Getting Started with Blackboard 6 -- A Guide for Instructors

Last Update: September 22, 2006

Getting Started

How to Get a Course Site

The simplest and quickest way to have a Blackboard site set up for your course is to use our online request form, located at http://www.library.upenn.edu/forms/courseware/bbrequest.html. Instructors or those acting on behalf of instructors may use this form. After you submit your request, your course(s) will typically be available within one to two days.

Students enrolled in your course will be given access to the Blackboard site automatically, usually within 24 hours of the site's creation.

Blackboard sites are not "renewed" each semester. You will need to request a new site, even if you're teaching the same course in consecutive terms. Course materials can be copied from previous sites however; so you won't have to rebuild an earlier site from scratch.

Your Blackboard course site will be accessible to you and your students for 14 months from time of creation, after which time it is moved offline and copied to CD-ROM. Archived courses will be kept for five years, and instructors may request access to their old courses at any time.

Using the Library's Electronic Reserve Service

To find out how to have reserve readings scanned and uploaded into your course site, see the Library's Reserves web page.

Login and Find Your Courses

Once you've received a notice that your Blackboard site is ready, you can find your course(s) by directing your browser to http://courseweb.library.upenn.edu/ Login using your PennKey and password, or, if you've been provided with a Blackboard-only account, your "bb-" User ID and Password.. (See our Access Guide if you're experiencing difficulty logging in.)

A listing of your courses will appear as hotlinks in "My Courses" area on Blackboard homepage. (This is where you'll find yourself upon successful login.) The listing will include your courses from the preceding 14 months. If you see no courses listed, or see courses other than the one(s) you're looking for, then either the course has not yet been created or you have not been added into the course.

Set Your E-mail Address

To insure Blackboard has your correct e-mail address, or to change the e-mail address Blackboard has listed for you, click Personal Information, which is under the green heading "Tools" on the left-hand side of the Blackboard homepage. Next, click Edit Personal Information, change your address in the E-mail field and click Submit.

View Your Student Roster

Blackboard automatically downloads your class roster each night from Registrar information. To view a list of the students currently having access to your course, follow the following steps.

Enter course that has the roster you wish to view, and
Click Communication > Roster > List All (tab) > List All (button).

** Privacy Note ** Enrolled students have access to the Student Roster. If you wish to disable this feature, follow these steps:

Click Control Panel;
Click Manage Tools (under Course Options heading);
Click Enable Blackboard Tools;
Scroll down to Roster and uncheck all boxes in the corresponding row;
Click Submit.

For additional information about Penn's Privacy policies view the following site: http://www.upenn.edu/privacy/

Alternatively, click Control Panel > List/Modify Users (under User Management) > List All (tab) > List All (button). Note: this method of viewing your student roster is not available to students.

Working with Content in Blackboard

How to Create an Announcement

Blackboard announcements are a good way to keep students apprised of new information or changes to schedule. New announcements appear both in the My Announcements box (visible upon initial login) and on the course's homepage for seven days (by default). You can specify that an announcement become available and/or disappear at a specific date and time, or remain visible permanently. Additionally, you can add a Course Link into the announcement to provide quick navigation to an area of your site.

Login to Blackboard and enter course for which you wish to make an announcement;
Click Control Panel > Announcements (under Content Areas heading);
Click Add Announcement;
Provide subject and body of announcement, and select text type (about "Smart Text, Plain Text, HTML");
Select options for controlling duration of announcement display: display seven days (default), display permanently or display for date range specified (Tip: be sure to check the boxes to the left of "Display After" and "Display Until");
Click Submit

Adding Course Content

Blackboard gives you two basic ways of getting content into your course site: typing/pasting it in directly or uploading it from your computer. In the latter method, the system automatically generates links to your uploaded files and requires no reformatting of your documents.

What kinds of files can I upload?

You can upload nearly any file type into Blackboard. Just be sure that your students have the proper software application to open the files you use. The following file formats are commonly used in Blackboard content areas:

Adobe PDF
MS Office (Word, PowerPoint, Excel)
JPG, GIF and TIFF images
HTML
Archived web sites ("zipped" HTML + images)

In the upper-left area of Control Panel, you'll find your site's Content Areas. By default, these areas will be named Course Information, Course Documents, Assignments and External Links (for instructions on how to change the names of these areas, see Managing and Customizing Your Site, below). These areas have the same tools, which are located in the toolbar along the top of the area. For example, if you click Course Information, you will find the toolbar shown in the image below:

CONTENT TOOLS

About the Add toolbar:

Item: use to upload content or type/paste in content
Folder: use to organize content
URL: an external link--e.g., http://www.library.upenn.edu
Course Link: a hyperlink connecting two areas within your course site
Test: select an assessment from a listing of those you've created (assumes you've built tests in the Test Manager)

How to Upload Content

To upload a file into Course Documents, enter your course site and:

Click Control Panel > Course Documents (under "Content Areas" heading);
Click Add Item;
Under (1) provide a name for your document by either selecting from the pull-down menu or entering a name into the text box beside "or specify your own name;"
Under (2) click the browse button and locate the file you wish to upload. Provide link text for the file (optional) and leave the pull-down menu to its default setting of "Create a link to this file." Note: for information on what types of files you can upload, see "What kinds of files can I upload" below);
Select any additional desired options from under (3) and;
Click Submit, under (4).

Create a Folder

Use folders to organize your content. Tip: organizing your content into folders can make the task of copying content significantly easier.

Click Control Panel > Course Documents > Add Folder
Provide a name for the folder, or select one of the names provided by the pull-down menu;
Add descriptive text to the folder name in the text box, and select text type (about "Smart Text, Plain Text, HTML");
Select options for controlling duration of announcement display: display seven days (default), display permanently or display for date range specified (Tip: be sure to check the boxes to the left of "Display After" and "Display Until").
Click Submit.

How to Add a URL

In Blackboard 6 you are no longer restricted to a single area in which you can place external links. Links are one of the content types available in any content area. To add a link to a course site:

Click Control Panel and enter a Content Area, such as "Course Documents";
From the "Add" toolbar along the top of the page, click URL;
Provide a name for the link, enter URL of website and provide annotation (optional);
Select options under (2);
Click Submit.

How to Create a Course Link

A new feature in Blackboard 6, the course link enables you to link from one area of your course site to another. For example, suppose you keep your assignments and e-reserve readings in separate content areas. A way to improve your site's navigability for students would be to add a course link connecting a reading assignment directly to the reading. The following steps could apply to such an example:

Click Control Panel > Assignments;
Click Course Link (from toolbar at top of page);
Provide a name for the link (e.g. "Link to Readings") and any additional comments (e.g., this will link you directly to the readings in Course Documents);
Next, click the Browse button, which will launch a "course map" in the upper right-hand of your browser;
Locate Course Documents in the course map, click the '+' to reveal the contents of the area/folder, and when you've found the content you wish to link to, click the radio button on its left;
Click Submit to close the course map;
Click Submit to finish creating the link.

About Smart Text, Plain Text and HTML

Smart Text enables you type or paste in HTML or text; Blackboard will treat markup elements (e.g., <b></b>) as HTML formatting.
Plain Text should be selected if you want HTML tags (i.e., "<" and ">") to be ignored.
The HTML option should be used if you're typing or pasting only HTML coded text into Blackboard. This option, in contrast to Smart Text, will ignore line and paragraph breaks that aren't delimited by HTML tags.

How to Use Blackboard's Assignment Tool

A new feature of Blackboard 6 is the assignment tool, which can make collecting and managing your students' written work a relatively simple task. Consider the following scenarios:

You assign your students a reading, about which they will submit a response paper.
You regularly assign problem sets to your students and require them to be submitted for grading.
You assign your students projects which they must create in specialized software; you then wish to assess the students' work based on their demonstrated competency with that software.

The assignment tool gives you a way to define an assignment, to encapsulate the disparate pieces of it. You provide name and instructions, assign a point value (assignments are automatically tied to the online gradebook) and attach content. When students view the assignment, they have what they need from you to complete it, and they also have an upload tool for submitting the assignment directly to you. (If you used the Digital Drop Box in previous versions of Blackboard, this should feel familiar.) You can then retrieve, grade and return assignments to students through the gradebook. (See instructions on managing assignments through the gradebook.)

To Create an Assignment

Click Control Panel and select one of your course's Content Areas (e.g., Assignments);
From the pull-down menu on the right side of the Add toolbar, select Assignment (see image, below);
Click the GO button;
Provide a name, point value and instructions for the assignment;
Provide (optional) content attachment(s);
Click Submit.

How to Copy/Move Content

Blackboard 6 gives you several tools for managing content:

Content copy: copy/move items within the site and from one site to another;
Copy Course: copy areas of your course site into another course site;
Import Package: import areas of an exported/archived site into a current site.

How to use content copy: after you add a content item to your site, you will find a Copy button to the right of it and between the Modify and Remove buttons (see image below).

Click on the Copy button. The subsequent screen shows you 1) what you'll copy, and; 2) what its destination is--which course and which folder in that course. Under step (2) on this screen you'll find a pull-down menu that lists the courses in which you're designated an instructor or T.A. By default, the course selected is the one you're currently working in;
Select the course you wish to copy the item into;
Click Browse (this launches a course map for the selected course) and choose the location in the target course for the item;
If you wish to delete the item after the copy (copy + delete = move), select Yes for "Delete item after copy?";
Click Submit.

How to use Course Copy:

From within the Control Panel click Course Copy (under Course Options heading);
Click Copy Materials into an Existing Course;
Click the Browse button, which will launch a search box, and search for the target course. (Tip: the easiest way to generate a listing of courses which you can copy into is to simply click the Search button.);
Use the Select button to the right of the listed courses to choose the target course;
Under step (2), select the areas of the source course (which you're currently in) that you wish to copy into the target course;
Click Submit. NOTE: although the system promises to notify you via e-mail when the copy process is complete, that function does not work. In general turnaround time for the operation is less than ten minutes.

How to use Import Package: If you've archived or exported content from a previous course site, you can integrate it into your current Blackboard site.

From within the Control Panel click Import Package (under Course Options heading);
Click the Browse button and locate the Blackboard Archive (this will be a file in .zip format);
Select which areas of the archive you wish to import;
Click Submit.

Using Communication Tools

How to Send Your Students E-mail

Click Communication > Send E-mail > All Users;
Compose message, including any additional options;
Click Submit.

How to Create a Discussion Forum

Click Communication > Discussion Board > Add Forum (alternatively you can click Control Panel > Discussion Board > Add Forum);
Provide a Title and a Description for the Forum (note: both are required, but you can modify them later).
Consider which options you'd like to include or exclude under Forum Settings and check/uncheck them accordingly. The Forum User Settings enable you to give students "Forum Administrator privileges," which means they can archive Forums (for more information about archiving Forums see "Managing and Customizing Your Course" below.);
Click Submit.

Managing Students

Enrolling & Removing Users

NOTE: Please see “Blackboard Account & Access Policies” for guidelines on creation and removal of student accounts.

Enrolled students with a valid PennKey are added (or dropped) automatically each day according to Registrar records. If the student does not have a PennKey s/he will be included in the daily roster update after obtaining one.
A user who is not enrolled but who does have a PennKey (this can be a student, a T.A. or an additional instructor) can be added by:
1. Clicking Control Panel > Enroll User;
2. Search for user by last name, user ID or email address;
3. Click Submit--user will be enrolled in site with student-level access privileges.
4. If the user's role in the course is to be other than Student:
  1. Return to Control Panel, click List/Modify Users and locate user;
  2. Click Properties (to the right of user's name);
  3. Scroll down resulting page to item 4, "Role and Availability;"
  4. Select desired role and click Submit.
Users without a PennKey (this will include Senior Associates, visiting students and some guest lecturers) will require a temporary User ID and Password to be generated for them. These login credentials will work only for Blackboard. To generate a temporary User ID and Password:
1. Click Control Panel > Create User;
2. Furnish first & last name, e-mail address, user name and password. Note: please prefix all user names with "bb-" (for e.g., "bb-jdoe").
3. Under step 4., designate a role for the user (will be student by default)
4. Click Submit.

Manage guest users

By default, guest access is enabled for Penn Blackboard courses. This means that some areas of your course are accessible to anyone on the Internet, while those specified as "secure" can be access only by those officially registered for the course.

When a new Blackboard site is created, the Course Documents content area is designated Secure. This default level of security is intended to restrict electronic reserves materials to only those registered for the course

Most Blackboard course sites are set up to permit guest access. If you have a Blackboard account, you can "preview" any site that allows guests, even if you're registered for no courses using Blackboard. If you don't have a PennKey, you may login using "guest" for both User ID and Password.

To access courses as guest point your browser to http://courseweb.library.upenn.edu/ and:

Login using your PennKey information for user ID and Password, click the Courses tab and navigate through the Course Catalog or use the Course Search to locate a course.
Alternatively, click "Course Catalog" and either navigate through the directory of courses or use the search box to locate a course.

Those accessing a course as guest are by default restricted to Announcements. To enable access to content areas (e.g., Course Information) of your site, you must enable guest access to your site's Content Area tools:

Enter Control Panel > Manage Tools > Tool Availability
Click check-box to the right of Content Area
Click Submit

How do I disable guest access to my course?

Note: course role of instructor, TA or course builder is required to configure guest access options.

To completely disable guest access to your course:

1) Click Control Panel > Settings (under Course Options heading) > Guest Access.

2) Click No (beside "Allow Guests:").

3) Click Submit.

You can also specify particular content areas of your site as either secure or guest accessible. To see which areas of your site are currently guest-accessible, go to Control Panel > Manage Course Menu (under Course Options heading). Click the Modify button to the right of each menu item. You will then see whether or not that area allows guest access.

How to Create Groups

Click Control Panel > Manage Groups > Add Group;
Provide a name and description for the group and select any of the options;
Click Submit.
After creating the group, you'll need to add users into it. To do this:
1. From Manage Groups page, click Modify (to the right of the group);
2. Click Add Users to Group and search for individuals or List All;
3. Check names of users to include in group and click Submit.

Managing and Customizing Your Course

Archive Discussion Group postings

You've probably noticed that you cannot make a forum or a thread unavailable without removing it from the Discussion Board. But there is a way to clean up a forum: archives provide a means of storing threads in such a way that they no longer appear in the forums. Here's how to proceed.

Go to the Control Panel, then to the area labeled Communication Center, and click on Discussion Board.
Enter the forum for which you wish to create an archive. (Enter it by clicking on its link.)
Below the list of messages, you'll see a link labelled "[Click Here for Archives]". Click there.
You'll see a button labelled "Add Archive." Click on it.
Create the archive by filling in the Title and Description blanks and then clicking the "Submit" button.
You should now see the archive listed. Click on the "Modify" button beside its name.
Near the bottom of the page, you will see "Select threads to move to Archive" followed by a check-list of threads. Check the ones you want to move. Then click "Submit."
If you return to the archive (in the Control Panel, as we did in steps 1-3 and 6), you'll see a new option "Release archived thread into Forum" with a checklist of archived threads that you can return to the forum.

About the Gradebook

Blackboard's online gradebook feature provides an easy way for students to monitor their progress. As instructor, you can create and weight assignments, assessments and attendance. The gradebook will automatically generate entries for assignments (see "How to Use Blackboard's Assignment Tool" above), tests and surveys. Additionally, tests and surveys can be automatically evaluated.

The gradebook can be exported as a comma-delimited file, suitable for use in a spreadsheet program such as Microsoft Excel, and re-imported into Blackboard.

NOTE: Blackboard gradebook is not connected to SRS information.

How to Create a Gradebook Entry

Click Control Panel > Gradebook > Add Item;
Supply name, category, point value and display setting (NOTE: display setting affects only your view of the grade--students will always see a raw score) for the item;
Click Submit;
Upon submitting the item, you'll be returned to spreadsheet view (and if the item you just created was the first, you'll now see a listing of your students);
To assign a weight to the item you've just created, click "Weight Grades";
Choose whether to weight by category or by item, assign a percentage in the box to the right of the item and click Submit.

How to Input Grades

You can access grade input fields grades in three ways: you can input all the grades for a single person (i.e., by row); you can input all the grades for a single gradebook item (i.e. by column); or you can input a single grade (i.e., by cell).

To input all the grades for a single person,

Click the person's name in the leftmost column of the gradebook;
Click User Grade List;
Enter grade(s) and click Submit.

To input all the grades for a single gradebook item,

Click the item name;
Click Item Grade List;
Enter grades and click Submit.

To input a single grade,

Click the '-' appearing in the cell where student and event intersect;
Enter grade and click Submit.

Additional tips:

To enter grades for a gradebook item, click its name (top row of spreadsheet). This will take you to a screen allowing you to enter or modify the item.
To change an item's name, type, point value or availability, click the item's name, then click Item Information. Alternatively, click the Manage Items button, then click the Modify button to the right of the item's name..
To change the order of the gradebook columns, click the Manage Items button and change the sequence by using the pull-down menu of numbers on the left. .
To view a single row of the gradebook (i.e., the record of a particular student), click the user's name in the spreadsheet and then click User Grade List.
To obtain statistical details about a gradebook item (class average, standard deviation, etc.), click the item name at the head of its column in the spreadsheet, then select Item Detail.

How to Manage Assignments Submitted Via the Assignment Tool

When you create an assignment by using Blackboard's Assignment Tool (see How to Use Blackboard's Assignment Tool" above), a column in the gradebook for that assignment is generated automatically. After a student submits an assignment, you will see an exclamation point (!) in the spreadsheet cell corresponding to that student (see image below).

By clicking that exclamation point you can access the work submitted by the student. The image below illustrates the display you'll see when you access a student's work.

By clicking the View button on the right-hand side of the display you can access the file(s) the student has submitted, supply a grade, return the graded file to the student (it will appear in the same area from which the assignment was submitted) and preserve comments and a graded copy of the file for your records.

How to Download Assignments

Another useful tool the gradebook provides for working with assignments is batch download. To access this tool:

Enter the Gradebook (spreadsheet view);
Click on the name of the Assignment;
Click Item Download;
Select any/all of the assignments you wish to download;
Click Submit. (You will be downloading a file in .zip format).

Customizing Your Course

The options for customizing your Blackboard site have grown progressively more flexible with each release of ths software. With Blackboard 6, you have a good deal of control over the look of your site--what labels to provide navigation buttons, which tools to enable and disable. You may find that through experimenting with these options you enhance the effectiveness of your site.

How to Change the Course Title

Click Control Panel > Settings > Course Name and Description;
Enter desired course title in Course Name and provide any additional information in Description text box;
Click Submit.

How to Modify Navigation Buttons

Click Control Panel > Manage Course Menu;
Click Modify (to the right of the navigation name);
Provide new label;
Click Submit.

How to Set Course Availability

(Also see "Set course duration," below.)

By default, your course site is available to guest users at the time of its creation and is available to registered students beginning two weeks prior to the start of the semester. Your site is also available for one year after the semester for which it was created. If you need to disable access to your course site, make the course "unavailable":

Click Control Panel > Settings > Course Availability;
Change "Make Course Available" to No;
Click Submit.

Note: T.A.s, Course Builders, Graders and additional course Instructors will continue to have access even when course availability is set to "No."

How to Enable/Disable Guest Access

See "Manage guest users" above

How to Set Course Duration

Similar to the course availability setting, Set Course Duration controls access to your course site. Using this tool to control access, however, may prove preferable, as the time parameters in which access to the site is restricted can be set ahead of time. To set course duration:

Click Control Panel > Settings > Course Duration;
Choose "Select Dates";
Use either pull-down selection or the calendar tool to specify a date range;
Click Submit.

Set course category

The course category determines where in Blackboard's course catalog your course site gets listed. Categories are organized by Penn's School (e.g., SAS, SEAS). You may list your course under any number of categories, so cross-listed courses will show up under more than one category. To specify a category for your course site:

Click Control Panel > Settings > Categorize Course;
Select School/Dept. using pull-down menu;
Click Add--the page should reload and the category will appear (note that you can also remove categories);
Click OK.

Set course entry point

By default, the entry point to courses is Announcements. However, you can designate another area to be the first place your students arrive when the enter it. If, for example, your use of Blackboard is limited to online Library Reserve readings, you might choose Course Documents to be the entry point. By doing so, you can make your site more simple to navigate. To select a new course entry point:

Click Control Panel > Settings > Set Course Entry Point;
Use the pull-down menu to designate the new entry point;
Click Submit.