignments.
| | 00:12 | Make it available to the students, drag
it to the right location, in this case,
| | 00:17 | I'll put it above Course Documents, and
then click Create Assessment > Assignment.
| | 00:24 | Or if you're running Blackboard
9.0 click Evaluate > Assignment.
| | 00:29 | The Assignment tool is the easiest
way for you to collect grade and return
| | 00:33 | students submissions,
assignments, papers, and files.
| | 00:36 | Now why not click on Build Content instead
or click on Create Item in Blackboard 9.0?
| | 00:44 | Well, you use Build Content or
Create Item to hint something out to your
| | 00:48 | students that you don't
particularly want them to return to you online.
| | 00:54 | The Assignments tool is what you use to
collect assignments from your students.
| | 00:58 | So let's actually create an assignment.
| | 01:00 | I'm going to create a new
assignment. Type in the name, Assignment 1.
| | 01:08 | I can change the color as it appears on
the page and notice I've got the text
| | 01:12 | editor that we've seen before.
| | 01:14 | I'm actually going to
paste my instructions here.
| | 01:17 | I've got an assignment where I'm going to
have my students write a two-page paper.
| | 01:21 | If I had some sort of supporting
material for the students, say I wanted them to
| | 01:26 | read a guide or a rubric or some other
information, I could attach it here or I
| | 01:32 | could scroll down and click on
Attach File. Many instructors do that.
| | 01:36 | It's just a way to support their
student, to scaffold what they are writing.
| | 01:39 | I'm going to scroll down in this case.
| | 01:41 | We got to type in how many points is this
worth. This is going to be worth 100 points.
| | 01:46 | It's going to ask me do I want
to make the assignment available?
| | 01:50 | What that really is asking is will
students ever be able to take this assignment?
| | 01:55 | If you uncheck it the answer is going to
be no, the students can never take this
| | 01:58 | assignment until you go back,
edit this and turn it back on.
| | 02:02 | My recommendation? Make the
assignment available and limit the
| | 02:05 | availability below.
| | 02:07 | Now let me give you a tip
from years of experience.
| | 02:11 | You're looking at this saying,
"Okay, Number of Attempts. Allow Single Attempt.
| | 02:14 | That sounds like a great idea.
| | 02:16 | I don't want my students be able to
submit a paper over and over again."
| | 02:19 | Experience shows Allow Single Attempt
is always, always a bad idea, because
| | 02:24 | there's going to be one student in
your class who is going to accidentally
| | 02:29 | submit the wrong paper.
| | 02:30 | It just happens all the time.
| | 02:32 | My recommendation is choose
Number of Attempts and choose 2.
| | 02:37 | That just make sure that if a student
does submit the wrong file, you don't have
| | 02:43 | to go into the Grade Center, clear the
students attempts, because that's going
| | 02:47 | to happen so often, you're
just going to get frustrated.
| | 02:50 | If you set the number of attempts as
two, you have nothing to worry about.
| | 02:54 | The students will have a chance to catch up.
| | 02:57 | Now if you do this, I do
recommend that you do something else.
| | 03:02 | You're going to need to limit the availability.
| | 03:04 | You want to make sure that this
shows up at a certain date and time.
| | 03:08 | We haven't actually played around
with this yet, so let's take some time.
| | 03:11 | I'm going to click on this and
I'm going to have it show up.
| | 03:15 | Now today, we are doing this on a
Saturday, and we'll have it show up at noon.
| | 03:19 | So I'll scroll down and choose Noon.
| | 03:23 | And I'm going to give the students
until next Friday to turn in this paper.
| | 03:28 | Click the date and I'm going to
choose until next Friday. In that case next
| | 03:33 | Friday is in July, so I
have to go into next month.
| | 03:36 | Now this is where things get a little confusing.
| | 03:39 | If I were to go and ask a hundred people,
is midnight the beginning of the day
| | 03:43 | or the end of the day, I'm going to
get 50 answers saying beginning and 50
| | 03:47 | answers that say the end of the day.
| | 03:49 | Blackboard kind of says well, we'll put
midnight here and we'll add an end of the day here.
| | 03:54 | But to tell the truth there are just so
many people who don't know that midnight
| | 03:58 | is the first minute of the first hour
of the day and not the end of the day,
| | 04:03 | it's just easier not to
use midnight as the due date.
| | 04:07 | My recommendation is choose like 11:30,
or if you want to you can actually go
| | 04:12 | and you do 11:59. You can type in a time.
| | 04:16 | I'm going to turn on Track the Number of Views.
| | 04:18 | Now with Display Until basically at
the end of the day, 11:59 p.m. on July 1st
| | 04:26 | the link to my assignment disappears.
| | 04:28 | The students will never
ever be able to see that again.
| | 04:32 | I do this instead of setting a due date.
| | 04:35 | See with a due date, it's a great
concept, but a due date allow students to
| | 04:40 | submit papers after the due date.
| | 04:43 | It will just mark it as late.
| | 04:45 | My recommendation is set a strict deadline.
| | 04:48 | It has to be turned in by 11:59 p.m. on
July 1st and if you don't turn it in, I'm
| | 04:53 | not going to give you an
option to turn it in late.
| | 04:56 | If you do want to allow late assignments,
then you uncheck both Display After and
| | 05:01 | Display Until and choose Due Date. So this
is an either/or situation. Let's scroll down.
| | 05:07 | Finally, it's going to ask me, okay well who
can take this assignment, who can complete it?
| | 05:13 | I can choose All Students or if I'm
working with groups I can have Groups of
| | 05:17 | Students take this. I'm just going
click All Students Individually. I click on
| | 05:21 | Submit and there it is.
| | 05:24 | Now we're just a few minutes before
noon so it's not available right now, but
| | 05:29 | let me show you what this thing looks
like from a student's point of view.
| | 05:34 | Right now, because it's not noon yet,
the students don't see anything.
| | 05:39 | However, after noon the students will
see a link and when they click on this link
| | 05:43 | they will be able to submit the
assignment, and this is actually what
| | 05:47 | the students will see.
| | 05:48 | There's a place here where the
students can either type their answer.
| | 05:52 | My recommendation is tell your students
don't do that. Instead have the students
| | 05:57 | browse their computer and
submit their file that way.
| | 06:01 | This process is similar to the process
of attaching a file to an email message.
| | 06:05 | The students can also give you some
comments when they submit their papers.
| | 06:08 | And students can either then click
Save as draft and come back and submit it
| | 06:12 | later or click on Submit. That's about it.
| | 06:16 | In our next movie, we're going to
show you how to download the files that
| | 06:19 | students submit to an assignment.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Downloading assignments| 00:00 | In our last movie I showed you how to
create a Blackboard assignment. Let me
| | 00:04 | show you that assignment one more
time from the student's point of view.
| | 00:07 | You'll notice that I'm logged into
Firefox as Jayden Brown, a student who's
| | 00:11 | enrolled in my Educational Technology class.
| | 00:13 | I'm going to click on the Educational
Technology link. I'm going to click on
| | 00:18 | Assignments and because it is afternoon
and before the assignment cutoff date I
| | 00:24 | can actually click on the link for the
assignment, so I click on Assignment 1.
| | 00:27 | It's going to give me the instruction,
show me how many points are possible,
| | 00:31 | and then I can as Jayden Brown write my answer
here or I can browse my computer and attach a file.
| | 00:39 | My recommendation when you're dealing
with assignments let the students know
| | 00:42 | which is appropriate and how
they're going to turn their papers in.
| | 00:46 | Most instructors recommend clicking on
Browse My Computer and attaching a file.
| | 00:51 | That's what I'm going to do here.
| | 00:52 | Now I can give comments back to the
instructor like This was hard, and scroll
| | 00:58 | down and click on Submit.
| | 01:01 | I know I've successfully
submitted a paper because it says,
| | 01:04 | "This assignment is complete.
Review the Submission History."
| | 01:07 | And actually if I scroll down the
Submission History shows me that at 1:02 p.m.,
| | 01:12 | I actually submitted paper.docx and the
instructor Patrick Crispen still has not
| | 01:19 | graded it and I have no comments or
attached files from the instructor.
| | 01:23 | So Jayden has now submitted
an assignment in my class.
| | 01:26 | Let me close Firefox and I'm going to
get back to Internet Explorer. I'm now
| | 01:29 | Patrick Crispen again.
| | 01:30 | Let me get into my Grade Center.
| | 01:33 | To download files that students have
submitted to an assignment, access your
| | 01:39 | Grade Center, then find the
Assignment column, in this case it's called
| | 01:43 | Assignment 1, and click the button
with the two downward-facing chevrons.
| | 01:47 | That always means edit or more,
and choose Assignment File Download.
| | 01:53 | Now let's slow down and take
that step by step one more time.
| | 01:57 | I want you to notice that I've got
this sort of green exclamation mark here.
| | 02:02 | That actually means that it needs
grading. In fact, I can click on the icon
| | 02:06 | legend at the very bottom of the page.
| | 02:09 | So anytime I see a green exclamation
mark that usually means it's something I
| | 02:13 | have to manually grade.
| | 02:15 | I ever see sort of a piece of paper and
a pencil that means a student is taking
| | 02:19 | the assignment right now. He hasn't
actually submitted the assignment.
| | 02:23 | They may have submitted their draft
but haven't turned that in yet, and then
| | 02:27 | there are some other icons that
can show up from time to time.
| | 02:30 | One thing I want you to notice before
we go and download the assignment is on
| | 02:35 | the left-hand side of the grade book I
have the ability to do checkboxes and I
| | 02:42 | can actually find all the students who
have not submitted the assignment yet and
| | 02:47 | I can email them a message.
| | 02:49 | Now remember sending email from the
Grade Center doesn't send the grades.
| | 02:55 | This is just a way for you to
communicate with your students.
| | 02:58 | I'm not going to do that though.
| | 03:00 | In this case, let's actually download
the assignment, so I'm going to click on
| | 03:04 | Assignment File Download.
| | 03:06 | Not Cleanup. That erases a file.
| | 03:08 | I'm going to do Assignment File Download.
| | 03:10 | And it's going to show all the
students who have submitted an assignment.
| | 03:14 | In this case Jayden is
the only one who submitted.
| | 03:16 | But if I click this checkbox right
here in the top-left corner, if there are
| | 03:20 | whole bunch of students here who have
submitted assignments, I'd be able to
| | 03:23 | select all of them at the same time.
| | 03:25 | So I'm going to select Jayden and go
to the next page by clicking on Submit.
| | 03:31 | And what this is done is
it's created a ZIP file.
| | 03:35 | It's taken all the students assignments,
all the comments, and put it together
| | 03:38 | into a single file that I can
now download to my computer.
| | 03:43 | So I don't have to go student-by-student,
right click, Save As, right-click, Save As.
| | 03:48 | I can now zip it, download it.
| | 03:50 | What I recommend you to do, however, is
right-click on this and Save Target As or
| | 03:57 | Save Link As and save it to your computer.
| | 04:01 | And I'm actually going to
save this to my Desktop.
| | 04:04 | Now because this is a ZIP file, I close this.
| | 04:08 | Let me go to my desktop.
| | 04:09 | I actually have to now open this.
| | 04:11 | If you have a modern operating
system, just double-clicking on the folder
| | 04:15 | should open it and you'll actually see that
Blackboard does something kind of interesting.
| | 04:21 | It actually goes and
renames the student's paper.
| | 04:26 | Remember, the student
uploaded a file named paper.docx.
| | 04:31 | Blackboard goes and renames the
file that the student submitted.
| | 04:36 | It puts the name of the
assignment. It gives a number.
| | 04:40 | It gives the Student ID.
| | 04:41 | It gives the date and time of the
attempt and then the original filename.
| | 04:46 | It's a great way when you download
student files to be able to organize the
| | 04:50 | information that students have given you.
| | 04:52 | So you see the file and then remember the
student also wrote down that this was hard.
| | 04:57 | If I double-click on this, this is a
text document that was created where the
| | 05:02 | student submitted an
assignment and said, "This was hard."
| | 05:05 | So it's sort of a receipt for me,
but the student's paper is right there.
| | 05:10 | So how can you give your students their grades?
| | 05:13 | Well, that's the topic of the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Grading assignments| 00:00 | The process of entering assignment
grades is identical to the process of
| | 00:05 | manually entering grades for pretty
much anything else in the Grade Center.
| | 00:08 | Go to the Grade Center, find the
Assignment column, and just enter the grade.
| | 00:13 | In this case, we're going to give Jayden a 90.
| | 00:15 | Press Enter or Return on my keyboard. The
exclamation point has been replaced by a grade.
| | 00:20 | Now there is one catch.
| | 00:22 | What grades count if you have a
multiple submission attempt assignment?
| | 00:27 | My tip is, if you're going to allow
multiple submissions, don't grade the
| | 00:32 | assignment until after the
assignment availability has expired.
| | 00:37 | The other thing I want you to see is,
let me go back to Assignment 1. I'm going
| | 00:41 | to click on the button with the downward
-facing chevrons. That always means edit
| | 00:45 | or more. I'm going to click
on Edit Column Information.
| | 00:50 | Now Blackboard when we created this
column automatically created all this
| | 00:54 | information. It shows the Score and do
a Secondary Display of Percentage, and
| | 00:59 | then this new field here, Score
attempts using, and we can do score attempts
| | 01:06 | of Last Attempt, Highest Grade,
Lowest Grade, Grade of First Attempt, or
| | 01:11 | Average of Attempt Grades.
| | 01:13 | So this gives you the ability if you
want to grade multiple times where a
| | 01:16 | student is doing a revision
assignment, you have the ability to create a
| | 01:20 | revision assignment.
| | 01:21 | The student submits a paper over and over
and over again. You can grade it each time.
| | 01:25 | Grade of Last Attempt is the default one.
You just want to leave that. I'm going
| | 01:29 | to go up and click on Submit
just to make sure that's been set.
| | 01:32 | By the way, what if you want to leave a
cell blank as you are entering grades?
| | 01:37 | Well, don't enter a grade. Just
leave it blank. It's that easy.
| | 01:41 | So that's a good news.
| | 01:42 | Entering grades in Blackboard's
Grade Center is really, really easy.
| | 01:47 | Now for the bad news.
| | 01:49 | Returning student papers through
Blackboard's Grade Center isn't easy at all.
| | 01:54 | And there is no batch upload. Rather
you're going to have to do this one file at
| | 02:00 | a time, one student at a time.
| | 02:04 | In fact, I'm going to be completely honest.
| | 02:06 | You need to know that some faculty
choose to skip what I'm about to show you and
| | 02:11 | just return assignments to students
either in paper or in class or via an email
| | 02:17 | attachment rather than using Blackboard.
| | 02:19 | But if you do want to return student papers
through Blackboard, let me show you how to do it.
| | 02:25 | I'm going to go to the first cell and I'm
going to go and click on View Grade Details.
| | 02:33 | Once I've got View Grade Details
open, I can click on View Attempt.
| | 02:39 | With View Attempt I can now see that
the student has submitted the paper and I
| | 02:45 | can right here enter a
new grade for the student.
| | 02:49 | Let's say the student actually got a 91.
I can give the student some feedback,
| | 02:53 | so I can say "well done."
| | 02:56 | It's a personalized feedback to the
student, something you didn't see earlier.
| | 03:00 | And then I can browse my computer
and return that student's file to them.
| | 03:05 | I click on Browse My Computer. I'm
going to go into My Documents. I've got it
| | 03:10 | here and we'll just say
that's the edited paper.
| | 03:13 | Now I can make some notes here for myself.
| | 03:16 | These grading notes are seen by no one
else in the class except me and other
| | 03:22 | instructors and other teaching
assistants and other graders in the course.
| | 03:26 | Students can't see this.
| | 03:28 | This might be a note for me saying,
"This student might qualify for a scholarship.
| | 03:39 | Investigate."
| | 03:41 | So I'm not making a note for
myself in the Grade Center saying, hey,
| | 03:45 | this student did really well.
I want to go and look at this.
| | 03:48 | Now the student is not going to see
this. This is just a note for myself.
| | 03:52 | I can save this as a draft or I click on Submit.
| | 03:55 | If I click on Submit, it takes me back
and now the student has my feedback, the
| | 04:01 | grade, and they're ready to go.
| | 04:04 | To do the next student, I click on the
Next User at the top of the page and I
| | 04:09 | can go to the Next User. And then if
the student had submitted an assignment I
| | 04:14 | can click on View Attempt.
| | 04:16 | I could then enter the information.
| | 04:18 | and I do that user by user by user.
| | 04:21 | Now that's one way to do it.
Let me show you one other.
| | 04:24 | We've done in the Grade Center, but you
could also in the Grade Center instead
| | 04:28 | of accessing the Grade Center if you
click on the words Grade Center--
| | 04:32 | we haven't done this before--
| | 04:34 | there is a Needs Grading feature.
| | 04:36 | We'll talk a little more about this in
another chapter, but the Needs Grading
| | 04:41 | will also show you all the
assignments that you need to grade, in this case
| | 04:45 | we've already graded this assignment.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
11. Creating Online TestsBest practices for using online assessments| 00:00 | Most instructors get excited when they
learn the Blackboard has a built-in test
| | 00:04 | tool that will automatically administer,
and sometimes even grade student tests.
| | 00:09 | I mean what's not to get excited about?
| | 00:11 | Well, there are some limitations that
you need to keep in mind before you give a
| | 00:17 | test in Blackboard or in
any other online environment.
| | 00:20 | The first one is that
technology cannot fix character.
| | 00:25 | The students who are cheating in
your face-to-face class are going to be
| | 00:28 | cheating online. There's no way in
Blackboard to prevent that from happening.
| | 00:32 | In fact, there is no technological
fix that is going to prevent your
| | 00:36 | students from cheating.
| | 00:38 | It's just not going to happen.
| | 00:39 | One of the questions I get asked a lot
is, how do I prevent my students from
| | 00:43 | copying my test questions?
| | 00:45 | And yeah, there are scripts out there
you can install that prevents students
| | 00:49 | from cutting and pasting. Just
do a Google search and you'll find it.
| | 00:53 | But here's a problem with this. You
install that script. You're not preventing the
| | 00:56 | students from cutting and pasting.
You're not disabling their cell phone and
| | 01:00 | their cell phone camera. You're
not disabling simple message system
| | 01:05 | so they can be text message to
their friends. You're not disabling the
| | 01:08 | telephone, so they could be on the
phone with somebody. You're not disabling
| | 01:11 | instant message, SnagIt, Camtasia, a
pencil, someone standing next to them.
| | 01:17 | Technology just can not fix character.
| | 01:20 | In fact, unless you're giving the test
in a proctored lab environment you just
| | 01:25 | have to consider that Blackboard
test are going to be take-home exams.
| | 01:30 | And what we say at my institution is,
if you're not comfortable with that
| | 01:34 | Blackboard tests, well, just isn't for you.
| | 01:37 | My suggestion from years of experience,
treat Blackboard tests like practice exams.
| | 01:42 | Low risk, low score.
| | 01:44 | Now this is a positive. You give the
students the opportunity to practice over
| | 01:50 | and over and over again, or
conversely think of this as a license to ask
| | 01:55 | really, really difficult questions that
will require lots of research and deep reflection.
| | 02:02 | If you're like me, some of the most
difficult tests I've ever taken in my life
| | 02:06 | were take-home exams.
| | 02:08 | Another tip that you need to remember,
again from years of experience,
| | 02:12 | don't assume that your students
know how to take an online exam.
| | 02:15 | What you need to do is you need to
teach your students how to take an online exam.
| | 02:21 | Let me give you some tips that might help you.
| | 02:24 | First of all, make sure that your
students know they need to close all other
| | 02:29 | programs running on their computer.
| | 02:31 | Any other program that kind of pops
up and tries to install an update or
| | 02:35 | whatever could kick them out of their test.
| | 02:39 | The test is kind of important so
you want to make sure that all other
| | 02:42 | programs are closed.
| | 02:44 | I really strongly recommended that
your students don't use a wireless
| | 02:48 | connection if it's possible.
| | 02:50 | The wireless connection at your campus
or around your town may be stable, but
| | 02:55 | sometimes it goes up and down.
| | 02:57 | You don't want to lose
connection in the middle of a test,
| | 02:59 | especially if that's
something that's important to you.
| | 03:02 | Something that may sound a little strange,
but don't use your browser's Refresh,
| | 03:08 | Back, or Forward buttons, because
you have got this test page open.
| | 03:12 | If you click Refresh, Back or
Forward you're leaving the test.
| | 03:16 | That's a bad idea.
| | 03:17 | And the mouse's scroll wheel, if you
haven't thought about this, say I click on
| | 03:22 | an answer and I use the scroll wheel, I
may not actually scroll down the page.
| | 03:26 | I may accidentally change my answer.
| | 03:29 | One other thing, students are so
used to double clicking on things.
| | 03:32 | You need to teach them that when
they're in the test environment they need to
| | 03:36 | single click the buttons. Do not double-click.
| | 03:39 | In fact, when you begin a test in older
versions of Blackboard, double-clicking
| | 03:44 | on Begin Test will begin it and then
begin it again and if the test can only be
| | 03:49 | taken once you've locked
yourself out of the test.
| | 03:52 | Finally, tell your
students to save their work often.
| | 03:56 | I'll show you how to do this
inside of a Blackboard test, but it's
| | 03:58 | really important.
| | 04:00 | Check with your institution's
help desk while you're at it.
| | 04:02 | To see if they have any additional
tips or tricks they would like for you to
| | 04:06 | share with your students.
| | 04:07 | But remember there is no
technological fix for character.
| | 04:12 | you need to treat Blackboard online
tests as a take-home exam that the students
| | 04:18 | are going to be using
notes and other resources on.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating an empty test and choosing the Question Settings| 00:00 | To create a new empty test in
Blackboard course, the best practice is actually
| | 00:05 | create an assignments content area
separate from your course documents.
| | 00:09 | Click on Create Assessment and choose Test.
| | 00:13 | If you're running Blackboard 9.0 you'll
click on Evaluate and click Create Test.
| | 00:18 | There's also a Tests, Surveys and
Pools area under Content Management.
| | 00:22 | So let's actually do this.
| | 00:23 | Let's create a test.
| | 00:26 | Notice that there are no tests waiting
for me. I have to create one by hand.
| | 00:29 | So I click on Create.
| | 00:30 | I'm going to type in the name of my
test, which is going to be Practice Test.
| | 00:35 | It's going to ask me for a
Description and Instructions.
| | 00:40 | Description is just a
reminder of what this test is about.
| | 00:43 | The instructions are how to take the test.
| | 00:45 | And if you have access to the
exercise files, I've saved mine on my desktop,
| | 00:50 | I've got some things that
I've already written down.
| | 00:52 | So there's the description. I'm
just going to copy and paste that in.
| | 00:58 | Go back to the test and there's my
description, and I'll just paste it and then
| | 01:02 | for the instructions. I usually include
the same instructions for my students,
| | 01:06 | just some tips that will help them
as they start working on their test.
| | 01:11 | So I'm going to copy and paste this.
| | 01:15 | Go back in here and paste it here.
| | 01:18 | So I've given these
students some simple instructions.
| | 01:22 | It's what you would give whenever you
give the students a test and I gave them
| | 01:26 | some common test taking tips.
| | 01:28 | So I've got now a name that's required.
The Description is optional and the
| | 01:32 | Instruction is optional oddly,
although I think it's kind of required.
| | 01:37 | And now I've created a practice test.
| | 01:41 | However, there's nothing in it here.
| | 01:43 | We actually haven't created any questions.
| | 01:45 | And before you go and create questions
there's this button that says Question Settings.
| | 01:51 | I recommend clicking on that button
before you create a single question, because
| | 01:57 | what you are going to be doing is you
are going to be changing the settings for
| | 02:00 | your test here on out.
| | 02:02 | You already have questions on here.
The setting changes aren't retroactive.
| | 02:06 | So you want to get this set up
before you create the test and add the
| | 02:10 | questions, not after.
| | 02:11 | So I'm going to click on
the Test Creation Settings.
| | 02:15 | It's going to ask me, okay well, do I
want to give feedback to my student?
| | 02:20 | What this means is when the students
take the test, I have the ability in the
| | 02:25 | Grade Center to go and type a personal note
for each student on each answer they give.
| | 02:32 | That option is disabled by default.
I can check this and turn it on if I wanted.
| | 02:39 | In my questions, when I'm creating
questions, am I ever going to need to add
| | 02:43 | images, files, or external links to
either the questions or to the answers?
| | 02:49 | If I am, I need to turn those tools on here.
| | 02:52 | If these are not selected I won't
actually be able to add images, files, or
| | 02:56 | external links to any questions that I create.
| | 02:59 | However, once I turn it on all future
questions will have these options built-in.
| | 03:05 | The Question Metadata is really helpful
if you are going to be asking lots and
| | 03:10 | lots and lots of questions.
| | 03:12 | You want to reuse your questions in
the future and search those questions.
| | 03:17 | For me, I don't normally ask a lot of
questions during a semester or even over a
| | 03:22 | couple years, so I turn this off,
but it's completely up to you.
| | 03:26 | Next Scoring. Every time you create a
question how many points do you want that
| | 03:32 | question to be worth?
| | 03:34 | The default point value for each
question is 10. If you don't like that,
| | 03:38 | you can actually say no, I
only want it to be one point each.
| | 03:42 | By the way, when you create a
question in the test, you have the ability to
| | 03:45 | override that as well.
| | 03:47 | The next two options really are more
advanced features, if you're going to be
| | 03:53 | adding questions or finding
questions from a test bank, from a pool, from
| | 03:58 | something that's been asked before.
| | 04:00 | So, Use the currently assigned points
when finding and adding questions, means
| | 04:05 | use the points that were given when that
question was first asked or you can use
| | 04:11 | the default points. The default points
are going to override what's going on.
| | 04:16 | You can also choose whether or not
you're going to allow students to have
| | 04:19 | partial credit, not that you're going to,
but do you want to have the option of
| | 04:23 | offering partial credit.
| | 04:25 | I'm going to leave that on.
| | 04:26 | Do you want to have the option of
creating an entire question that is partial
| | 04:30 | credit or do you want the option of
adding a question that is itself going to
| | 04:35 | count as extra credit?
| | 04:37 | If you uncheck this, this
isn't going to be available.
| | 04:41 | Last down at the bottom, you have the
ability to choose whether or not you want
| | 04:45 | to randomize the answers, to show
horizontal or vertical display of the answers,
| | 04:52 | or to specify the
numbering options for the answers.
| | 04:55 | I'm going to leave all those the same,
and now I've set the Question Settings.
| | 05:02 | So this takes us back to the empty test canvas.
| | 05:06 | Remember, to create a new empty
test in a Blackboard course, access a
| | 05:11 | content area, click Create
Assessment > Test, or in Blackboard 9 click
| | 05:17 | Evaluate > Create Test.
| | 05:20 | Create a test, enter its name and
instructions, and then change its Question Settings.
| | 05:25 | The next step is to add a question.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating multiple choice questions| 00:00 | In the last movie, we showed you how to
create a new blank test canvas in Blackboard 9.1.
| | 00:06 | In this next handful of movies we're
going to focus on how to add some popular
| | 00:11 | question types, such as multiple choice,
true/false, short answer, fill in the
| | 00:16 | blank, and opinion scale/Likert.
| | 00:17 | Now we're only going to be scratching
the surface of the types of questions
| | 00:22 | that you can answer.
| | 00:23 | I want you to see that there are 17
different question types you can add, but
| | 00:27 | for now, we're going to be focusing
on just multiple choice in this movie.
| | 00:33 | Now I want to show you something. I've
got this Test Canvas here and let's say I
| | 00:37 | accidentally click on the
Home Page and then it -- oh,
| | 00:39 | wait, where did my Test
Canvas go? It's not gone.
| | 00:44 | If I scroll down, click on Course Tools
and then click on Test, Surveys and Pools,
| | 00:51 | I click on Tests, I'll see
the test that I was working on.
| | 00:55 | Click the button with the two downward
facing chevrons, which is Edit. I'm going
| | 00:59 | to choose Edit here and now it
takes me back to the Test Canvas.
| | 01:04 | So if you ever leave the Test Canvas
or need to edit a test, you can always
| | 01:08 | go back to it, down in the Control
Panel, under Course Management, click on
| | 01:13 | Test, Surveys and Pools.
| | 01:15 | For now, let's add a multiple
choice question. So I'm going to click on
| | 01:18 | Create Question, and I'm going to
scroll down and look for not Multiple
| | 01:22 | Answer, but Multiple Choice.
| | 01:24 | I'm going to type in a question
title. That helps me if I ever want to go
| | 01:29 | back and review this.
| | 01:31 | Before I do that though, I did
actually write a multiple-choice question in a
| | 01:35 | text file which is sitting on my desktop.
| | 01:38 | I actually have it open already.
| | 01:39 | So here's the question, which is Which of
the following is NOT a component of motivation?
| | 01:45 | I'm going to copy that.
| | 01:46 | If you don't have access to the text file,
you can actually type whatever you want here.
| | 01:51 | So I'm going to type the Question
Title of Motivation and I'm going to type
| | 01:55 | the Question Text here.
| | 01:56 | Now here's the thing.
| | 01:58 | We are actually pasting the text here.
| | 02:01 | One of the things you need to be
careful of is you don't put the answers here.
| | 02:06 | It's just the question text.
| | 02:08 | Blackboard separates the
question from the answers.
| | 02:12 | The answers go down here, and there's
actually a box for each separate answer.
| | 02:17 | So if I have answer A, B, C, D, well,
I have to have an answer in this box for
| | 02:23 | A, and answer in this box for B.
The other thing I want to point out and I kind
| | 02:28 | of mentioned this earlier, if I copy
and paste from Microsoft Word, I'm going
| | 02:34 | to be copying over not only the text, but a
lot of hidden formatting behind the scenes.
| | 02:39 | And it's usually on the tests that
faculty noticed the most problems, where the
| | 02:45 | questions and the answers don't line up.
| | 02:48 | That's why I recommended if you're
going to be copying and pasting, copy and
| | 02:52 | paste from Word into a text editor,
Notepad on your PC, SimpleText over on your
| | 02:57 | Mac, and then copy and paste from
your text editor into Blackboard.
| | 03:02 | That gets rid of all that extra formatting.
| | 03:04 | If you don't do that and you cut and
paste from Microsoft Word, expect that this
| | 03:08 | thing is going to look a
little strange when you view it.
| | 03:10 | So I've got the Question Text
here. I'm going to scroll down.
| | 03:14 | It's going to ask me do I want to
number my questions. I really don't.
| | 03:19 | I can put next to the answers like a
Roman numeral or an Arabic number or
| | 03:24 | an uppercase letter.
| | 03:25 | that really is not necessary because
what the students are going to see on the
| | 03:29 | left-hand side are the little
buttons that they can click on.
| | 03:32 | There's no need to add an
extra letter before that.
| | 03:36 | It's sort of a throwback to when we gave
paper exams you would have an answer A,
| | 03:40 | B, C, D. In this case, we
don't need the A, B, C, D.
| | 03:45 | We can also choose whether or not the
answers are going to be vertical or horizontal.
| | 03:49 | Vertical is the default.
| | 03:51 | My recommendation is don't confuse the students.
| | 03:53 | They are used to seeing in a multiple
choice question each answer on its own line.
| | 03:59 | Don't mess that up. The students
are going to get confused if you do.
| | 04:02 | Are you going to allow partial credit?
| | 04:04 | In this cas, no, and I want you to
notice something and I talked about this
| | 04:09 | earlier when we were talking about the
student view and talking about why you
| | 04:14 | don't want to use the scroll wheel.
| | 04:16 | You may have noticed
I did something by accident here.
| | 04:20 | While I had Vertical selected, I was
going to scroll down the page, but I
| | 04:24 | scroll my wheel, watch what happens
to the word Vertical. I've accidentally
| | 04:28 | changed what I wanted.
| | 04:31 | The scroll wheel is almost always a bad
idea, not only when taking a test, but
| | 04:36 | when creating a test.
| | 04:38 | So I'm not going to do partial credit
and I can actually choose to show the
| | 04:43 | answers in random order.
| | 04:45 | This is a good way to
discourage student cheating.
| | 04:48 | Again, there's no way that you can
prevent student cheating, but what that means
| | 04:52 | is that when students take your test,
the students are going to see the answers
| | 04:57 | in different order, depending on
who they are and where they are.
| | 05:00 | So the answer may be A, B, C, D for one
person and maybe B, C, A, D on another person.
| | 05:08 | It's up to you.
| | 05:08 | Let's scroll down here and now I've got
the answers and again, because I'm such
| | 05:13 | a lousy typist, I'm just going to cut and paste.
| | 05:16 | So answer number one, the Value component,
I'm going to copy that, paste it over.
| | 05:22 | This is what most faculty do.
Unfortunately they copy and paste from Word and
| | 05:26 | they are going to have some problems.
| | 05:27 | So do it from a text editor.
Take out that extra space.
| | 05:30 | So Value component, I'm going to
scroll down, choose the second one.
| | 05:36 | Expectancy component, again, I've got
this extra space. I've got to remove that.
| | 05:40 | Answer three is going to be the
Affective component, and answer four is
| | 05:49 | going to be the Developmental component.
| | 05:52 | And for those of you who know your
motivational theory, turns out the correct
| | 05:55 | answer to Which of the following
is NOT a component of motivation,
| | 05:58 | it's actually the Developmental component.
| | 06:02 | So what I'm doing now is I click that
little box to the left. What you do is you
| | 06:08 | type in your question in the question
box, you choose the options, you type in
| | 06:15 | your answers, and then you have
to select which answer is correct.
| | 06:19 | You're going to do it with
little radio button to the left of it.
| | 06:22 | Notice that I've got four possible
answers, so does that mean all my questions
| | 06:27 | have to be four answers long?
| | 06:29 | Actually no. You have the ability to
offer up to 20 different answers. Four is
| | 06:35 | what I'm doing in this case,
but if you want to do 20, you can.
| | 06:38 | So let's do a quick review.
| | 06:41 | I typed in the question title.
I typed in the question text.
| | 06:44 | I do have formatting here if I want to.
| | 06:46 | Remember if you cut and paste from
Microsoft Word, the formatting might be
| | 06:49 | messed up, especially when you start
getting down here to the answers, like
| | 06:54 | the Value component.
| | 06:56 | So I've got the Value component,
Expectancy component, Affective component, and
| | 07:00 | then the correct answer is
the Developmental component.
| | 07:04 | Now I can, if I want to, give
my students generic feedback.
| | 07:08 | If they get the answer
correct, I can say Good job!
| | 07:15 | And if they get it wrong, I can
give them feedback like Re-read Dembo.
| | 07:22 | What happens is the students aren't
going to see this by default until I turn it
| | 07:26 | on when I deploy the test.
| | 07:27 | We'll show you how to do that a
little later. And then I click on Submit.
| | 07:32 | And if I scroll down you'll see
that I actually have now a test.
| | 07:36 | Now don't worry that
this looks a little strange.
| | 07:39 | It will look okay on the student's
page. And notice that the point value
| | 07:42 | is worth one, because we set that as the
default point value for all future questions.
| | 07:47 | So that's how to add a multiple choice
question. I just keep going and Create
| | 07:53 | Question > Multiple Choice and
just keep going one after the other.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating true/false questions| 00:01 | So we're back in our Test
Canvas. We've already added a
| | 00:03 | multiple choice question.
| | 00:05 | By the way don't be worried that the
question answers don't line up here.
| | 00:09 | When we get in and view this
as a student you'll see that the
| | 00:12 | question and answers do line up.
| | 00:14 | In this case, we're now going
to create a true/false question.
| | 00:18 | These are actually very simple to do.
| | 00:20 | Let's scroll down and choose True/False.
| | 00:23 | By the way there is a type of true/
false question here called Either/Or that's
| | 00:27 | like Yes/No, Agree/Disagree, but in this
case we're just going to do True/False.
| | 00:31 | And the question title here is going
to be Bloom. We're going to ask question
| | 00:39 | about Bloom's taxonomy.
| | 00:41 | And in the exercise files, I've
already written a question on Bloom's
| | 00:45 | taxonomy using the Anderson and
Krathwohl rewrite of it, so I'm just going to
| | 00:49 | copy and paste that.
| | 00:50 | Again the question text is not that
important in this example. We just want to
| | 00:54 | show you that what you do here
is you type in your question text.
| | 00:57 | Again remember cutting and pasting
from Microsoft Word is a bad idea.
| | 01:02 | Go through an intermediate step first
| | 01:04 | just to make sure you don't
have any extra formatting.
| | 01:07 | Finally it's going to ask okay the
answers, are they're going to show up
| | 01:11 | vertical or horizontal?
| | 01:12 | My recommendation is they
should always be vertical.
| | 01:15 | If you put them horizontal,l the
students will see the word True on one side
| | 01:19 | and False on the other.
| | 01:21 | Students just aren't used to seeing that.
They're still use to remembering on a
| | 01:25 | piece of paper, there is one answer per line.
| | 01:28 | Two answers per line just confuse the
students, so vertical is a much better way.
| | 01:33 | And then, I get to choose
is the answer true or false?
| | 01:37 | And it turns out that executing and
implementing are not analyzing. They're
| | 01:42 | actually examples of application or
apply, so I'm going say this as False.
| | 01:48 | I can give feedback to the students who
got it right. I can say "Correct." I can
| | 01:53 | scroll down and say for the students who didn't,
| | 01:56 | "No, it is an example of apply, "
and then click on Submit.
| | 02:06 | Now our question appears at the
bottom of the test, question number 2.
| | 02:12 | But I want to you to notice something.
| | 02:15 | We've got that up and down arrow again,
so I can if I want to click my mouse,
| | 02:19 | and I can drag question 2
and it becomes question 1.
| | 02:23 | So I can reorder this at any point in time.
| | 02:26 | And what if I find out there's
a typo or I don't like it?
| | 02:29 | Well, remember I've got this button
with the two downward-facing chevrons and I
| | 02:33 | can always edit anything that I've
created in the Blackboard course.
| | 02:37 | So to create a true/false question
access your Test Canvas, click on Create
| | 02:43 | Question, scroll all the way down
to the bottom and choose True/False.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating essay or short answer questions| 00:00 | So far on our Test Canvas,
we've created two questions.
| | 00:04 | We've created a multiple
choice question and we've created a
| | 00:07 | true/false question.
| | 00:08 | Don't worry that they don't line up.
They'll actually look better when we
| | 00:11 | display them for the students.
| | 00:13 | The great thing about the Multiple
Choice and True/False question types is that
| | 00:17 | they're automatically graded by Blackboard.
| | 00:19 | There's one correct answer.
Blackboard knows the answer.
| | 00:22 | So now that we've set this up
there's nothing for us to do.
| | 00:25 | When we deploy the test,
Blackboard will automatically grade the
| | 00:28 | student's answers.
| | 00:29 | That's great, but what if we want the
students to be a little more reflective?
| | 00:34 | We don't want them to just
click on the correct answer.
| | 00:36 | we want them to actually do a
little bit of thinking and reflection.
| | 00:40 | Well, Blackboard has an Essay question tool.
| | 00:44 | The Essay question tool, unlike True/
False, unlike Multiple Choice, is not going
| | 00:49 | to be graded by Blackboard.
| | 00:51 | You are going to have to grade these by hand.
| | 00:53 | So it's kind of like the
Assignment tool, but it's an Assignment tool
| | 00:57 | within tests.
| | 00:59 | The students aren't
going to be attaching a file.
| | 01:00 | They're going to be typing in a text box.
| | 01:03 | So in this case, I'm going to type in
Activity as the question title and I'm
| | 01:08 | going to use a question text.
| | 01:11 | We've got a bunch of text that I've
already written here. I'm just going to
| | 01:14 | copy and paste this.
| | 01:15 | If you don't access to the Exercise
Files, no worries. You can go and type
| | 01:19 | whatever you want here.
| | 01:20 | So I'm going to type this question,
make sure there's no extra spacing around it.
| | 01:25 | So simply we're going to ask them, hey,
| | 01:27 | give me a classroom activity that
would enable students to construct meaning
| | 01:30 | from instructional messages including
oral, written, and graphic communication.
| | 01:34 | I'm going to scroll down and
there's this box here that says Answer.
| | 01:39 | It sort of gives me the idea that
Blackboard is going to grade it if I typed the
| | 01:45 | correct answer here, but no,
don't type the correct answer here.
| | 01:49 | This is where you give your
students an exemplar of what you think they
| | 01:54 | should be writing.
| | 01:55 | This is in case you need to give the
students a nudge in the right direction and
| | 02:00 | you don't want to include it in the
question text. You can give an example of a
| | 02:06 | great writing sample here.
| | 02:09 | Usually, I leave that blank.
| | 02:11 | So again, we've created a question.
| | 02:14 | We're not going to type an answer,
unless we want to give it as an exemplar
| | 02:17 | for the students.
| | 02:18 | We don't want to give them the answer to this.
| | 02:21 | And remember Blackboard isn't going
to be grading this automatically, even
| | 02:26 | though there's an answer box here.
| | 02:27 | We still have to manually grade
the essays that the students write.
| | 02:31 | I am going to click on Submit.
| | 02:32 | Now, I want to show you something.
| | 02:35 | I showed you the Essay tool, which
now shows up at the bottom of our test.
| | 02:40 | We can actually rearrange that
by clicking the up and down arrow.
| | 02:43 | We can edit it by clicking on the
button with the two downward facing chevrons.
| | 02:46 | I want to show you one
other type of Essay question.
| | 02:50 | I kind of prefer the Essay question
over this one, but it's completely up to
| | 02:54 | you if you want to do.
| | 02:55 | It's called Short Answer.
| | 02:57 | I'm going to scroll down.
| | 02:59 | You are going to notice here that
Short Answer has a Question Title.
| | 03:03 | It has a Question Text.
| | 03:05 | The only thing that's different
is it's going to say "Okay well,
| | 03:09 | I'm going to give the students a box
into which they can answer the question.
| | 03:12 | How many rows do you want that box to be?"
| | 03:16 | The Essay question is going
to be about six lines I think.
| | 03:19 | This is only going to be three or as
many as I want and that's really the only
| | 03:24 | difference between the two.
| | 03:26 | The reason why I like the Essay tool
more than I like the Short Answer tool
| | 03:33 | is actually based on some research I
saw and I'm not sure it can apply here.
| | 03:38 | But there's research when it comes to
skeletal notes and skeletal outlines
| | 03:42 | which says the more wide space you
give students, the more they think they
| | 03:46 | have to write down.
| | 03:47 | And I kind of believe that if you give
the students a test and you give them a
| | 03:50 | lot of white space, they're going to try
to write and fill that space, which is
| | 03:55 | one of the reasons why I
like the Essay activity.
| | 03:57 | It just gives you a bigger amount of
space in which the students can write.
| | 04:02 | So that's three down, two to go.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating fill-in-the-blanks questions| 00:00 | We now have three types of
questions on our Test Canvas.
| | 00:04 | Let's go for a fourth one, Fill in the Blank.
| | 00:07 | Now this is one of those tools that's helpful,
but you need to be aware of its limitations.
| | 00:12 | I'm going to click Fill in the Blank.
| | 00:14 | What Fill in the Blank allows me to do--
let me type in and I'll do SocioCog.
| | 00:19 | I'm going to take my question text from
the file that we've been playing around
| | 00:25 | with and really what I'm going to do is,
blank is considered to be the father of
| | 00:31 | Social cognitive theory,
(also known as social learning theory).
| | 00:35 | That's Albert Bandura.
| | 00:38 | Make sure there's no extra spacing here.
| | 00:40 | Now here's a limitation.
| | 00:42 | Blackboard is going to
automatically grade the student's answers.
| | 00:47 | The students are going to be
asked to type their answers.
| | 00:50 | Because of that I have to come up
with every possible acceptable spelling
| | 00:56 | permutation that I'm going to allow.
| | 01:00 | So Fill in the Blank requires a little
bit of work from me at the beginning to
| | 01:04 | set up, but it's great if I have
vocabulary words, if I want to make sure that
| | 01:09 | my students not only know the concept,
but know the concept's spelling perfectly,
| | 01:17 | this is a great tool.
| | 01:18 | So in this case, I'm going to
probably have three possible answers.
| | 01:22 | First answer is going to be Albert Bandura.
| | 01:26 | I'm going to do Albert. Just in
case the students don't spell Bandura
| | 01:31 | correctly or Bandurra.
| | 01:35 | Now here's what's going on.
| | 01:37 | I provide the answers and I have to
allow for common spelling errors or the
| | 01:41 | errors that I'm going to accept.
| | 01:42 | In fact, now that I think about it,
| | 01:44 | no, you need to spell Bandura correctly or
you're not going to get a good grade on this.
| | 01:49 | So I'm now down to two answers.
| | 01:51 | I have to provide answers that are
going to allow for abbreviations or
| | 01:56 | for partial answers.
| | 01:58 | I have to create the question in a way
that the students know what the blank is.
| | 02:02 | I have to phrase it so there
is literally only one answer.
| | 02:08 | Key point to remember. There can only
be one answer because Blackboard will
| | 02:12 | only know what I typed and the answers that I
type are not case sensitive, but spelling counts.
| | 02:22 | So my recommendation is if you're
going to be doing a Fill in the Blank
| | 02:26 | question, do it for key vocabulary
words where you just are wanting to force
| | 02:32 | the students to just spell it correctly,
try to keep your answers limited to
| | 02:37 | one word to avoid mismatched answers,
and try to make sure that you don't have
| | 02:43 | extra spaces in it.
| | 02:44 | If the answer is going to be more than
one word, in this case Albert Bandura or
| | 02:48 | Bandura, you want to give all
the possibilities as answers.
| | 02:52 | I'm going to scroll down.
| | 02:55 | I can give the students a correct
feedback if I want to. Good job.
| | 03:01 | Or I can sit there and say
"No. Re-read Ormrod Chapter 10."
| | 03:12 | Scroll down and click on Submit.
| | 03:16 | I've now added a Fill in the Blank question.
| | 03:20 | So, the Multiple Choice question,
that will be automatically graded by
| | 03:23 | Blackboard, True/false, automatically
graded by Blackboard, Essay, I have to
| | 03:28 | grade that by hand, and the Fill in
the Blank question will automatically be
| | 03:33 | graded by Blackboard and if the
student misspells it even a little, it's
| | 03:38 | going to be wrong.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating opinion scale/Likert questions| 00:00 | So we are back on our Test Canvas. We
have got four types of questions on our
| | 00:04 | Test Canvas right now. We've got a
Multiple Choice question. There is one
| | 00:08 | correct answer so Blackboard will
automatically grade that for us.
| | 00:12 | We have got a True/False question.
| | 00:14 | Again one correct answer.
Blackboard will automatically grade that.
| | 00:17 | The Essay question, Blackboard
isn't going to be able to grade.
| | 00:21 | I am going to have to grade that by
hand. The students will submit it, but I
| | 00:24 | will have to go and review their answers.
And then finally we have got a Fill in
| | 00:28 | the Blank question and that actually
does have a correct answer, correct
| | 00:31 | spelling in this case.
| | 00:32 | Two possible spellings, either Albert
Bandura or Bandura ,and Blackboard will
| | 00:37 | match with the students type and if
they got it correct they are going to get
| | 00:40 | the correct points and if not they're
not. Each question is worth one point.
| | 00:44 | Now I want to go and add one last question type.
| | 00:50 | This is called an Opinion
Scale/Likert question by the way.
| | 00:53 | That is pronounced "lick-ert" not "like-ert".
| | 00:56 | The person who the scale is named
after Rensis Likert is from Belgium and he
| | 01:00 | actually did say his last
name is pronounced "lick-ert".
| | 01:03 | So I am just going to type Likert and I
am going to go and get the question text.
| | 01:09 | So let me go back to the file
that we've been playing around with.
| | 01:13 | I've got this question here.
| | 01:15 | I want the students
reflecting on what they've answered.
| | 01:18 | So I am going to paste this here. This
actually came from a colleague of mine at
| | 01:24 | the University of Southern California
and he asked this question at the end of
| | 01:29 | his test, just to have the students
reflect, and I thought this is a great idea.
| | 01:34 | So reread the questions above
and the answers you've given.
| | 01:37 | How confident are you with your answers?
| | 01:40 | Now, I'm going to scroll down and
Blackboard by default when it creates Likert
| | 01:46 | scale question is actually going to
have a 6 point Likert scale and that's
| | 01:51 | going to be Strongly Agree, Agree, Neither
Agree nor Disagree, Disagree, or Strongly Disagree.
| | 01:57 | In relationship to the question I just
asked, that makes absolutely no sense at all.
| | 02:04 | I actually want to do a 5 point Likert scale.
| | 02:07 | You would think that you click on
Number of Answers and choose 5, but as long
| | 02:11 | as there is 6 on the screen already, you
have to manually remove one of the answers.
| | 02:17 | Thhat's okay. I'll scroll down and
choose any one of them. I'll click on the
| | 02:20 | second one and remove it.
| | 02:22 | So that's how you take a 6 answer
question and turn it into a 5 answer question.
| | 02:27 | So I have got now 5 possible answers.
Strongly Agree, Neither Agree nor
| | 02:33 | Disagree, Disagree, Strongly
Disagree or Not Applicable.
| | 02:38 | that really is not the choices that I
want to have for this sort of questions.
| | 02:43 | So I actually have again over in the
text file all the answers and I am actually
| | 02:47 | going to cut-and-paste them over.
| | 02:54 | And again, I am going to
have one answer per box.
| | 02:57 | That's all I am doing is just taking all 5
answers and then choosing just the one
| | 03:03 | that I want to save.
| | 03:04 | There we go, so now I have the
answers from Not Confident at all, A Little
| | 03:13 | Confident, Somewhat Confident,
Fairly Confident and Very Confident.
| | 03:18 | Now what I need to do now, and this is a
little strange because this is a test
| | 03:23 | and every test has a correct answer.
| | 03:25 | I have to go down here and say okay well,
the correct answer to this is I'm Very Confident.
| | 03:33 | However, what I am going to do is
when I deploy this question I am going to
| | 03:36 | make it worth 0 points.
| | 03:39 | So what I'm doing is I am
embedding a survey question into my test.
| | 03:44 | It's a way for me to gauge the students'
confidence with their learning and put
| | 03:50 | it into my test and I
will make it worth 0 points.
| | 03:52 | So no matter what they answer, they are
not going to get penalized by this, but
| | 03:56 | it's a way for me to do
a little bit of research.
| | 03:59 | Now here's the other
thing that my colleague did.
| | 04:01 | He actually had this line here. I am
going to copy of this over, which I thought
| | 04:07 | just was a great idea, which was okay,
compare your answers to the prior
| | 04:14 | questions with the correct answers to
determine if you were overconfident in
| | 04:18 | your response and need to apply more
mental effort to the readings to match your
| | 04:23 | performance with your confidence.
| | 04:24 | I just thought it was a neat little
idea and if you answer it correctly, you are
| | 04:28 | going to see that. If you answered it
incorrectly you are going see that.
| | 04:31 | So I am going to click on Submit.
| | 04:33 | Now remember this is still a test
question that's worth one point. I've got to
| | 04:37 | change that or the students are going
to get penalized if they answer anything
| | 04:42 | other than absolutely I agree.
| | 04:44 | So in this case I click on the points
and I changed the points to 0 and then I
| | 04:53 | must click on Submit.
| | 04:56 | If I click somewhere else, it doesn't save it.
| | 04:59 | So I've got to click this,
change it, and then click on Submit.
| | 05:05 | So now this is a 0 point question.
| | 05:08 | So now I have 5 questions on my
test, but it's only worth 4 points.
| | 05:13 | A multiple-choice question, which
graded automatically is worth 1 point, the
| | 05:18 | True/False question graded
automatically worth 1 point, the Essay question not
| | 05:23 | graded, I have to grade
that by hand, worth 1 point.
| | 05:26 | The Fill in the Blank automatically
graded 1 point and then finally, the survey
| | 05:32 | question, the Likert scale
question, is worth 0 point.
| | 05:35 | I have now created a simple test.
| | 05:39 | The next step is for me to deploy that
and give it to my students, but before I
| | 05:45 | do that I want to show
you how to reuse questions.
| | 05:48 | We are going to talk
about that in the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Reusing questions| 00:00 | When a student takes a test, chances
are that students are going to have
| | 00:04 | some level of anxiety.
| | 00:06 | It turns out that there is some
research that shows that if you can frontload
| | 00:10 | your test, the beginning of the test,
the first 10% of the questions, with
| | 00:17 | questions that are either very very simple or
questions that the students have seen before,
| | 00:24 | it reduces the student's test
anxiety and the relevant questions actually
| | 00:31 | activate prior knowledge and the
students actually perform better.
| | 00:36 | So it's a good idea as you build
your questions to kind of go back and if
| | 00:41 | there's a question you've asked before
that you want to reuses, well, you can do that.
| | 00:46 | Now we haven't created any other questions
other than what we see here on the screen.
| | 00:51 | But as you start creating more and
more questions, I want you to see that
| | 00:55 | Blackboard has a Reuse Question button.
| | 00:59 | Now, I believe this is just in 9.1.
| | 01:01 | I don't recall this in 9.0, but
I'm going to click on Reuse Question.
| | 01:07 | I can choose to reuse a Question Set.
| | 01:11 | So the Question Set is you're choosing
specific questions. The Random Block is
| | 01:16 | go to that test over there and get me this many
questions, I don't care what the questions are.
| | 01:24 | Those are great, but I want
to show you Find Questions.
| | 01:27 | Now for this to work you need to
disable the Pop-Up Blocker or the first time
| | 01:32 | you run it, if you're running it in
Internet Explorer, you might see that yellow
| | 01:35 | bar at the top of the page saying you
need to give us permission to be able to
| | 01:40 | open up this pop-up window.
| | 01:42 | I'm going to click Find Questions and
it's going to open up this pop-up window.
| | 01:47 | And I actually now have the ability to
see pretty much all the questions in my
| | 01:52 | course from all the tests.
| | 01:55 | So right now, I only have five
questions from the practice test, but I can then
| | 02:00 | choose okay, I want to take this
question, I want to take this question, and
| | 02:04 | I want to take this question and I
want to add those questions to my test.
| | 02:09 | Now at the very top, you've got what
they call Mode and you have two options.
| | 02:16 | You can copy the question or
you can link to the question.
| | 02:21 | What's the difference between the two?
| | 02:23 | Well, copy the question makes a copy
and then kind of says okay, that's it.
| | 02:28 | And the original question and the
copy are no longer linked together.
| | 02:33 | Link to original questions
keeps those questions linked.
| | 02:38 | So if I ever go back to the original test,
| | 02:41 | in other words if I ever go back to
the practice test and I rewrite or modify
| | 02:46 | that question, if I've chosen Link,
all the other tests that use that question
| | 02:54 | will also be updated.
| | 02:56 | So that's actually just a quick way
if you ever need to go and get some more
| | 03:00 | questions, you want to go and pull
back some questions that you asked before
| | 03:04 | in your test, click on Reuse
Question. You can just say okay,
| | 03:10 | I just want these questions, this, this,
and this from quiz number four, or just give
| | 03:14 | me five random questions from this quiz.
| | 03:17 | That's Create Questions
Set or Create Random Block.
| | 03:21 | My recommendation is click on Find
Questions. Make sure your Pop-Up Blocker is
| | 03:24 | disabled or if you have Internet
Explorer, you are going to need to allow it to
| | 03:28 | open up a new window.
| | 03:30 | And then choose the questions you
want to add and when you do that, it'll
| | 03:34 | actually add them to the bottom of
your test. You can then change the point
| | 03:38 | value and you're ready to go.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
12. Deploying and Grading TestsSetting test availability and deploying the test| 00:00 | So over the last several movies we've
worked on creating a test in Blackboard.
| | 00:05 | You can actually see the test by going
to Test, Surveys and Pools, clicking on
| | 00:09 | Tests, and then to the right of
Practice Test clicking and choosing Edit.
| | 00:16 | So we've created a blank test. We set
its questions settings by clicking the
| | 00:20 | Question Settings up here.
| | 00:23 | We created five questions. Four of them
are going to have point values. One of
| | 00:27 | them isn't going to have any points at all.
| | 00:30 | Three of them are going to be
automatically graded by Blackboard. The essay
| | 00:33 | question we're going to have to grade by hand.
| | 00:35 | Now before we deploy this test, we
need to make sure that all of the
| | 00:42 | questions are correct.
| | 00:44 | There are no typos, no confusing
questions. You do not want to edit a test after
| | 00:51 | it has been deployed and taken by your students.
| | 00:54 | What ends up happening is the
grades then could be wrong. In fact, any
| | 00:58 | changes other than textual changes to
an existing test will invalidate those
| | 01:04 | test attempts and could actually corrupt
the entire test and its Grade Center entries.
| | 01:10 | So make sure your test is
done, it's ready to go.
| | 01:16 | Once you've gotten the test, we've
created the test, we've got the questions,
| | 01:20 | we're now ready to deploy it.
| | 01:22 | I'm going to go back to my Assignments folder.
| | 01:25 | Again, it's always a good idea to
separate your course documents from your
| | 01:29 | tests and assignments.
| | 01:31 | I'm going to click on Create
Assessment and then I'm going to click on Test.
| | 01:36 | Now we've been here before, but the
last time we had to create a test.
| | 01:41 | Notice here our Practice Test
is sitting there waiting for us.
| | 01:45 | If you don't see your Practice Test,
that means you haven't saved it and you're
| | 01:49 | going to need to go and create it.
| | 01:50 | Go back to the earlier movies
and kind of watch those again.
| | 01:54 | In this case we've got our practice test.
| | 01:56 | We're ready to deploy it.
| | 01:57 | I'm going to click on Submit and
now I'm ready to deploy the test.
| | 02:02 | Now I'm going to scroll down and it's
going to show me okay, well, here is the
| | 02:06 | name of the test and the description
and now it's going to do I want to open
| | 02:12 | this test in a new qindow?
| | 02:14 | I have a choice Yes or No. It's up to you.
| | 02:17 | My recommendation is to say No.
| | 02:19 | If the students have a pop-up blocker
and you say open the test in a new window,
| | 02:25 | you run the risk that the students are
going to accidentally keep your test from
| | 02:29 | opening up and therefore
they won't be able to take it.
| | 02:31 | Now I'm going to scroll down here
and under Test Availability my favorite
| | 02:36 | question in the entire
program, Make the Link Available.
| | 02:41 | That's not what they're asking.
| | 02:42 | Make the Link Available is saying, will
students ever be able to take this test?
| | 02:49 | Not do you want to make it available now,
but do you ever want to make it available?
| | 02:54 | Well, yeah, that's why I created it.
| | 02:57 | Remember we don't have to have it show
up right now. I can go into the Display
| | 03:02 | After and Display Until and hide
it until a certain date and time.
| | 03:05 | But if I have Make the Link Available
set to No, students will never ever be
| | 03:11 | able to take this test.
| | 03:13 | Add a new announcement for the test?
| | 03:15 | Yes, I strongly, strongly recommend this.
| | 03:19 | I'm going to show you a reason in a
later movie, but this is actually going to
| | 03:23 | be very helpful so the students are
going to know that the test is available,
| | 03:27 | when it becomes available.
| | 03:28 | And if the students have accidentally
hidden the course menu, they get into your
| | 03:32 | course homepage, they will still see
the announcement and they will still be
| | 03:36 | able to get to the test.
| | 03:38 | And now I'm going to scroll down
and I'm going to show you where most
| | 03:41 | faculty get into trouble.
| | 03:44 | Most faculty say,"Multiple
attempts? Absolutely not.
| | 03:48 | I'm not going to let my students
take this test over and over again.
| | 03:52 | That's a terrible idea."
| | 03:54 | Actually no, it's a good idea.
| | 03:57 | It turns out that if a student is
taking a test and they get locked out,
| | 04:04 | you want them to be able to get back in to the test.
| | 04:07 | This one is up to you.
My recommendation allow the students to take the test
| | 04:12 | as many as two times.
| | 04:14 | This just make sure that if the
student has some sort of connection problem,
| | 04:19 | they're not going to be locked out.
| | 04:21 | They can always get back.
| | 04:23 | And as I said earlier you've got to
treat Blackboard tests as take-home exams.
| | 04:29 | You don't want to make this high
stakes because you can't guarantee that the
| | 04:32 | students aren't going to be cheating.
| | 04:34 | Use this as a practice and in this
case, Number of Attempts 2 is fine.
| | 04:40 | Unlimited number of attempts is also a
great idea if it truly is a practice.
| | 04:45 | If the students were taking a test
over and over again, they are learning.
| | 04:50 | Now here is where faculty absolutely
get into trouble. Force Completion.
| | 04:55 | Force Completion sounds like this great idea.
| | 04:58 | It says once a student starts, the
student must complete the test in one sitting.
| | 05:06 | If they leave, if they drop,
then it's not going to work.
| | 05:11 | They have to go Save and Submit.
| | 05:12 | Boy, that just sounds
compelling. Here's a problem.
| | 05:16 | Imagine that this is checked.
| | 05:18 | I'm connected and all of a
sudden there's a power surge.
| | 05:21 | All of a sudden somebody with a
backhoe digs up my Internet connection.
| | 05:28 | All the sudden I bump the power cord on my computer.
| | 05:32 | I'm going to be locked out of the test,
and I guarantee it's going to happen
| | 05:35 | more often than you could possibly imagine.
| | 05:38 | As someone who supported Blackboard for
10 years, the number one complaint I get
| | 05:44 | when faculty are saying "my students
are having problems with test" is because
| | 05:48 | they've checked Force Completion.
| | 05:51 | This sounds like a great idea.
| | 05:53 | Please, please, please
don't check Force Completion.
| | 05:57 | What I recommend you do is set a timer instead.
| | 06:02 | Force Completion says the students must
complete it in one sitting, but if you
| | 06:07 | want to force the students to
complete the test, set the timer.
| | 06:11 | The timer is going to say once you start
this test, you have one hour to complete it.
| | 06:16 | If your Internet connection drops
during that hour, congratulations, you can
| | 06:20 | come back. However, at the one hour
mark after you started the test, I'm going
| | 06:27 | to count this as late.
| | 06:29 | Now the bad thing is that Set Timer
doesn't actually yank the test from the
| | 06:33 | students when the timer expires.
| | 06:35 | A student could technically
go beyond the one-hour limit.
| | 06:39 | What happens is Blackboard then
just says I'm not going to grade this.
| | 06:42 | You'll see an exclamation mark in the
grade book showing you need to manually
| | 06:47 | grade it. Blackboard won't manually
grade anything that's turned on late.
| | 06:52 | So you can allow multiple attempts
if you want or you can set the timer.
| | 06:57 | It's completely up to you.
| | 06:59 | My recommendation is because it's going
to be a low-stakes test, I'm going to allow
| | 07:02 | my students to take it over and over again.
| | 07:05 | This isn't a high-stakes test. I want the
students to be able to learn. That's fine.
| | 07:10 | I do not recommend Force Completion.
| | 07:12 | Set Timer is optional,
| | 07:14 | if you want to have the
students have a certain amount of time.
| | 07:17 | Again, it's not going to
yank the test away from them.
| | 07:20 | I can now choose when the students
can start taking the test and when the
| | 07:25 | students can stop taking a test.
| | 07:28 | Very strongly recommend,
always keep these paired.
| | 07:31 | If you have a Display
After, have a Display Until.
| | 07:35 | Some versions of Blackboard had problems
when you set up announcements that had a
| | 07:39 | Display Until date or Display
After date and they weren't paired.
| | 07:43 | That's why I've been saying
always pair these things.
| | 07:47 | So I'm going to allow my students to
start taking this test, well, today.
| | 07:52 | I'll actually make it as of noon today.
| | 07:56 | That's okay that it is past noon. That's fine.
| | 07:59 | And I'm going to have this
test show up until next Thursday.
| | 08:05 | I'll have it at the end of the day.
| | 08:07 | Remember we talked earlier, don't
choose midnight. A lot of people get confused
| | 08:12 | is what midnight is, is at the
beginning of the day or the end of the day.
| | 08:16 | I also wouldn't choose End of the Day.
| | 08:18 | In this case I'll choose 11:30 PM and I'll
actually change it to 11:59 PM. I can type there.
| | 08:25 | I can have the students type in
a password to get into this test.
| | 08:31 | It seems like a good idea.
| | 08:32 | That's better if you're in
a proctored lab environment.
| | 08:35 | The reality is your students are going
to forget that password and you're going
| | 08:39 | to get a lot of people who
yell at you saying "I can't get in."
| | 08:42 | The Due Date really is only going to
be helpful if you allow students to
| | 08:47 | submit late papers, in which case you
don't do the Display After and Display
| | 08:51 | Until. You do the Due Date.
| | 08:54 | So those are the settings
so far. Let's keep going.
| | 08:57 | The Self-assessment Options.
| | 09:01 | The first question here is, does this count?
| | 09:04 | Well, yeah, I'm giving
this a test. This matters.
| | 09:07 | This is a test I want my students to
get a grade for. May not be a very high
| | 09:11 | grade, may not matter that much.
| | 09:13 | I mean I can't guarantee the students
aren't cheating, so I'm going to include it,
| | 09:17 | but I'm not going to
give it that much of a weight.
| | 09:20 | So yeah, I'll include it in the
Grade Center score calculations.
| | 09:24 | One thing I could do though is
I could actually make this an
| | 09:28 | anonymous assessment.
| | 09:30 | I can uncheck this test and click in
this, basically saying it's going to be a
| | 09:37 | manually graded test and the questions will
never be graded because the test is a self-test.
| | 09:43 | What you're doing is you're creating a
test that students have to grade on their own,
| | 09:47 | and you're kind of giving the
students the opportunity to practice on their
| | 09:52 | own and you never even see the
answers. You never even see the questions.
| | 09:57 | My recommendation, if you want to do
that-- eh, it's up to you. I kind of like
| | 10:02 | making test that count but not for a lot.
| | 10:04 | Now when the students submit their test,
they are going to get feedback from
| | 10:09 | Blackboard and you have the option of
what the students are going to see when
| | 10:13 | they submit the test.
| | 10:15 | They can see their score and/or they
can see submitted answers, in other words,
| | 10:20 | what their answer were.
| | 10:23 | You can tell them the correct answer if
you want to, and you can choose whether
| | 10:28 | or not to give feedback.
| | 10:29 | Remember when we were creating
those questions we had those boxes where
| | 10:33 | correct feedback, incorrect feedback,
those are only going to show up if I
| | 10:37 | choose Feedback here.
| | 10:39 | If not, all that time I spent creating the
feedback is not going to be very helpful.
| | 10:44 | So I can choose any or all of these.
| | 10:46 | In this case I'll choose them all.
| | 10:48 | And then finally we get down to the end
and I get to say okay, the Presentation Mode.
| | 10:53 | Do I want all the questions to show up on the
same page? Do I want to do it one at a time?
| | 10:58 | It really depends on the
number of questions you have.
| | 11:03 | If you've 10, 20 questions,
All at once is fine. If you've 50 or 100
| | 11:08 | questions, do One at a time.
| | 11:10 | The reason why is anything longer than 10 or
20 questions is just going to take a long time.
| | 11:17 | I've also heard from Blackboard, now
this is a while ago, but some engineers at
| | 11:22 | Blackboard actually recommended that
One at a time actually causes less load on
| | 11:27 | the Blackboard server than all at once.
| | 11:29 | I'm not quite sure why that's true but it's
an engineer I actually trust who said that.
| | 11:35 | So if you're concerned about connections and
everything, One at a time might be a good idea.
| | 11:40 | Prohibit Backtracking basically says
the students if they're doing one at a
| | 11:45 | time are going to be able to answer
the first question, then they go to the
| | 11:49 | second question, but they can't
go back to the first question.
| | 11:53 | If you've taken computer graded tests,
like the Graduate Record Exam, they do that.
| | 11:58 | They prohibit backtracking.
| | 11:59 | I'm going to do it All at once in this case.
| | 12:02 | Final thing is I can choose
right now to randomize the questions.
| | 12:06 | That's actually one sort of okay
way to cut down on student cheating
| | 12:12 | where somebody says, "Hey,
| | 12:13 | what's the answer to question number one,"
if question number one is different for everybody.
| | 12:18 | So we've now set the settings for our
test. We've basically said we're going
| | 12:24 | to create the test.
| | 12:25 | It's now going to be available.
| | 12:28 | I could say that I don't want
it to show up until next week.
| | 12:31 | That's perfectly fine, but I do want
my students to be able to take the test.
| | 12:35 | Absolutely want to put up an announcement.
| | 12:38 | I'm going to allow students to
have unlimited attempts on this one.
| | 12:42 | I'm going to set a timer though. The
students do have an hour to complete it.
| | 12:46 | I'm going to do Display After and Display
Until,.I'm not going to do the Due Date.
| | 12:50 | I'm going to include it. I'm going to give
the students all the feedback they can get.
| | 12:54 | Presentation Mode All at Once, and
I'm going to randomize the questions.
| | 12:58 | And when I click on Submit
I have now deployed my test.
| | 13:02 | To see what this test looks like from a
student's point of view, if I turn Edit
| | 13:06 | mode off in the Assignments folder,
there is the link to my test. And we'll talk
| | 13:11 | more about that in the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Assisting students with common testing obstacles| 00:00 | I mentioned in an earlier chapter
that it's a mistake to assume that your
| | 00:04 | students know how to take an online test.
| | 00:06 | Many of your students have
never taken an online test.
| | 00:10 | So in this movie, we are going to
look at the top five common obstacles
| | 00:14 | your students may encounter when
they take a Blackboard test and how to
| | 00:17 | overcome each.
| | 00:19 | So I'm logged in as Jayden Brown.
He is a student in my class.
| | 00:24 | See that I'm enrolled in Educational
Technology and hey, look. A test has been posted.
| | 00:29 | So I am going to click on the name of
the course. You can see there's no edit mode,
| | 00:34 | there is no control panel.
I really am a student in this course.
| | 00:37 | Now Jayden may have
accidentally hidden the course menu.
| | 00:41 | So Jayden is going to go "I can't see a
link to the test. I clicked this link it
| | 00:45 | says Test Posted and all I get is the
announcement. There is no link to it."
| | 00:51 | One tip for you is go in to the
Announcements and add a course link to this
| | 00:56 | announcement, edit the announcement,
add a course link to the test, just so if
| | 01:01 | students have hidden the course menu
they can still get to the test by going
| | 01:05 | through Announcements.
| | 01:06 | Let me actually go here.
| | 01:09 | Another thing is Jayden might not
know where in the course to look.
| | 01:13 | So another reason why the student
couldn't find is, "Well I looked in Course
| | 01:18 | Documents and I looked in Week 1 and
it's not in Week 1 and I don't know what to do."
| | 01:24 | You can have the students click in all
the links or you can remind the students
| | 01:27 | that if they click on the Folder View,
they actually have the ability to go and
| | 01:33 | expand and see everything within their course.
| | 01:37 | So reminding the students about the
Folder view is actually really helpful.
| | 01:41 | My recommendation is edit the
announcement to include a course link and
| | 01:46 | demonstrate in your class how to take a test.
| | 01:49 | One other thing and this actually
is not a student fault, but if I go to
| | 01:54 | Assignments and the test isn't here,
make sure that you as the instructor,
| | 01:59 | you've actually deployed it.
| | 02:01 | The student also needs to know that
there's got to be a set time that this test
| | 02:04 | is available and unavailable.
| | 02:07 | If the student tries to take the
test before it's available or after it's
| | 02:11 | available, there's not going to be a
link there and that might be a reason.
| | 02:15 | So let the students know ahead of
time the deadline and the timeline that
| | 02:20 | they need to follow.
| | 02:21 | But let's say that Jayden is
able to overcome that obstacle.
| | 02:24 | Jayden clicks on the Practice Test and
he sees the instructions and he clicks on Begin.
| | 02:32 | But Jayden actually is not very
confident with his mouse skills and
| | 02:37 | accidentally double clicks.
| | 02:39 | Well in older versions of Blackboard
each time you click Begin you started a new assessment.
| | 02:45 | So if you actually went here and double
clicked it would create two assessments.
| | 02:50 | Blackboard 9.1 is much better about this.
| | 02:53 | If I double-click it actually says
"No, wait, wait you've already taken one test! Stop!"
| | 03:01 | Previous versions might have a
problem, so remind your students don't double click.
| | 03:07 | It's actually a really, really bad idea.
| | 03:10 | The third problem that your students
might encounter is that there is scroll
| | 03:13 | wheel on their mouse may
accidentally change their answers.
| | 03:18 | Now in this case it's not going to
happen here I've selected True and if I
| | 03:22 | scroll down its actually
going to scroll the page.
| | 03:25 | I don't have to worry about that here.
| | 03:26 | But in some types of questions
it actually will cause a problem.
| | 03:31 | Notice that I've been now in the test
for about a minute and 13 seconds and
| | 03:35 | that's perfectly fine. It's going to give
me the timer, showing me that I have an
| | 03:39 | hour to take this test.
| | 03:41 | But the third problem, scroll
wheel could cause answer changes.
| | 03:45 | Teach your students not to use the scroll wheel.
| | 03:49 | Fourth problem, I'm here
taking my test and then I go, gosh!
| | 03:54 | I don't know. Let me refresh this.
| | 03:56 | Blackboard is going to throw up a
message saying "You're leaving the test with
| | 03:59 | unsaved answers. Are you
sure you want to do this?"
| | 04:02 | So its actually going to warn the
students, stop don't leave yet you haven't
| | 04:07 | submitted your test.
| | 04:08 | If the student clicks OK
it takes the student out.
| | 04:11 | That's a bad thing unless you allow
the students unlimited attempts or
| | 04:14 | multiple attempts.
| | 04:16 | I am going to click Cancel. It kicks
me back here. Whoops, didn't expect that and
| | 04:21 | actually, it kicked me out of the test.
| | 04:24 | So even though I said Cancel, my
hitting refresh took me out of the test.
| | 04:29 | If this were a force completion
test, I am hosed. I can't take the test
| | 04:33 | anymore. I'm locked out.
| | 04:35 | Fortunately, this was not a forced
completion test. I'm still able to pick up in
| | 04:40 | the middle of the test.
| | 04:41 | That's the reason why I recommend
turning off Force Completion, because a
| | 04:46 | student might accidentally go here
and say "Okay let me click back, that's fine.
| | 04:51 | Oh! That's a mistake."
| | 04:53 | The student could
accidentally get out of your test.
| | 04:56 | I just don't recommend Force
Completion. It's going to cause more problems than
| | 05:00 | you can possibly imagine.
| | 05:02 | So solution? Don't force
completion. And the other thing is teach your
| | 05:07 | students to save.
| | 05:09 | So if I go here and click on
False, I want to save my answer.
| | 05:13 | It's going to say "Here you go,
you've answered a question."
| | 05:17 | Go down scroll a little more and
I'm going to say, how confident am I?
| | 05:22 | This actually makes no sense. This
should be question number 5 because I did the
| | 05:26 | questions in random order and it
actually says "Read the questions above", which
| | 05:31 | is just one question.
| | 05:32 | I am going to save my answer.
| | 05:34 | One other thing I could do is I could
scroll down to the bottom of the page and
| | 05:38 | save all my answers so far.
| | 05:42 | So Blackboard will save the answers,.
What that means is if I am disconnected my
| | 05:47 | answers aren't going to be lost.
| | 05:50 | So the fourth problem, students can
accidentally leave the test before they have
| | 05:54 | submitted, this happens a lot on
wireless. If the browser crashes, if the
| | 05:59 | students hit the back button, refresh,
or they go down here and click Save but
| | 06:05 | they never actually submit their test.
| | 06:08 | My suggestions?
| | 06:09 | Don't force completion and teach your
students to save and if you need to, if a
| | 06:16 | student actually does get locked out,
you can go into the Grade Center and
| | 06:19 | reset the students test attempt by
going to View Grade Details and clearing the attempt.
| | 06:26 | And then finally, the fifth
problem is saving but not submitting.
| | 06:30 | The student has the answer, but they
didn't click on Submit down here in the
| | 06:34 | bottom right-hand corner.
| | 06:35 | That happens occasionally.
| | 06:37 | My suggestion? Again don't force
completion. Allow the students to go back in.
| | 06:42 | You could reset the test attempt in the
Grade Center, but my recommendation is
| | 06:46 | the students will click on Save and
Submit, they are going to say, you haven't
| | 06:49 | answered 3, 4, and 5 Blackboard will
warn the students, guess what? You're not done.
| | 06:54 | The student can say no, cancel,
let me go back and answer those, and we'll
| | 06:59 | do Bandurra. I will misspell it on
purpose and choose Expectancy, which is a wrong
| | 07:08 | answer. Now Save and Submit.
| | 07:10 | It will now say you still
haven't answered the essay.
| | 07:13 | Yeah, I know that. I am going to click
on OK. That's going to say "No, really, you
| | 07:17 | still haven't finished. Are you sure?"
| | 07:20 | So notice the Blackboard stops the
students twice before they submit their final grades.
| | 07:26 | Only when the students click on
OK is the test actually submitted.
| | 07:32 | Bottom right-hand corner the students
now can click on OK and depending on my
| | 07:36 | settings, I can actually see the answers.
| | 07:40 | So in this case question number one is
correct. Turns out question number two is
| | 07:44 | incorrect although it's only worth 0 points.
| | 07:47 | The essay still needs to be graded.
I misspelled Bandurra. Even though it's
| | 07:53 | the same, we can kind of see this as
humans, Blackboard is a computer. It didn't
| | 07:57 | know that this was the correct spelling
or close enough, so 0 points and then I
| | 08:02 | have got this one wrong.
| | 08:04 | So the student now has taken a test in
Blackboard and that shows you some of the
| | 08:08 | problems that the students can encounter.
| | 08:10 | In the next movie, we are going to show you
how to view and grade your student test results.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Viewing the student results| 00:00 | To view the results of a students' test,
go to the Grade Center, find the column,
| | 00:04 | and well, there are the results.
| | 00:06 | In this case, this needs grading.
| | 00:09 | But if it were something that didn't
need grading, it was all true/false
| | 00:13 | questions or all multiple-choice
question or all questions that were graded by
| | 00:17 | Blackboard, I can see the score here.
| | 00:20 | Now if you have an essay, a short
answer, or a file response question you are
| | 00:24 | going to have to grade these by
hand, those parts of the questions.
| | 00:28 | One of the easiest ways to do this is
you could go here and click on Practice Test,
| | 00:33 | but I want to scroll down.
| | 00:35 | I want to show you something that
instead of clicking Grade Center and
| | 00:39 | clicking the greater than signs on the right,
I am actually going to expand the Grade Center.
| | 00:44 | There is a tool here called Needs Grading.
| | 00:48 | Anytime there's something on your Grade
Center that you need to grade, the Needs
| | 00:53 | Grading shows up and I have
the ability now to start grading.
| | 00:57 | Now, I want to show you something
here. I can grade all the users.
| | 01:03 | When I click that, it's going to
open up the first student's paper.
| | 01:07 | I get to see who the student is.
| | 01:09 | I get to read that student's paper.
| | 01:11 | Or I could choose Grade Anonymously.
| | 01:15 | What that's going to do is it's going
to show me one at a time the students'
| | 01:19 | answers, the students' tests, but it's
not going to show me the student's name.
| | 01:26 | It's actually just going to show me a number
for the student like Student 8 or Student 12.
| | 01:32 | That way I'm being sort
of impartial in my grading.
| | 01:37 | I can also Grade by
Question or View by Attempts.
| | 01:40 | In this case, I'm actually
going to grade all users.
| | 01:43 | I click on that. I am going to scroll down.
| | 01:45 | I can if I want to
overwrite what Blackboard says.
| | 01:50 | If I decide that I'm going to allow
that answer, I can go in and enter a
| | 01:54 | new point value here.
| | 01:56 | That's perfectly fine.
| | 01:57 | It doesn't count until I click on Submit.
| | 02:00 | So you have the ability to
overwrite or change individual scores.
| | 02:03 | You can't change the answers, but you can
change whether or not the students get points for it.
| | 02:08 | I am going to scroll down and there
is my essay and I'll type "Thank you
| | 02:13 | Cicero" and scroll up.
| | 02:17 | And now I have to enter a grade.
| | 02:19 | If you see a dash here, dash in the Grade
Center always means that you need to enter a grade.
| | 02:24 | It's missing a grade.
| | 02:25 | I am going to give it a grade of
1, because it's out of 1 points.
| | 02:28 | By the way, could I give
it a higher grade? Sure!
| | 02:31 | I can give it the grade of 1,000 if I wanted to.
| | 02:34 | Of course, it's going to completely
blow the students grades on Blackboard,
| | 02:38 | because they are going to get the
extra points and those extra points will
| | 02:42 | actually count in their final grades.
| | 02:44 | So be very, very careful when you enter
grades to make sure that you're entering
| | 02:49 | them in the right scale.
| | 02:51 | I am going to scroll down, give the feedback.
| | 02:54 | I can also give some
extra notes to the students.
| | 02:58 | This is notes not on the essay,
but rather on the test itself.
| | 03:02 | I can have feedback to the
users or I can do frading notes.
| | 03:06 | When I click on Submit, it would now take me
to the next student that I needed to grade.
| | 03:11 | In this case, there's no one
else who needs to be graded.
| | 03:15 | By the way, notice I actually
didn't enter a grade for the quiz score.
| | 03:20 | I just entered it for that particular item.
| | 03:22 | If I go back to the Grade Center, you
will notice that Jayden's practice test
| | 03:27 | now has 2 points, because
I gave him some extra points.
| | 03:30 | I gave him 1 extra point on that first
question and then I also gave him a point
| | 03:34 | for the answer at the end.
| | 03:36 | So that's why the Practice
Test is worth 2 points here.
| | 03:39 | Let me also show you a couple other
things that you might want to know about.
| | 03:46 | That's how to view the test results for a
single student or to change their grades.
| | 03:51 | But I want to show you something else.
| | 03:54 | If I go and click the column
header and click the button with the two
| | 03:58 | downward-facing chevrons, I want you to
notice that there are a lot of options here.
| | 04:03 | Again, Grade Attempts, Grade Anonymously.
| | 04:06 | It's the same thing we saw when we
went to Needs Grading under Grade Center.
| | 04:10 | But I want you to notice here
there's also something here called
| | 04:13 | Attempts Statistics.
| | 04:15 | This gives me a report that shows me the
answers and the distribution of how the
| | 04:22 | students in my class
answered each and every question.
| | 04:26 | It's not going to give me a graph.
| | 04:28 | It's also not going to
show it to me it in raw score.
| | 04:30 | In other words, it's going to say
100% of my students answered question one
| | 04:35 | incorrectly or answered this,
the Effective component.
| | 04:39 | Second, it will tell me what the number is.
| | 04:41 | I have to do the math to figure that one out.
| | 04:44 | Scroll down a little further
and I can see all the results.
| | 04:47 | This is something you might want to
think about downloading or saving or
| | 04:50 | printing on your computer if you're interested
in seeing how your students did on your tests.
| | 04:56 | I am going go back to the Grade Center.
| | 04:58 | I want to show you one other thing.
| | 05:00 | Click on Practice Test.
| | 05:02 | I also have the ability to download the results.
| | 05:06 | The Download Results is actually going
to give me a file that I can then open up
| | 05:12 | in a statistics program.
| | 05:15 | It's helpful if you want to analyze
responses in a much more in-depth robust way
| | 05:21 | in a stats program like SPSS or SAS.
| | 05:24 | So if I click on Download Results, I
can then say okay, I want Tab. I want By User.
| | 05:30 | Click the Download Results.
| | 05:31 | Let me just open this and I
will show you what it looks like.
| | 05:36 | Again, we get that message saying, now
this is an XLS file, but it sure looks
| | 05:40 | like a tab-delimited file.
| | 05:42 | Yeah, we know that, and it gives
me the username, the last name.
| | 05:46 | It shows me each question.
| | 05:48 | It gives me the answers.
| | 05:50 | I can then go into a stats program and
clean this up, recode this, and do some
| | 05:55 | advanced statistics on this if I'm interested.
| | 05:58 | That in a nutshell is what you need to
know about test grades in Blackboard.
| | 06:04 | When you create a test it
automatically creates a Test column.
| | 06:08 | If your test contains questions that
Blackboard grades, the grades here are
| | 06:12 | going to be automatic.
| | 06:13 | You can just go into Practice Test or
the name of the column, click on the
| | 06:17 | button, and you can then see the
Attempts Statistics or Download Results.
| | 06:22 | If there's anything in a
test that you need to grade,
| | 06:25 | if it has an essay or short answer or
a file response, you can then in the
| | 06:29 | column header either go and Grade
Attempts, Grade Anonymously, or down here
| | 06:35 | under Grade Center you
can click on Needs Grading.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Reviewing the differences between surveys and tests| 00:00 | You may have noticed that we spent a lot
of time talking about Blackboard's Test
| | 00:03 | tool and haven't actually
mention Blackboard Survey tool.
| | 00:07 | Well, the reason why is
Blackboard's Test and Survey tools are
| | 00:10 | practically identical.
| | 00:11 | Now that you know the Test
Tool you know the Survey Tool.
| | 00:14 | In fact you create test and
surveys almost exactly the same way.
| | 00:18 | In Blackboard 9.1, you go to a Create
Assessment and then choose either Test or
| | 00:22 | Survey. In Blackboard 9.0 you'll go to
Evaluate and then Create Test or Survey.
| | 00:28 | In the Course Management area, if you
scroll down, click on the Course Tools,
| | 00:34 | there is Test, Surveys and Pools. That's
the same in Blackboard 9 and 9.1 and it's
| | 00:41 | pretty much the same creation settings.
| | 00:44 | In fact let me go and create a quick
survey here. Notice that I still click on
| | 00:49 | Create New Survey. I type in the
name of my survey. I'll call it foo.
| | 00:54 | Type in the description and
instructions. Cick on Submit. I've got the same
| | 01:00 | canvas. I can go to the Question Settings.
| | 01:04 | The only thing that's different here
is I have fewer options and I don't have
| | 01:10 | any point values and that's
actually the thing to remember. So I've got
| | 01:16 | identical question types so I can go
and find questions. I can even upload
| | 01:20 | questions. That's an advanced topic.
| | 01:23 | So what are the differences
between a test and a survey?
| | 01:26 | Survey always have 0 points and
surveys are always, always, always anonymous.
| | 01:35 | When you go in the Grade Center you can
see who submitted a survey, you'll see a
| | 01:39 | green checkbox, but you
cannot identify who said what.
| | 01:43 | You can download the aggregated data
and you can download individual responses,
| | 01:48 | but those responses will be anonymized.
| | 01:51 | There is no way to change a deployed
survey into a test or deployed test into a survey.
| | 01:59 | So my suggestion, if there is ever a
chance you will need to see the individual
| | 02:05 | responses on a survey and you want to be
able to identify who said it, don't use
| | 02:11 | the Survey tool. Instead create a test
whose questions are worth 0 points each.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
13. Communicating with Your StudentsSending emails| 00:00 | We talked about sending email back in
Chapter 1, but I want to take some time to
| | 00:05 | go through sending email a little
slower now, especially now that you are more
| | 00:09 | familiar with the Blackboard interface.
| | 00:11 | If you're going to send email a lot
and if your institution allows you to
| | 00:15 | update your email address-- Many do not.
| | 00:17 | In fact, many institutions, they
automatically update your email address based on
| | 00:21 | your payroll records or your campus directory.
| | 00:25 | My recommendation is start by going to
My Places, click on Personal Information,
| | 00:32 | scroll down, and edit your personal information.
| | 00:36 | You want to make sure that you
have the correct email address.
| | 00:40 | Now don't be surprised if your
campus has disabled this feature.
| | 00:44 | If your campus has connected
Blackboard to your campus directory, you're not
| | 00:48 | going to be able to edit it.
| | 00:49 | But some campuses allow you to do this.
| | 00:52 | In that case you want to make sure
that your email address is correct.
| | 00:56 | Another tip is you want to make this
your first class assignment, to have your
| | 01:00 | students update their email addresses.
| | 01:02 | Now remember, this is only going to
work if your campus allows you to go into
| | 01:07 | Blackboard and update your email address.
| | 01:10 | If not, you're going to have to
contact your help desk to figure out how to
| | 01:12 | upgrade your email address.
| | 01:15 | I mentioned there are several ways
to access Blackboard's Email tool.
| | 01:20 | What I didn't mention is that you
maybe able to send email from the My
| | 01:25 | Institution or the
default Home tab in Blackboard.
| | 01:28 | Some campuses have link
under Tools to send email.
| | 01:33 | Now some also disable that.
| | 01:35 | The reason why they disable that
is to cut down on student to student email abuse.
| | 01:40 | But if your campus allows this, you
can click on Send Email, click the course
| | 01:45 | in which you're participating, and it
takes you straight into the Send Email
| | 01:49 | tool in Blackboard.
| | 01:51 | Now don't be surprised if you log in
to My Institution and Send Email is
| | 01:55 | not available here.
| | 01:56 | Again, some institutions disable
this tool at least at this level.
| | 02:00 | Let me also get into my course.
| | 02:03 | Within my course, there are
several ways that I can send email.
| | 02:08 | One is I can just click on Tools and
just scroll down and click Send Email.
| | 02:15 | The other way I can do it--
| | 02:16 | Remember, this is a Tools panel that
you're going to share with your students.
| | 02:19 | The other way you can do it is under
Course Tools you can actually click on Send Email.
| | 02:25 | My recommendation,
| | 02:26 | in fact, I really strongly recommend
this, is, if you're going to be sending
| | 02:30 | email a lot, this link is kind
of buried within your course.
| | 02:35 | Go back to your course menu.
| | 02:36 | We've already done this before.
| | 02:38 | Let me redo this.
| | 02:39 | I am actually going to remove this email link.
| | 02:42 | Let me show you one more time.
| | 02:44 | I really strongly recommend that you
create a tool link on your Course menu
| | 02:50 | which you can call Email or Send Email,
link it to the Email tool, and then
| | 02:57 | choose whether or not you want to
make this available just to you, leave it
| | 03:00 | unchecked, or make it available to
everyone in the course by clicking
| | 03:04 | Available to Users.
| | 03:05 | I am going to click on
Submit and it adds an Email tool.
| | 03:09 | So now whenever I get back into my
course if I ever need to send email,
| | 03:12 | I don't have to go into Tools and Email,
or scroll down, click on Course Tools and Email.
| | 03:18 | I have a link right here on the
course menu straight to the Email tool.
| | 03:22 | So now that we've found a way to get
into the Email tool, let's go through one
| | 03:26 | more time on how to send an email.
| | 03:29 | I am going to send an
email to everyone in my course.
| | 03:31 | It's going to show you the
person's first and last names.
| | 03:35 | Actually, the last name first and first name.
| | 03:37 | It's not going to show you the
email address. That's actually a privacy feature here.
| | 03:41 | I can type in the subject.
| | 03:44 | No Class on Tuesday.
| | 03:48 | I can type in the message.
| | 03:50 | Class on Tuesday has been canceled.
| | 03:58 | I can scroll down.
| | 03:59 | Now, as I mentioned in
Chapter 1, Return Receipt,
| | 04:03 | when the students receive your email
message, they are going to be prompted to
| | 04:06 | send a message back to
you saying they received it.
| | 04:08 | It's completely opt in.
| | 04:10 | So while Return Receipt looks
like a good idea, I never use it.
| | 04:14 | Attach File is also almost always a bad
idea simply because students' email spam
| | 04:20 | filters might actually erase your
email message or the attachment.
| | 04:25 | My recommendation is put the file in
Blackboard and in the message tell the
| | 04:29 | students where they can find it.
| | 04:31 | Never send a file attached to
an email message from Blackboard.
| | 04:35 | When I click on Submit, Blackboard is
going to send the message to my students.
| | 04:39 | Remember that Blackboard does
not keep a copy of email messages.
| | 04:43 | It's not an email server.
| | 04:45 | It's sort of like an email sender.
| | 04:47 | So if you want to find a copy of
this, a copy will be sent to you.
| | 04:51 | In fact, you can see that right here.
| | 04:52 | A copy of this email will be sent to
the sender. But Blackboard is not going
| | 04:56 | to keep a copy.
| | 04:57 | So check your email Inbox to
see a copy of that message.
| | 05:01 | I have now sent the message.
| | 05:02 | Now, I've got some fake
email addresses in my class.
| | 05:05 | That's why I am getting a little error
message saying that some of the email
| | 05:08 | addresses were not delivered.
| | 05:10 | What I get in my email
box is some bounced messages.
| | 05:14 | In this case, I can then contact the
students in class and say, "Hey, I told you
| | 05:18 | to update your email address.
| | 05:19 | You didn't. I am taking points away from you."
| | 05:21 | One last thing I want to mention this
just because it's a common misconception.
| | 05:26 | I've said it a couple of times,
but I want to say it one more time.
| | 05:29 | I am going to get into the Grade Center
and I want you to notice that there is
| | 05:33 | an ability here in the Grade Center
for me to click students' names on the left-hand
| | 05:38 | side and then click on email
and choose Email Selected Users.
| | 05:43 | Please remember the Grade Center's
email tool does not email grades.
| | 05:49 | It's a common misconception.
| | 05:50 | The Grade Center email tool opens up
an email message to the students so that
| | 05:56 | you can send them reminders.
| | 05:58 | Grades remain in Blackboard.
| | 05:59 | The reason why Blackboard doesn't
email grades is email is not secure and you
| | 06:04 | don't want grades being put out there
in the World Wide Web and you don't want
| | 06:09 | grades released to the public.
| | 06:11 | So that's basically how to
send an email from Blackboard.
| | 06:16 | In our next movie, let's go back and
take a look at announcements again.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating announcements| 00:00 | Blackboard has a tool that allows
you to create an announcement within
| | 00:03 | Blackboard that is viewed by
anybody who is enrolled in your course.
| | 00:07 | This announcement could be a reminder
of a test, a pointer to some new file,
| | 00:11 | notification of a schedule or a room change.
| | 00:14 | I want you to notice that inside
of Blackboard there are links to the
| | 00:18 | Announcements tool all over the place.
| | 00:20 | In fact, I am here on My Institution tab.
| | 00:22 | Under tools there's a link
to Announcements right there.
| | 00:25 | I've got My Announcements module which
is going to show me anything that's been
| | 00:29 | posted within the last seven days.
| | 00:32 | After seven days, announcements go into
an archive, which you can still access.
| | 00:36 | But here's the new announcements.
| | 00:39 | Test has been posted.
| | 00:40 | Notice it's actually under the
courses that you're teaching.
| | 00:43 | Your My Courses module may also
show you the announcement for that
| | 00:47 | particular course.
| | 00:49 | But notice it's only going
to give me the subject line.
| | 00:52 | It's not actually giving me the text
of the message. I have to click on the
| | 00:56 | announcement to actually
view the announcement text.
| | 00:59 | Let me get back into My Institution.
| | 01:02 | I am going to into one of my courses.
And just like the My Institution tab,
| | 01:06 | there are lots of ways to get into
announcements here in your Blackboard course.
| | 01:10 | One of the easiest ways to do it is if
you still have the course homepage there
| | 01:14 | is a My Announcements module here.
| | 01:17 | You can also find Announcements under Tools.
| | 01:19 | This is the tools that are
available to the students.
| | 01:22 | So unless you've hidden this link
from your students, you will see a link
| | 01:25 | to announcements here.
| | 01:27 | If I scroll down under a Course Tools,
let me smush Customization and open up
| | 01:32 | Course Tools, you're going to
see a link to Announcements here.
| | 01:36 | But again when I get into my course
and access to course homepage notice the
| | 01:42 | Announcements only gives me the subject.
| | 01:43 | It doesn't give me the full message.
| | 01:46 | The other thing, out of the box
Blackboard 9 by default does not have a link to
| | 01:54 | Announcements on the course menu.
| | 01:56 | Now we added a link earlier.
| | 01:58 | Let me get rid of that and let's do it again.
| | 02:00 | I am going to delete this link and
you may not see a link to Announcements
| | 02:07 | anywhere on your course menu.
| | 02:09 | Well, you can fix that pretty
easily just by adding a new tool link.
| | 02:14 | I am going to click on the
plus in the top left-hand corner.
| | 02:16 | I am going to click on Create Tool Link.
| | 02:19 | I am going to type Announcements.
| | 02:20 | I am going to make it available to users.
| | 02:24 | Notice that Announcement is the first
type of tool you can link to, but you can
| | 02:28 | link to a whole bunch of other things as well.
| | 02:30 | I am going to click on Submit.
| | 02:32 | When I add anything to the
course menu it adds it to the bottom.
| | 02:36 | I am going to drag it to where I want it.
| | 02:38 | The location of where this is on the
course menu doesn't actually change what
| | 02:42 | the course entry point is.
| | 02:44 | In fact, I've made
Announcements as the number one thing.
| | 02:47 | If I click on the breadcrumb trail,
notice that the Home Page is still the
| | 02:51 | first page that people see when they
get in course regardless of where it is
| | 02:56 | here on the course menu.
| | 02:58 | I can change this though.
| | 02:59 | So I can make it so that when
students access the course they access the
| | 03:03 | announcements first, not the home page.
| | 03:06 | Let me show you how to do that.
| | 03:07 | I am going to scroll down.
| | 03:08 | I am going to smoosh Course Tools.
| | 03:11 | This time I'm a going to go
down to Customization > Style.
| | 03:16 | I can no scroll down and choose
in number 4, a new entry point.
| | 03:21 | I am going to choose an entry
point not of the Home Page, but of
| | 03:24 | the Announcements.
| | 03:25 | By the way, when you change your
course entry point the safe choices are
| | 03:29 | Announcements and Home Page.
| | 03:31 | You never ever want to
link to an external website.
| | 03:35 | Some of the other areas within
Blackboard could cause a problem.
| | 03:39 | Announcements, Home Page,
those two are really safe choices.
| | 03:43 | So I am going to click on
Announcements and at the very bottom of the page
| | 03:46 | click on Submit.
| | 03:47 | Now let's get back into the course
and I can click on the course breadcrumb
| | 03:51 | trail and notice that my home page has changed.
| | 03:55 | It says Announcements.
| | 03:56 | Actually, let me get out My Institution.
| | 04:00 | Go back into the course and
notice that the course entry point is
| | 04:04 | now Announcements.
| | 04:05 | The home page is still there.
| | 04:06 | The students can click on it, but I've
now made it so that when students access
| | 04:09 | my course, they're going to
see the announcements first.
| | 04:13 | Two more things I want to
talk about with announcements.
| | 04:15 | There is already an announcement here.
| | 04:17 | The test automatically created this.
| | 04:20 | So in a previous movie we created a test
and it says, "The following Test has been
| | 04:25 | made available in Assignments: Practice Test."
| | 04:28 | What I want to do now is I
actually want to link to that test.
| | 04:35 | What I can do is I can click on the
Edit button, the button with the two
| | 04:39 | downward facing chevrons to the right
of the particular item I want to edit.
| | 04:44 | Click Edit and then scroll down.
| | 04:48 | I can edit this announcement, but I can
also down here browse my course and add
| | 04:54 | a link to that particular test.
| | 04:57 | It's actually a smart idea.
| | 04:59 | Blackboard automatically
creates this announcement for a test.
| | 05:02 | My recommendation, click on
Browse, find the test, link to it.
| | 05:07 | It's actually just a really smart way
and it's going help your students get to
| | 05:10 | the test a little quicker.
| | 05:11 | I am going to skip though in this
case and create a brand-new announcement.
| | 05:16 | I want to remind the students
that there's a test coming up.
| | 05:19 | I am going to tell the
student, Test 2 is on Thursday.
| | 05:22 | I am going to paste this text
saying Test 2 is own Thursday.
| | 05:27 | Study the week 1 files.
| | 05:32 | Scroll down and I'm going to go-- and
because I have a specific announcement I am
| | 05:38 | going to say, well, Test 2 is on Thursday.
| | 05:40 | Study the week 1 files.
| | 05:42 | That's not going to make
much sense after next Thursday.
| | 05:45 | So I am going to have it
Display Until next Thursday.
| | 05:49 | I am going to say, okay, on
Thursday I want this to go away.
| | 05:53 | The test is actually at 10 am.
| | 05:54 | So I am going to have the
message go away at 10 am.
| | 05:58 | Always a good idea when working with
date restrictions to work in pairs.
| | 06:01 | I am going to have it show up
today and the time is perfectly fine.
| | 06:07 | Let me give you an example of
browsing and choosing a link.
| | 06:11 | So I told the students here that I
want them to study the week 1 files.
| | 06:15 | I am actually going to
link to those week 1 files.
| | 06:18 | There they are in the course menu.
| | 06:20 | So I am going to have a
link to the week 1 files.
| | 06:23 | When I click on Submit,
| | 06:24 | I've now created a link in the
announcement to that particular file.
| | 06:30 | Again, I can go and rearrange these in
any order that I want, completely up to me,
| | 06:35 | and to see what this looks like
from student's point of view just turn Edit
| | 06:39 | mode off and that's what the students will see.
| | 06:41 | So remember Blackboard has an
Announcements tool that allows you to create a
| | 06:47 | text announcement within your
Blackboard course, which you can use to
| | 06:51 | communicate with your students and
remind them of things that they need to know.
| | 06:55 | To access the Announcements tools in
your course there are links to it all over
| | 06:59 | the place, but eventually you're
going to get into the announcement.
| | 07:02 | Let's do it the old-school way, click
on the Announcements, and then you can
| | 07:07 | click on Create Announcements,
or you can edit any announcement.
| | 07:11 | So that's how to create an announcement.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Course Calendar| 00:00 | Blackboard has a built-in course
calendar that lets you post information about
| | 00:04 | course events, meeting times,
assignment due dates, test times and the like.
| | 00:08 | Like the Contact tool, it's kind of
buried within your site. Let me get into
| | 00:12 | our course and I can if I were a student,
and notice I've got Edit mode off, I am
| | 00:19 | going to click on Tools and I'll click
on Course Calendar and this is what
| | 00:23 | the Course Calendar looks like
from a student's point of view.
| | 00:26 | But as an instructor, I
want to have an Edit mode on.
| | 00:28 | I am actually going to scroll down
and go into the Course Tools and click
| | 00:33 | on Course Calendar.
| | 00:35 | Notice that the default view is a
daily view, or I can view it by week, I can
| | 00:41 | view it by month, even view it by year
if I want to, and I have the ability to
| | 00:46 | jump to a certain date.
| | 00:47 | Let me go back to View Day though.
| | 00:49 | So let's create a new course event.
Let's actually remind the students about the
| | 00:54 | test that's coming up on Thursday at 10 am.
| | 00:59 | So it's going to ask me to type in the
event name. This is required, and my tip,
| | 01:04 | include the course name in the event title.
| | 01:08 | The reason why is the students are
going to be able to see your event not
| | 01:11 | only within your course calendar, but
within Blackboard's master calendar as well.
| | 01:16 | Unfortunately the master calendar
doesn't tell you from which calendar this came.
| | 01:21 | The students might see something saying
test on Thursday, but they are not going
| | 01:25 | to know from which course this is coming.
| | 01:28 | So I can do EDUC 100 Test on Thursday.
I can go down here and type something in
| | 01:37 | the Event Description. In this
case I am going to leave it blank.
| | 01:40 | I'm going to scroll down and click the
Event Date. This is required. Remember the
| | 01:45 | test is going to be on Thursday,
so I am going to choose Thursday.
| | 01:48 | I'm going to have an
Event Start Time and End Time.
| | 01:53 | Now the Event Start Time and End Time do
have to be different. There's no way to
| | 01:58 | create an event that starts at 10 am.
and ends at 10 am. There has to be a
| | 02:03 | difference between the two.
| | 02:04 | There is also no such thing as an
all day event, unless you wanted to go
| | 02:08 | beginning of the day and end of the day.
| | 02:11 | So I have set the event time, I
click on Submit, and nothing shows up.
| | 02:18 | Well, the reason why is it's a
Thursday event and it's Sunday.
| | 02:22 | If I click on View Week you can see
that it now shows up here on the calendar.
| | 02:28 | The other thing is if I go into My
Institution it shows up on My Calendar here.
| | 02:34 | Remember that it doesn't actually add
the name of your course on this big master
| | 02:40 | calendar. That's the reason why I
type the name of the course here.
| | 02:43 | So that's a quick look at the
course calendar in a nutshell.
| | 02:47 | Remember to get into the calendar,
access your course, scroll down, click on
| | 02:52 | Course Calendar and then
click on Create Course Event.
| | 02:57 | To go and edit an event you have already
created, just like almost anything else
| | 03:01 | you've done in Blackboard, click the
button with the two downward facing
| | 03:04 | chevrons to the right of
the item and click Edit.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
14. Creating and Managing DiscussionsCreating discussion forums and threads| 00:01 | Blackboard's discussion board, like
other online Internet forums or message boards,
| | 00:04 | is a tool that allows students
to participate in an asynchronous or not
| | 00:09 | live discussion on a variety of
topics usually chosen by the instructor.
| | 00:14 | What normally happens is the
instructor initiates the conversation, students
| | 00:19 | then chime in, and the instructor jumps
in from time to time to offer feedback
| | 00:24 | and to guide the conversation.
| | 00:26 | Before we start, let me give you
some best practices that you may want to keep in mind.
| | 00:31 | First, do not assume that your
students know how to participate in a
| | 00:34 | scholarly online discussion.
| | 00:36 | You are going to need to show your
students the mechanics of how to use
| | 00:40 | Blackboard, but you are also going
to have to show the students how to
| | 00:43 | participate in a scholarly conversation.
| | 00:47 | Your students have experience
posting things to Facebook, but this isn't Facebook.
| | 00:51 | They need to be more
reflective in what they post.
| | 00:54 | In fact, you need to set your
expectations at the beginning of the term and let
| | 00:59 | the students know how many posts per
week you are going to expect from them and
| | 01:04 | what you consider to be a substantive post.
| | 01:07 | In other words, you need to let your
students know that "I agree" or "me too" is not
| | 01:11 | acceptable and that other rules of
Internet netiquette are going to apply here.
| | 01:16 | For example, you don't want to
do LOL or ROFL or any of those other abbreviations.
| | 01:22 | You want to actually follow real
scholarly writing examples in this case.
| | 01:27 | Finally, in the beginning of the
term, you are going to need to model the behavior.
| | 01:32 | What that means is, as you go into the
discussion board, you are going to show
| | 01:36 | your students through your example what
reflective writing actually looks like.
| | 01:41 | So let's get back to Blackboard.
| | 01:43 | How do you access Blackboard's discussion board?
| | 01:46 | Well, there are multiple ways to do it.
| | 01:48 | Let me get into our Educational
Technology course and I am going to scroll down here.
| | 01:53 | One way to do it is there maybe a
link on your course menu to Discussions.
| | 01:58 | That's there by default.
| | 02:00 | If you don't see a link to Discussions
on your course menu, you can add one by
| | 02:03 | hand just by clicking on the plus sign
on the top of the course menu adding a
| | 02:08 | tool link and then linking
to Discussion Board tool.
| | 02:11 | Let me also scroll down and notice
that students can click on Tools and then
| | 02:16 | scroll down and click on Discussion Board.
| | 02:19 | They can access the discussion board
that way as well, and as an instructor under
| | 02:24 | Course Management in Course Tools you
have a link to the Discussion Board.
| | 02:28 | There is one thing different
about this link than the other two.
| | 02:33 | If a student clicks on Discussion
Board, they're taken into the class discussion board.
| | 02:38 | So I clicked on Discussion here as
well. It takes me to the same place.
| | 02:42 | As an instructor, down here in Course
Management under Course Tools, if I click
| | 02:49 | on Discussion Board, it's not
going to take me to that page yet.
| | 02:52 | It's actually going to give me an
option and say, okay, which discussion board
| | 02:57 | do I want to click on?
| | 02:58 | I have my class discussion board,
but as I create groups, groups could
| | 03:04 | have discussion boards.
| | 03:05 | As the instructor, I need to be
able to get into those as well.
| | 03:08 | So you are going to see a list of
all the discussion boards going on in your class.
| | 03:12 | Not only your class discussion board,
but your group discussion boards as well.
| | 03:16 | In this case, let's get into the class
discussion board and you are going to
| | 03:19 | notice it's pretty much the same.
| | 03:21 | So what we're going to do right now is
we're going to set up a discussion board
| | 03:27 | and it turns out that creating a
discussion board or creating a conversation is
| | 03:33 | actually a two-step process.
| | 03:35 | Step number one is we need to create a
forum or a room in which the conversation
| | 03:41 | is going to take place, and step
number two is then to create a thread or
| | 03:45 | conversation on a particular topic.
| | 03:48 | So what we're going to do is we're going
to create a forum and my recommendation
| | 03:54 | is you should create at
least two forums in your class.
| | 03:59 | You're going to create a scholarly
forum and a non-scholarly forum, sort of one
| | 04:04 | forum that counts and one for the
students to be able to post other things.
| | 04:10 | By giving the students a parking lot
in which they can add non-scholarly,
| | 04:16 | non-class related information, you
actually make sure that you have a place
| | 04:20 | for students to express that information
that doesn't pollute your scholarly conversation.
| | 04:25 | So I am going to create a forum here.
| | 04:27 | It's going to ask me for a name.
| | 04:30 | I can type in a description.
| | 04:32 | If you have access to the exercise
files, on the desktop I've got a text file
| | 04:39 | that I created called discussion.txt.
| | 04:43 | In this case, I am just going to cut and paste.
| | 04:45 | You can type whatever you want here.
| | 04:48 | In this case, I just made it earlier,
because I'm such a terrible typist.
| | 04:52 | So we've got the weekly class
discussions, and I am going to give the
| | 04:56 | information to the students.
| | 04:58 | Now it says that this is actually a
description, but realistically I treat this
| | 05:03 | as the instructions.
| | 05:05 | I am going to tell the students
that whatever they post in here,
| | 05:08 | that counts.
| | 05:09 | You're actually going to get a grade
for this, and you need to submit two
| | 05:13 | substantive posts each week, one in
response to a question that I post and one
| | 05:17 | in response to something that
a fellow student has posted.
| | 05:20 | So even though it says
Description, put your instructions here.
| | 05:24 | I am going to scroll down.
| | 05:25 | Forum Availability is, will students
ever be able to participate in this forum? Yes.
| | 05:31 | I can turn on Date and Time
Restrictions if I wanted to.
| | 05:34 | Now, let's go through the settings for
this particular place where students are
| | 05:38 | going to be able to communicate.
| | 05:40 | Do I want my students to be
able to post things anonymously?
| | 05:44 | Well, no, because I'm going to be
creating this, and do I want the students to
| | 05:49 | be able to delete their own posts?
| | 05:51 | A student could post something and then
come back and say, "Gosh, I want to take
| | 05:55 | that back," and I can say Yes.
| | 05:58 | If I do, I have two options.
| | 05:59 | I can have them delete their own posts,
anything they make, or only posts that
| | 06:04 | somebody hasn't replied to yet.
| | 06:06 | In this case, I am going to kind of
say no, I want this to stay up and
| | 06:10 | running all the time.
| | 06:11 | Do I want my students to be able to
edit their posts after they make it?
| | 06:15 | No. Again, once you turn it in, I want
you to stand behind what you're saying.
| | 06:20 | Post Tagging is just a way of saying
do you want you and your students to be
| | 06:26 | able to sort of put a "personal" flag on
any post and say ooh, I want to come
| | 06:31 | back and read that later.
| | 06:33 | That's what Post Tagging is.
| | 06:34 | So I will turn that on.
| | 06:35 | Do I want the users who read a post in a
discussion board to be able to click on
| | 06:40 | a button that says Quote and pull a
quote out of the original post and include
| | 06:46 | it in theirs, sort of a reply?
| | 06:48 | Yeah, I actually like that approach.
| | 06:49 | So I will say yes.
| | 06:51 | Do I want users to be able to attach files?
| | 06:55 | This actually is a neat idea.
| | 06:58 | Earlier versions of Blackboard had
something called a Digital Dropbox.
| | 07:01 | The Digital Dropbox allowed students
to drop files into a particular area.
| | 07:05 | If you allow file attachments, you can
actually use your discussion board as a
| | 07:11 | replacement for the Digital Dropbox.
| | 07:14 | The students could go into the
discussion board and just attach files.
| | 07:17 | Now the issue with this is any student
can see any file that's been submitted to
| | 07:22 | the discussion board.
| | 07:23 | It doesn't go just to you.
| | 07:25 | it goes to everyone in the course.
| | 07:27 | So Allow File Attachments is a way for
students to attach files, but it's files
| | 07:32 | that will be viewable by everybody.
| | 07:35 | And do I want members, in this case
students, to be able to create a new thread?
| | 07:40 | Remember, a forum is the room in
which the conversation takes place.
| | 07:44 | A thread is that topic that
starts that particular conversation.
| | 07:50 | It's up to you.
| | 07:51 | Many instructors basically
will initiate threads themselves.
| | 07:56 | Students can then reply.
| | 07:57 | Others will allow the
students to create their own threads.
| | 08:02 | Remember that if you uncheck this,
nothing can happen in your discussion board
| | 08:07 | until you go in and initiate the conversation.
| | 08:11 | If I check this, the students can go
in and start the conversation right now.
| | 08:15 | Subscription is a feature that allows
students to receive an email message
| | 08:20 | whenever something new has
happened in a particular room or a forum.
| | 08:25 | You can also do this as well.
| | 08:27 | So you can actually allow people to
subscribe to the room itself, the forum, or
| | 08:33 | to individual
conversations that are going on here.
| | 08:37 | Then what is going to show up in the
email message whenever there's a change?
| | 08:41 | You can have a link to the post or you
can actually have Blackboard email you
| | 08:45 | the discussion board post and you can
have it show up in your email inbox.
| | 08:50 | Remember, make sure your email
address is correct. Completely up to you.
| | 08:54 | I usually say no, but it's up to you on
whether or not you want to allow this.
| | 08:58 | Next thing is, do you want
to allow members to rate posts?
| | 09:01 | This will actually put a series of
stars in each post and the students can
| | 09:05 | then grade it from one to five stars
and we have a movie that shows you more about that.
| | 09:10 | So I am going to turn it on.
| | 09:11 | Force Moderation means that whenever
a student posts something, before it
| | 09:16 | shows up on the discussion board it
comes to an inbox only visible to you or
| | 09:22 | somebody that you choose and then
that person chooses to either accept or
| | 09:27 | reject that post.
| | 09:29 | If you're concerned about your
student posting inappropriate materials,
| | 09:33 | you might want to turn on Force Moderation.
| | 09:34 | We'll talk about that in an upcoming movie.
| | 09:37 | Last thing is you have the option
here of grading the forum or grading the threads.
| | 09:43 | In other words, you can actually
assign grades for students' participation
| | 09:47 | within a room or within
a particular conversation.
| | 09:52 | Two things to keep in mind.
| | 09:53 | Grading Forum when you do this will
automatically create a score column in
| | 09:58 | the Grade Center.
| | 09:59 | If you've gone into your Grade Center
and changed your Total column or your
| | 10:03 | Weighted Total column, you need to go
back to the Total column or Weighted Total
| | 10:07 | column and then make sure
that this new column is counted.
| | 10:11 | Grade Threads sounds like a great idea,
but it's going to create a new Grade
| | 10:16 | Center score column for each and every
thread in your Discussion Board and this
| | 10:21 | could be really, really big.
| | 10:24 | It could adversely impact your Grade
Center, because say that you have two
| | 10:29 | conversations a week over an 18 week
course. By clicking on Grade Threads,
| | 10:34 | you've just added 36
columns to your Grade Center.
| | 10:37 | My recommendation is grade the discussion forum.
| | 10:40 | In this case, I am going to give it 100 points.
| | 10:42 | Remember, make sure that if you've gone
and edited your Grade Center to have a
| | 10:46 | Total and Weighted Total column that
is anything other than the standard set,
| | 10:51 | you want to go back and add
this to those columns as well.
| | 10:54 | I am going to click on Submit
and I have now created the forum.
| | 10:59 | Let me do one more.
| | 11:00 | I'll do this really quickly.
| | 11:01 | I want to create the parking
lot that I was talking about.
| | 11:05 | The parking lot is just a free-for-
all where students can post on anything.
| | 11:10 | However, you do want to have
rules for your parking lot.
| | 11:12 | So in this case I'm going to go here
and the rules are post non-class related
| | 11:19 | questions or comments.
| | 11:20 | It's optional. It does not count
to your final participation grade.
| | 11:24 | That said, I expect you to be
professional in comment and to nurture an
| | 11:27 | environment of mutual tolerance and respect.
| | 11:30 | Am I going to make it available? Yes.
| | 11:32 | Am I going to allow anonymous posts? No.
| | 11:35 | Do I want to let people delete their posts? No.
| | 11:38 | I might want to allow
somebody to do the editing.
| | 11:41 | I am going to allow reply with quotes.
| | 11:44 | I won't allow file attachments.
| | 11:46 | In this case, I do want people to
create their own threads and that is all I am
| | 11:50 | going to do to create that.
| | 11:52 | So I've now created two discussion board forums.
| | 11:57 | One last thing I need to do now that
I've created the forums, this one, the
| | 12:01 | students can start their own conversation.
| | 12:03 | This one, students can
start their own conversation.
| | 12:05 | My recommendation is since I
want to model the behavior,
| | 12:08 | I'm now going to create a thread.
| | 12:10 | So I've accessed this forum, this
room, and now I am going to start the
| | 12:14 | first conversation.
| | 12:16 | And you are going to notice that
this box looks an awful lot like what
| | 12:19 | we've seen before.
| | 12:20 | I am going to cut and paste the prompt.
| | 12:33 | I can, if I want to, attach a file here.
| | 12:35 | In this case, I am just
starting the conversation.
| | 12:38 | Pretty simple settings here, Subject
and a Message, click on Submit, and I've
| | 12:42 | now created the conversation.
| | 12:44 | So in my discussion board I now have
in my room two forums, a Weekly Class
| | 12:50 | Discussion, I've got a Parking Lot.
| | 12:52 | I can actually see that there's now one post.
| | 12:55 | In our next movie we're
going to talk about how to manage Blackboard discussions.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Facilitating discussions| 00:00 | In our last movie we created two
discussion board forum or rooms and then
| | 00:04 | created one conversation or thread.
| | 00:08 | Now before I show you what this
looks like from a student's point of view,
| | 00:10 | I want you to notice that here in our
Course menu look at the word Discussions
| | 00:14 | and to the right there is this
box with this slash through it.
| | 00:17 | That means that this item is hidden
from the students. If I turn Edit mode off,
| | 00:22 | there is no link, the link doesn't show up.
| | 00:25 | So if the Discussions link is hidden
on your course menu and you want your
| | 00:29 | students to be able to see it, make
sure you click the button with the two
| | 00:33 | downward facing chevrons to the right
of Discussions and choose Show Link.
| | 00:38 | By the way if you don't do that, let me
turn Edit mode off, if we decide not to do
| | 00:43 | that students can still access the tool
by clicking on Tools and then scrolling
| | 00:48 | down and clicking on Discussion Board.
| | 00:50 | Now lets hop on over, I'm in
Internet Explorer right now logged in as
| | 00:55 | Patrick Crispen.
| | 00:56 | I'm going to go into Firefox.
| | 00:57 | Now I am going to be logged in here
as Jayden Brown, who is a student in one
| | 01:02 | of my courses.
| | 01:03 | I am going to click on this link and
let's show you what the discussion board
| | 01:06 | looks like from Jayden's point of view.
| | 01:08 | There's now a link to the
Discussions here in the course menu.
| | 01:12 | If there wasn't Jayden would be able to
click on Tools and then scroll down and
| | 01:15 | get to the discussion board that way.
| | 01:18 | So when Jayden accesses the
discussion board, he sees two forums,
| | 01:21 | a Weekly Class Discussions and the Parking lot.
| | 01:24 | Notice that there is a button with two
downward facing chevrons to the right
| | 01:28 | of the forum. However, he can't
actually edit this. He's a student, so the
| | 01:33 | students can't make changes.
| | 01:34 | Also notice that it shows Jayden
the number of posts that are in this
| | 01:39 | particular forum and how
many of these he's unread.
| | 01:42 | If he clicks on Unread it shows him
only those threads that he hasn't read.
| | 01:47 | However, if he clicks on the forum
itself, he sees the entire forum, all the
| | 01:53 | threads, all the sub threads,
either shown as a list or as a tree.
| | 01:58 | In this case, I am going to click on
the name of this thread and this actually
| | 02:03 | opens up sort of two windows.
| | 02:06 | This little window up here is going
to show me all of the replies in this
| | 02:10 | particular thread, and then
down here I've got the message.
| | 02:14 | In this case, this is going to be
Patrick Crispen or my message to the students,
| | 02:18 | saying give me some information
on self-efficacy and motivation.
| | 02:24 | Jayden has two possibilities
here. He can actually reply.
| | 02:28 | Reply just opens up a empty text box or
he can quote. Wuote actually will create
| | 02:34 | a new reply but quote my original
message. It's completely up to him.
| | 02:39 | Although Quote doesn't work as
easily as you think it does, it's not like
| | 02:44 | Microsoft Word where I can now cut and
paste this and put it into the middle.
| | 02:48 | I can either put it usually at the
bottom. Trying to put it back up at the top
| | 02:52 | tends to be a challenge as well.
| | 02:54 | I am going to just reply
with some Lorem ipsum text.
| | 02:56 | Let me show you what I was saying.
When I said that moving this around can
| | 03:01 | sometimes be a little challenging.
If I go up here and see if this works,
| | 03:06 | yeah it worked.
| | 03:08 | Sometimes that doesn't.
| | 03:09 | It's not the easiest thing to do but
the students can be replies and move things around.
| | 03:14 | It's completely up to them.
| | 03:15 | Its completely up to you and whether or
not you are going to allow that when you
| | 03:18 | set up the forum settings.
| | 03:21 | So now Jayden has taken the
prompt and given his response.
| | 03:26 | Jayden does have the ability to attach a
file here. If he wants to he can browse
| | 03:30 | his computer, click on Submit, and
now Jayden has replied to my post.
| | 03:36 | That's what it looks like
from a student's point view.
| | 03:38 | Let me get back into Internet Explorer.
Let me get back into my course. I'm now
| | 03:43 | back in as Patrick Crispen. I'm the
instructor. I am going to turn Edit mode back on.
| | 03:47 | Remember I want to be in Edit
mode to make any changes in my course.
| | 03:50 | And I want to get into the
discussion board. I can link to it here.
| | 03:54 | In Discussions I can go to Tools.
I can actually scroll down and
| | 03:57 | click on Discussion Board.
| | 03:58 | If I do that, remember I am going to
have to click on the name of the discussion
| | 04:02 | board because I can see not only the
course discussion board but any group
| | 04:07 | discussion board on this page. I click in,
| | 04:10 | and notice now that there are two posts
in my Weekly Class Discussion, including
| | 04:15 | one unread post. If I click on Unread
Post, that will show me only Jayden's post,
| | 04:21 | the one that I haven't read yet.
| | 04:23 | It's not going to show in any
context and that might be a little confusing.
| | 04:28 | My recommendation is until you get
comfortable with this discussion board don't
| | 04:31 | click on Unread Post. Just go
into the Thread view itself.
| | 04:35 | Thread view is going to show you that
Jayden has now replied to my message.
| | 04:40 | So my message actually is what started
the conversation and because Jayden is
| | 04:45 | replying to my message it appears
indented underneath my conversation.
| | 04:51 | I can actually minimize this and see
that those two are actually related to each other.
| | 04:57 | If I want to, this is my message,
I can now start going next, next, next
| | 05:02 | through the responses and I now,see
the student's post. I have the ability to
| | 05:07 | go here and reply.
| | 05:09 | And I can do nice use of Latin.
| | 05:15 | I could attach something here, click on Submit.
| | 05:18 | Now because I was replying to
Jayden, my reply is indented underneath
| | 05:26 | Jayden's post.
| | 05:27 | So what I'm seeing now is sort of
an order or hierarchy, meaning that
| | 05:32 | Jayden replied to me.
| | 05:35 | So I can see that his message is a
reply to mine. I can see that this is a
| | 05:39 | reply to this.
| | 05:41 | That's what this sort of top window gives you.
| | 05:45 | I have the ability here, and I want to
show you something that's actually really
| | 05:48 | great as an instructor.
| | 05:50 | Underneath this, I can select all of the
different posts that are in this thread.
| | 05:57 | And then if I click on Collect, I
want you to see this. I love this feature.
| | 06:02 | Collect actually collects all of the
students posts, all of my posts, puts it
| | 06:08 | on the page, in this case in reverse
chronological order, although I have the
| | 06:13 | ability to change the order to be
ascending. So I can see my post first,
| | 06:18 | who posted next.
| | 06:19 | And this is a great thing for me to
print out then and carry around with me.
| | 06:24 | if I want to grade my student's
discussion board post outside of the discussion
| | 06:29 | board or if I just , it's not locked in
| | 06:34 | a thread. That gives me that option right there.
| | 06:37 | So we showed you how to reply to a thread.
| | 06:40 | Let me show you also that as the
instructor you have the ability to go
| | 06:46 | and delete threads.
| | 06:48 | So if it turns out that a student or
somebody says something inappropriate, as an
| | 06:53 | instructor you absolutely have
the ability to delete threads.
| | 06:58 | Let me also show you that you have
the ability-- let me select these three.
| | 07:02 | I can read all these. I can mark them
all as unread. I can set a flag on them so
| | 07:08 | it says hey, I want to come back
and read them. Completely up to me.
| | 07:13 | Let me also get back here into the forum.
| | 07:15 | Now I want you to notice here that
in the forum I have some options.
| | 07:19 | I have the ability to mark everything
in this forum as read. Because I have
| | 07:23 | already read it, it already says
that, but I can make it as unread.
| | 07:28 | When I do that it'll say that you have
three unread posts. I have the ability to
| | 07:33 | set a flag saying this is
important, come back and read this later.
| | 07:36 | This is a flag for me, not for
my students. I can clear it.
| | 07:39 | Publish this means that students can
use it. They can start seeing it and get into it.
| | 07:45 | Hiding it hides it, making it
unavailable makes it so that only the instructor
| | 07:50 | or the teaching assistant or a person
that you assigned to be the leader of that
| | 07:54 | group can get in it.
| | 07:56 | I can lock a particular thread and
that's actually a really good idea.
| | 08:00 | At the end of week 1, I
may want to lock this thread.
| | 08:04 | What that does is the students can
get back into the thread. They just can't
| | 08:08 | make any changes to it.
| | 08:10 | I can also unlock a thread, meaning
that once I've locked it I can change that.
| | 08:15 | I could subscribe to the thread.
| | 08:17 | Remember that when we setup the form we
had the choice of whether or not we were
| | 08:21 | going to allow people to subscribe.
| | 08:23 | Subscriptions will actually send you
an email message when something changes.
| | 08:28 | Aand Collect is what we showed you
earlier. You can actually do collect from the
| | 08:32 | forum and just collect everything and
that creates everything on one page that
| | 08:37 | you can then print out.
| | 08:38 | And then finally the last thing-- and
I really recommend you never do this
| | 08:43 | you can delete this.
| | 08:45 | Now this is not a collection of files.
This is a collection of things that are
| | 08:50 | stored in Blackboards database.
| | 08:52 | So if you delete a forum, Blackboard is
not going to have a copy of this in the
| | 08:57 | content collection or course files.
| | 08:59 | If you delete, it's gone.
| | 09:00 | It's not coming back.
| | 09:04 | In fact, you're not to going to be
able to contact your system administrator
| | 09:06 | and say, "Oops, I accidentally
deleted this. Can you give it back to me?"
| | 09:10 | The answer is no, they can't.
| | 09:13 | Delete is always a bad idea.
| | 09:15 | do not delete these unless you are
absolutely certain you're never going to need it.
| | 09:20 | So that's how they manage Blackboard
discussion board forums and threads.
| | 09:24 | In the next movie we are going to talk
about how to moderate forums and this is
| | 09:28 | an option that you may or
may not want to investigate.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Moderating forums| 00:00 | If you're concerned about your students
posting inappropriate materials to your
| | 00:03 | discussion board, Blackboard does have
the way for you to moderate the forums.
| | 00:08 | In other words you can preview
students' posts before they appear to anyone else
| | 00:13 | on your discussion board.
| | 00:14 | It's a setting that you need
to do when you set up the forum.
| | 00:17 | So we've already set up a forum
here, our Weekly Class Discussions.
| | 00:21 | So I am going to go here and click
on Edit, click the button with the two
| | 00:24 | downward facing chevrons.
That means edit or more.
| | 00:26 | I am going to scroll down and I am
going to turn on down here almost near the
| | 00:32 | bottom of the page, Force Moderation of Posts.
| | 00:34 | I am going to click on Submit.
| | 00:36 | I am going to into the Weekly Class
Discussions and there is going to be a new
| | 00:40 | button here that says Moderate Forum.
| | 00:43 | Before we do that though, let me
actually show you what this looks like from
| | 00:47 | student's point of view.
| | 00:48 | So we'll go back to Jayden right now.
| | 00:50 | Again Jayden is logged in, in Firefox.
| | 00:53 | So let me get into the Weekly
Discussions and I am going to have Jayden now do
| | 00:59 | another reply, have him do
the same lorem ipsum text.
| | 01:03 | So I am going to click on Reply, paste
in here the lorem ipsum text, and just to
| | 01:09 | make sure that it's not confusing, I am
going to go and change the color of this
| | 01:14 | to like a light green. That way I know
it's a different lorem ipsum text.
| | 01:19 | I am going to scroll down and click on Submit.
| | 01:23 | And the message doesn't actually show up.
| | 01:25 | Now Jayden can see it, but it shows
that it's in the moderation queue.
| | 01:30 | Let's get back into the instructor side of this.
| | 01:32 | I am going to log back into Internet Explorer.
| | 01:34 | You can see that I am now Patrick
Crispen. I've got the Edit mode.
| | 01:37 | So I'm now an Instructor again.
| | 01:39 | I am going to get into my
Weekly Class Discussions.
| | 01:42 | I am going to click on Moderate Forum.
That's that button that I just turned on.
| | 01:47 | And it's going to show me that there
is actually a queue waiting for me to look at.
| | 01:52 | It's going to show me all of the
posts that have been submitted.
| | 01:56 | And now I can go and moderate the post.
| | 01:59 | I can actually look at this and I have
two choices. I can actually publish this.
| | 02:04 | In other words I say this is good.
Or I can return it to the student.
| | 02:09 | So I can say I don't like
green and return it to Jayden.
| | 02:15 | If I send this to him this way, the
student is going to get a message inside of
| | 02:20 | Blackboard, but this text here will
never show up to anyone other than to me
| | 02:25 | and to Jayden.
| | 02:26 | So I have the opportunity to push
this back to Jayden and say, could you
| | 02:30 | rewrite this please?
| | 02:31 | I don't have a way to edit this.
| | 02:33 | I can't go and change what he's
written, but I can choose either Publish it
| | 02:37 | or return it.
| | 02:38 | When I click on Submit, the message has
been submitted and will show up now at
| | 02:46 | the bottom of my discussion forum.
| | 02:49 | And there it is, Jayden's green text message.
| | 02:52 | So remember, if you want to moderate
your forums to make sure that students
| | 02:58 | can't post anything without it first
coming by you and you approving it, to the
| | 03:04 | right of the forum that you want to
moderate click the button with the two
| | 03:09 | downward facing chevrons.
| | 03:11 | Click on Edit. Make sure that the
settings down at the very bottom of the page
| | 03:15 | say Force Moderation of Post is checked.
| | 03:19 | Click on Submit.
| | 03:20 | Then access the forum and you'll see
a new button that says Moderate Forum.
| | 03:26 | Click that button, follow the on-
screen prompt, and you can either publish or
| | 03:30 | return each student's post before
they show up to anyone else on your discussion board.
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| Rating posts| 00:00 | If your campus has the enterprise
license of Blackboard 9.0 or 9.1, not the
| | 00:06 | basic license, but the enterprise
license, there is an option available to you
| | 00:12 | that you can choose to turn on or
off that will allow users to rate other
| | 00:17 | student's posts on a one to five star system.
| | 00:21 | There is no such thing unfortunately
as a zero star. You have to rate it
| | 00:25 | between one and five stars.
| | 00:27 | This is an option that you
choose when you create the forum.
| | 00:32 | So I've already created the forum.
| | 00:34 | If I clicked on Create Forum, I could
create a new one, but in this case I'm
| | 00:37 | going to edit my existing forum,
my Weekly Class Discussions.
| | 00:41 | I am going to turn to Edit here.
| | 00:43 | I've clicked the button with
the two downward-facing chevrons.
| | 00:46 | I'm going to scroll down and I have the
option of allowing members to rate post.
| | 00:53 | I want to turn that on. In fact I want
to turn Force Moderation off. We talked
| | 00:57 | about that in last movie.
| | 00:58 | But I am going to Allow Members to Rate Posts.
| | 01:01 | How does that look like?
| | 01:03 | Well, let me get in here and I'll show you.
| | 01:05 | So I've turned this on. I'm going to
get into my forum. I am going to get into
| | 01:10 | the thread. I see that I now have four
posts here and I have the ability here to
| | 01:16 | change the rating, but nothing's happening.
| | 01:19 | I'm clicking on the stars and well,
it turns out you can't rate yourself.
| | 01:25 | You can only rate other people's posts,
again from one to five stars.
| | 01:29 | So let's actually go to the next post
and now I've got your rating and I'm just
| | 01:35 | holding my mouse over this and
I'm going to give them a five star.
| | 01:39 | Now what's going to happen is it's going
to take my rating plus a whole bunch of
| | 01:43 | other people's ratings in this course
and give me my rating and then the overall rating.
| | 01:48 | Since I'm the
first person to grade this,
| | 01:51 | he gets a five star.
| | 01:52 | I go to the next one.
| | 01:54 | That's the post from me.
I can't actually rate that.
| | 01:56 | This is him.
| | 01:57 | I'm actually going to rate this as a two.
| | 01:59 | And I'm going through basically post
-by-post and adding my stars to it.
| | 02:04 | Now, literally is all it is. It's a way
for you to see as an instructor what the
| | 02:11 | other students think of other student's posts.
| | 02:15 | So this is an option built into the
enterprise version of Blackboard 9.
| | 02:20 | If your campus has the basic license of
Blackboard 9 or 9.1, you're not going to
| | 02:25 | be able to see this, but you can in
the enterprise nersion of Blackboard 9 or
| | 02:30 | 9.1, you can choose edit for a
particular forum and turn the ability for users
| | 02:37 | to rate posts on or off.
| | 02:40 | If it's on, students will have the
ability to rate the posts from one to five stars.
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| Grading discussions| 00:00 | When you create a new discussion board
forum, Blackboard asks you whether or not
| | 00:04 | you want to grade that forum or threads.
| | 00:07 | If you choose Grade Forum, it will
create a score column in the Grade Center for
| | 00:12 | that particular forum.
| | 00:14 | If you choose Grade Threads, it
will create a score column for each and
| | 00:17 | every thread.
| | 00:18 | Remember, if you are going to have
lots of conversations that could make your
| | 00:21 | Grade Center in credibly huge.
| | 00:24 | In this case, we are going to go back,
and I just want to make sure here for my
| | 00:27 | Weekly Class Discussions,
| | 00:29 | I am going to go click on the
button with the two downward facing
| | 00:31 | chevrons, click on Edit.
| | 00:33 | I am going to scroll down.
| | 00:34 | I just want to make sure that I
actually turned this on and I did.
| | 00:38 | So I am going to grade the forum.
The forum is itself worth 100 points.
| | 00:44 | I am going to click on Submit.
| | 00:46 | So we know that this thing has been
enabled. I can now grade the forum.
| | 00:50 | So how actually do I do it?
| | 00:54 | Well, the easiest way to do it is click
on the name of the forum and then at the
| | 00:58 | top of the page click on Grade Forum.
| | 01:00 | The button will only show up if you've
turned it on and what I can now do is it
| | 01:06 | shows me a list of all the students
who were in my course and it shows me how
| | 01:12 | many posts that they've read and then I
click on Grade to see those two posts.
| | 01:18 | Now it's going to show me
those posts out of context.
| | 01:21 | But again I'm grading just the
student's contribution to the course.
| | 01:26 | Before I show you that, I also want to
show you that if I click on Jayden Brown
| | 01:30 | and Email, it's not going to
email him his discussion forum.
| | 01:34 | It just opens up the Email tool and
allows me to communicate with Jayden Brown
| | 01:38 | outside of the forum.
| | 01:40 | Just like when you click on this link
in the Grade Center you are not emailing grade;
| | 01:44 | you are just opening up
a way to get to the Email tool.
| | 01:48 | The Email tool here doesn't actually
email the students the discussion forum.
| | 01:51 | It just gives you a way
to communicate with them.
| | 01:54 | I am going to click on Grade.
| | 01:56 | And what it's going to do now is it's
going to show me a couple of things.
| | 02:00 | Over on the right-hand side it's going
to show me that he has made two posts.
| | 02:05 | It shows me that his Average Post
Length is 1000 characters or 669 characters.
| | 02:12 | It counts characters, not
words, which is kind of strange.
| | 02:16 | Maximum Post Length is 1377 characters.
| | 02:20 | Average Post Position, meaning that
he's actually in there pretty quickly.
| | 02:25 | Show it will show me that when he is
posting he is usually the second person in
| | 02:29 | and I am usually the first.
| | 02:30 | So that's pretty good.
| | 02:33 | I also have the ability
here to click on Edit Grade.
| | 02:36 | When I click on Edit Grade, it's
going to say okay, what grade do I want to give him?
| | 02:40 | In this case, I am going to give him a 90.
| | 02:43 | Give him some feedback.
| | 02:44 | Remember, if I want to give
some feedback, I can do "Well done."
| | 02:49 | He'll see this in his My Grades when he's done.
| | 02:52 | I click on Save Grade and now he has a 90.
| | 02:56 | I am going to click now and go to the
next user and in this case, there is
| | 03:03 | no one else.
| | 03:04 | Jayden is the only person.
| | 03:06 | But I could go user, user, user, and
just start grading them one at a time.
| | 03:12 | It's really all there is to it.
| | 03:14 | I am going to get back into my discussion board.
| | 03:16 | Let me just show you one more time.
| | 03:17 | As long as you've turned Grade Forum
on when you created the forum, when you
| | 03:22 | click on the name of the forum and then
click Grade Forum, you will see a list
| | 03:27 | of users enrolled in your course.
| | 03:29 | You'll see the number of
posts that they've made.
| | 03:32 | If you click on Grade, you'll see their
posts and what's great is whatever grade
| | 03:37 | you enter here if I go into the Grade
Center, let me smoosh this and go to the
| | 03:41 | Grade Center, and here in the Grade
Center I'll be able to hunt down somewhere...
| | 03:45 | Now, it's turning out in this
case it didn't put the column on the
| | 03:48 | far right-hand side.
| | 03:50 | So I kind of have to scroll to left and find it.
| | 03:53 | I am not quite sure why it didn't put it
where I want it, but I'm looking for the
| | 03:56 | Weekly Class Discussions.
| | 03:58 | It's going to be a column in here.
| | 04:00 | There it is!
| | 04:01 | One last thing I want to show you.
| | 04:02 | When I named the forum, I named it
Weekly Class Discussions, which is longer
| | 04:08 | than 13 characters.
| | 04:10 | So this ends up being really long.
| | 04:12 | I can, if I want to, go and
change the name here for the column.
| | 04:15 | I can click on Edit Column
Information and shorten the name here.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
15. Creating GroupsCreating groups| 00:00 | To create a group of students within
your Blackboard course, access your course
| | 00:05 | and then on your course menu click on Groups.
| | 00:09 | If you don't see a link to Groups
there, you can actually add a tool link to
| | 00:12 | Groups, or scroll down and under
Users and Groups click on Groups.
| | 00:19 | Finally, choose whether or not you
want to create just one group or a set of groups.
| | 00:25 | Now before we do that I
want to show you a secret.
| | 00:28 | I'm going to click on Group Settings.
| | 00:30 | Blackboard 9 out of the box gives the
students the ability to create their
| | 00:36 | own groups, so they can have their
own study groups that they can create
| | 00:41 | within Blackboard.
| | 00:42 | These groups are sort of
their own little walled garden.
| | 00:45 | They have their own set of tools
and only the members of the groups can see this.
| | 00:50 | If you don't want your students to be
able to create their own little private
| | 00:54 | study groups, you want to turn that feature off.
| | 00:58 | So let's go and create a group now
and show you what I'm talking about.
| | 01:02 | I'm going to create just one single group.
| | 01:04 | I've two options.
| | 01:05 | I can create a group and not have
anybody in it and the students can then
| | 01:10 | choose whether or not they want to
join this group, or I can create a manual enroll group.
| | 01:14 | That means that I'm going to
add the students to this group.
| | 01:17 | I control it.
| | 01:18 | Let's do that.
| | 01:19 | So I'm going to call this Manual Enroll Group.
| | 01:22 | I can type in a description if I want to.
| | 01:26 | Is this going to be available to the students?
| | 01:28 | Yes or No, it's up to me.
| | 01:30 | And then within this group and only
within this group I can give these students
| | 01:36 | certain tools that are
going to be private to them.
| | 01:40 | In other words, I can give the students
their own discussion board, but only the
| | 01:44 | students in this group will be
able to see that discussion board.
| | 01:46 | Well, and me or any other
instructor in the course.
| | 01:50 | In this case, I can give the students
the ability to create and edit their
| | 01:53 | own private blogs.
| | 01:55 | I mentioned earlier the Blackboard's
Blog tool is sort of not really what we
| | 01:59 | think of when we think of a blog tool.
| | 02:01 | It's not visible outside of the course.
| | 02:04 | Well, a group blog is even more closed off.
| | 02:07 | It's only visible to the members of the
group and the instructor of the course.
| | 02:12 | So I'm going to turn that off for now.
| | 02:14 | Collaboration gives the students the
ability to create a virtual classroom or a whiteboard.
| | 02:20 | I'm not going to let them do that.
| | 02:21 | I'm going to let them have a discussion board.
| | 02:23 | I'm going to let them email themselves.
| | 02:25 | And Group File Exchange is
actually a great feature.
| | 02:28 | It's a way for students who are working
together on a same project to upload a
| | 02:32 | file and share it with each other.
| | 02:34 | It's sort of their own private group dropbox.
| | 02:37 | A little aside. If you really miss
Blackboard's dropbox, create one group, call
| | 02:44 | it Dropbox, turn on only Group File
Exchange, and you've just recreated the dropbox.
| | 02:50 | Again, anything that's uploaded into
the file exchange can be viewed by anybody
| | 02:54 | who was a member of that group.
| | 02:56 | I'm not going to turn on Journals.
| | 02:57 | It's sort of a reflection tool.
| | 02:59 | I'm not going to do Tasks or the My
Scholar social bookmarking and I'm
| | 03:04 | not going to do Wikis.
| | 03:05 | Now I'm going to allow the students to
change the color scheme of their group's
| | 03:10 | page to move modules around,
if they want to add modules.
| | 03:12 | That's fine with me.
| | 03:14 | And now I'm going to start adding a few people.
| | 03:16 | I'm not going to add Jayden Brown.
| | 03:18 | I like Jayden, but I want to show
you why I don't want to add him.
| | 03:21 | I'm going to add like four
students here. And I click on Submit.
| | 03:27 | So I've now created a simple group.
| | 03:30 | If I get on the Group page, I can see
what it looks like to the students.
| | 03:35 | The students now have access to a
file exchange, discussion board, they can send email.
| | 03:39 | Now notice that I didn't
actually put Jayden Brown in here.
| | 03:44 | I did that on purpose.
| | 03:45 | I'm going to switch over to Firefox
and I'm going to show you what this looks
| | 03:49 | like from Jayden's point of view.
| | 03:50 | You get into Groups and there's nothing there.
| | 03:54 | If Jayden is not a member of the
group, he's not going to see that the
| | 03:57 | group exists.
| | 03:58 | That's actually a really
interesting and powerful feature.
| | 04:02 | It keeps the groups private.
| | 04:04 | You can't have students going into
other people's groups and seeing what's going on.
| | 04:09 | This is a great way to make sure
that the group work that you assign your
| | 04:12 | students, the students
aren't cheating off of each other.
| | 04:14 | They are working together as a team.
| | 04:16 | So I've created just one group.
| | 04:19 | Let me get back to the Groups page.
| | 04:20 | Let me show you one other thing.
| | 04:22 | How to create a group set.
| | 04:24 | Now I can create a self-enroll group,
and when I'm creating a group set, it's
| | 04:30 | a number of groups.
| | 04:31 | It's not just one group but multiple
groups, and instead of having to go and
| | 04:36 | create it one at a time, I can just say
create three or four groups or five
| | 04:40 | groups or n number of
groups, and it will create it.
| | 04:42 | I can have it where the
students can enroll themselves.
| | 04:45 | I can manually enroll, and new here,
I've the ability to randomly enroll.
| | 04:50 | In other words, take certain number
of students, I don't care who, put them in one group.
| | 04:54 | Take some others, put them in
another group, and I can do that.
| | 04:57 | I'll click on Random Enroll.
| | 04:59 | Now you might be tempted here to
type like Group 1, Group 2, Group 3.
| | 05:03 | You can't do that.
| | 05:04 | What I can do is I can type Group or
Study Group, but I can't add the numbers,
| | 05:12 | because that number's going to
appear in every group when I create this.
| | 05:16 | The Description is optional.
| | 05:18 | If I want to give
instructions on what to do, that's fine.
| | 05:21 | And the rest of the
settings pretty much look the same.
| | 05:23 | I'm going to turn off Blogs and Collaboration.
| | 05:25 | I'll leave Discussion Board on.
| | 05:27 | Leave Email and File Exchange.
| | 05:29 | Turn off Journals, Tasks, My
Scholar, Scholar, and Wiki.
| | 05:34 | Allow Personalization. And now I can
either have a certain number of groups or
| | 05:40 | I can sit there and say okay, I want
to have how many groups it needs where I
| | 05:44 | have three students per group and just
go do that. Or I can sit there and say
| | 05:49 | no, I want to have five groups and just
evenly distribute the students through the course.
| | 05:54 | In fact, I get to choose what happens
with the rest of the people if anybody
| | 05:58 | else comes in or whatever.
| | 06:00 | I can just basically
distribute everybody through the groups.
| | 06:03 | I can put the remaining members in
their own group or I can manually add the
| | 06:07 | remaining members to groups.
| | 06:09 | In this case, I'm just going to go
three groups and distribute evenly.
| | 06:13 | So now actually in this
case I've got six study groups.
| | 06:18 | If I ever need to edit this, for example,
if I want to call this Study Group 1,
| | 06:22 | I can edit this, and then call them
Study Group 1 or Study Group - Monday.
| | 06:30 | I have the ability to go back and
change and edit this at any point in time.
| | 06:34 | As an instructor I can now see all of my groups.
| | 06:37 | Let me switch back to Jayden's point of view.
| | 06:39 | I click on Groups again. Jayden sees
one group and one group alone because
| | 06:44 | Jayden was randomly put into Study Group 5.
| | 06:48 | He gets into Study Group 5.
| | 06:49 | He sees the group members, he has
got the file exchange, he has got the
| | 06:53 | group discussion board, he can
actually personalize the module, and kind of
| | 06:57 | change things around here.
| | 06:59 | Last thing, let me go back here.
| | 07:01 | We were talking about discussion board
earlier and I want to go down here and I
| | 07:06 | want to get into Course Tools and
Discussion Boards, and I want to show you why
| | 07:11 | when you click on Course Management >
Course Tools > Discussion Board, it doesn't
| | 07:16 | take you into the course discussion board yet.
| | 07:18 | Remember that each of these groups
now have their own discussion board.
| | 07:23 | How do you get access to that?
| | 07:25 | Well, I could go and click into each
group, and that's a good way for you to see
| | 07:28 | what's going on in the file exchange.
| | 07:30 | But if you just want to see what's
going on in the discussion board, if I click
| | 07:34 | on the Discussion Board link under
Course Tools, you're going to see that I have
| | 07:38 | my course discussion, but you're also
going to see that I have a discussion board
| | 07:43 | for each and every group that I can access.
| | 07:45 | So that is in a nutshell
Blackboard's Group tool.
| | 07:49 | How to create Blackboard groups.
| | 07:51 | In the next movie, we're going to
show you how to change the enrollment of
| | 07:55 | a particular group.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding members to groups| 00:00 | In our last movie, we created a
handful of Blackboard groups, student groups
| | 00:05 | that are sort of private to these students.
| | 00:08 | Certain numbers of students are in each
group and within the groups the students
| | 00:11 | can send email, they can do a
discussion board, they can exchange files.
| | 00:15 | But let's say I want to change the
membership of a particular group. I want to add
| | 00:19 | somebody to a group or
remove somebody from a group.
| | 00:22 | How do I do that?
| | 00:23 | Well, I am here on the Groups page.
| | 00:25 | I did it by clicking on the
Groups link here in the course menu.
| | 00:28 | I could also go down under Users and
Groups and click on Groups to get to
| | 00:32 | the exact same page.
| | 00:33 | What I want to do is add
Jayden Brown to a particular group.
| | 00:37 | I'm going to add him to Study Group 2.
| | 00:39 | So what I'm going to do now is click on Edit.
| | 00:44 | As I scroll down, it's going to show me
a list of the people who are currently
| | 00:48 | enrolled in this particular group and
if I want to add Jayden Brown to a group,
| | 00:54 | I just click his name and move
him over. That's all there is to it.
| | 00:57 | If I want to kick Mia Jones out of this
group, I click her name and move her to
| | 01:01 | the left. And that
literally is all there is to it.
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ConclusionNext steps| 00:00 | Well, we are almost done and I want to
thank you for joining me on this tour
| | 00:04 | of Blackboard 9.
| | 00:05 | We've really only scratched the surface
of what's available in Blackboard 9, but
| | 00:10 | we did want to cover the essentials.
| | 00:12 | What I want to do now before we leave
is I want to point you in the direction
| | 00:17 | of some great resources that can help
you as you start using Blackboard more and
| | 00:21 | more with your student.
| | 00:23 | The best resource really is going
to be your institution's help desk or central IT.
| | 00:29 | Chances are your help desk has created
handouts, customized movies, telephone
| | 00:34 | support, and drop-in support is
probably going to be available.
| | 00:37 | They may even offer webinars
and workshops and seminars.
| | 00:41 | When in doubt, call the help desk or
whoever manages Blackboard at your
| | 00:45 | institution. And as a favor to me, from
time to time when Blackboard is working
| | 00:50 | and doing something right,
call them and thank them.
| | 00:54 | Working and supporting on Blackboard
can be a thankless job,. Getting a pat on
| | 00:58 | the back, these people really deserve it.
| | 01:00 | Now with Blackboard used by thousands
of institutions around the world, there
| | 01:06 | are lots of Blackboard support
information resources available to you on the
| | 01:09 | World Wide Web.
| | 01:10 | For example, let me go to Google
and I'll just type in Blackboard 9.1
| | 01:16 | adaptive release.
| | 01:18 | That's the topic we didn't have time to
talk about and I've got 40,000 hits for
| | 01:23 | Blackboard 9.1 adaptive release.
| | 01:27 | So Google is a wonderful
resource for you to find information.
| | 01:31 | Do include the version of Blackboard
when you do searching, because Blackboard's
| | 01:36 | been around for a while. I think I
started using it in Blackboard 5.
| | 01:40 | We are now up to Blackboard 9.
| | 01:42 | Your help desk can tell you what
version your institution is running.
| | 01:46 | The other place that you
can go is check YouTube.
| | 01:50 | Remember, most institutions are also
creating videos that they have customized
| | 01:54 | just for the institution's look and
feel and the features that they've enabled
| | 01:57 | and disabled.
| | 01:58 | So if I do again Blackboard 9.1
adaptive, I am going to find movies that are
| | 02:07 | specifically made about that particular topic.
| | 02:10 | Now one word of warning.
| | 02:12 | Each campus has its own look and
feel in Blackboard and in fact their
| | 02:17 | own settings.
| | 02:18 | So when you search Google or you
research YouTube, what you see on your
| | 02:22 | screen may not exactly match what's
available in your version of Blackboard,
| | 02:27 | but it should be close.
| | 02:29 | Finally Blackboard Inc.,
| | 02:31 | the company that makes the Blackboard
software, also has some resources that have
| | 02:36 | been steadily improving
over the past year or so.
| | 02:38 | If you haven't checked out the
Blackboard Help site in awhile, check it out again.
| | 02:43 | Go to help.blackboard.com.
| | 02:46 | Now this is only going to be
for Blackboard 9.1, not 9.0.
| | 02:51 | But I want you to notice that there is
a Student Help section, an Instructor
| | 02:55 | Help section and even one for Administrators.
| | 02:58 | If I click on the Instructor Help section,
it actually opens up a Web help tool.
| | 03:04 | It shows me some frequently asked
questions like why can't I log into
| | 03:08 | Blackboard or why am I getting
browser errors or how do I make a course
| | 03:11 | available to students.
| | 03:12 | Well, you watched my movie, I already
showed you how to do that, but you can click
| | 03:16 | on any of these links.
| | 03:18 | There is a search box up here.
| | 03:20 | The thing about the search box is
you have to know about exactly what you
| | 03:24 | are looking for.
| | 03:25 | My recommendation is if you know
what you're looking for, search for it.
| | 03:29 | For example, if I type adaptive
release, it gives me information about it.
| | 03:35 | But you can also down here at the
bottom click on the Table of Contents and
| | 03:39 | notice that there is a Help Guide
for Students, also a Help Guide for
| | 03:43 | Instructors, and then this is
actually broken down piece by piece.
| | 03:48 | So I can see information about
announcements, about contacts, about the course
| | 03:52 | calendar, things we've talked about in
this movie, but if you're interested in
| | 03:56 | learning more, for example here's some
information about the course calendar or
| | 03:59 | how to access it, and they have pictures.
| | 04:02 | Again, the pictures may not match
exactly what you see on your campus as
| | 04:06 | Blackboard instance, but there it is.
| | 04:08 | It's actually kind of helpful.
| | 04:10 | So remember what you're seeing here
is going to be generic information.
| | 04:15 | Your institution may have disabled
some of the tools or features mentioned
| | 04:19 | in these help guides.
| | 04:21 | When in doubt, contact your help desk.
| | 04:23 | Well, that's it!
We are at the end.
| | 04:26 | Thank you again for joining me!
| | 04:28 | Have a safe and productive academic term!
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