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blackboard for instructors
Frequently Asked Questions
New Issue Fall 2007
Checklist for opening a course to studentsUse the following chart to as a checklist for getting a course open to students:
TIP: You should check the course id and name of the course. Remember that students will know your course by the official Registrar course id and that may or not be the same as the one in Blackboard - in fact, they will often be different. So when informing students in class of how to enroll in your Blackboard course, note explicitly for them the Blackboard Course id. Also, different sections of a course may have the same name - alert students to that as well.
How do I make my course available to students?You must make the course available for students to see. Do this via Control Panel > Settings > Course Availability and set it to "Yes". "Available" in Blackboard-speak means that the course will appear on the list of courses, can be searched for, and can be enrolled in. If a course is "Unavailable" that means only the Instructors (and other Course Assistants) will see the course, not Students. You should set a course to be Unavailable before the term begins when you are working on adding content to it, and after a term ends so students can no longer enroll in it, and it will not appear on the course list.If you use Self-Enrollment, it is highly recommended you set an Access Code, too (q.v. below).
How do I get students to Enroll ?You set the enrollment type via Control Panel > Settings > Enrollment Options. There are two basic ways to enroll students in a course:
How and why do I set an Access Code?In Control Panel > Settings > Enrollment Options under Self Enrollment, first check the Require access code to enroll box and enter a secret word in the box next to it. Keep it simple and related to the class. When you tell your class about how to enroll in your course in Blackboard, you will give them the access code. Note: Access Codes are Case Sensitive; "Abracadabra" is not the same as "abracadabra". It needs to be a single word, no spaces; avoid punctuation. There are two reasons to use an Access Code: to prevent students from enrolling in your courses by mistake; and to provide coverage for copyright materials used in accordance with the fair use clause in your course, which are legally allowed to be available to registered users in your course only during the actual duration of the course. TIP: If you have policies about late enrollment in your classes, enforce them in Blackboard too, by changing the Access code after the first week or so of class, to prevent stragglers or strangers from enrolling.
Students are asked for an Access Code, but I didn't set one!Double-check it via Control Panel > Settings > Enrollment Options. Some older courses may have inadvertently had their codes reset by other faculty incorrectly using the System tab > Settings menu. There are some bugs in our version of Blackboard related to setting Access Codes, so always double-check it before making a course available.
How do I check that all my students are enrolled?Check the list of students enrolled in a course via Control Panel > List/Modify Users. (Then click "All Users" twice to show you the full list).
How do I create a new course?To create a course, go to System tab > Create Course which will let you make a new, empty course. TIP: Always check whether a course id is already used before creating a course. It will save you some frustration. Here are the guidelines for how to fill out the form:
CAREFUL: Be sure to put your Userid as the Instructor! Don't put your real name, but your Blackboard user id that you use to log into Blackboard with. Otherwise you will have created a course of which you are not the Instructor, and it will not show up in your "My Courses" list. 
How do I copy an already existing course?
Go into the course you want to copy and then do this via Control Panel > Course Copy. You will then have three choices. In most situations, you will want to use the first choice: Copy Course Materials into a New Course. (For the others, visit the manual online in the Blackboard 101 course.)
There are three important options to set:
I copied a course, but I can't find it or it not longer lists me as the Instructor?!
You didn't check the enrollments button in step 3 above when copying the course, so the course is Instructorless. Contact Randy Thornton to have this corrected for you.
How can I clean out an already existing course to reuse it?
Use the Control Panel > Recycle command which is specifically designed to let you clean out certain parts
of a course that change from term to term, e.g. student accounts, discussion board entries, etc. This is a very useful command. Note that it cleans out the course as it is,
so the data you are cleaning out is gone forever. It is a very, very good idea to first Archive a course before Recycling it.
How can I change the Course Id of a course?The short answer is you can't: a course id can never be changed. It is an unfortunate limitation of Blackboard that the course ids must be unique, so if an existing course already has an id, the id cannot be shared or reused. But there is a workaround: remove the course with course id you want, then create a new course or copy an existing course to that id. Here's an example:Suppose there is a Course with the Course id "ABC101_LastYear" that you want to change to "ABC101", but "ABC101" already exists in the system. Do the following:
Q: What if the course id I need is in use by another Instructor? A: Negotiate.
I'm taking over someone else's course: How do we do this?It is a two step process:
Can I delete the Course Buttons on the left hand side?
How can I add a banner to my course startup page?A "banner" is a graphic logo you can set for a course that will appear above the Announcements page of a course. It can be used to give a visual entrance point to your course. You need to create a graphic file of type .gif or .jpg, and then upload it to the course via Control Panel > Settings > Course Design > Course Banner. The suggested size is 400 pixels wide by 50 pixels high, but it can be larger or smaller. See the Blackboard 101 course for an example of a banner. Here is a sample suggested size banner image: 
I'm team teaching: How do I add another Instructor to a course?This is a two step process:
Some strange people are listed as Instructors beside me!This usually happens when one of the Librarians who has uploaded Electronic Course Reserve content requested by you or your department secretary has inadvertently put themselves in the course as Instructor. If so, the students will see their names listed as Instructor alongside yours. To correct this situation, you need to change their role in the course from Instructor to Course Builder. Do this via Control Panel > List/Modify Users, find their name on the list, click the Properties button, then in Section 4 set their Role to Course Builder.
How can I allow Librarians, T.A.s, and others to add course content for me?Make them a Course Builder for the course. It's a two step process:
How can I save my course for safekeeping?
You should use the Archive or Export process to extract your course data into a single compressed file outside of Blackboard. This file can then be later restored back into Blackboard. When you do this you will be given a link to the archive file, which is always in a ZIP compressed file format. (Note: you can extract uploaded files from this zip using standard zip file tools, like WinZip, but you cannot extract any of the other information, like student work, gradebook, or discussions.)
Why should you do this? Do this as a safekeeping procedure. It is very important because once a course is deleted or removed from Blackboard, it can NOT be gotten back. Really. Never. Practice defensive computing and archive your data. Remember: Any instructor could inadvertently remove any other Instructor's course. And it has happened. When should you archive ? Once you have all the material in it at the beginning of a term, archive it before you make it available to students. Then you have a clean backup of the course. Archive again later on whenever you make major changes that you might want to save, especially at the end of the semester.
What is difference between Archiving and Exporting?
What should I do with my Archived course files?Save them to your hard drive and then also copy them somewhere else safe: your H: drive on Alexandria, a flash drive, a zip drive, and/or burn them onto CD. Take a copy of ALL your courses each term and take them somewhere safe off campus. TIP: Save your archive files by renaming with the date you archived them. By default, Archive files have the name ArchiveFile_Courseid.zip with the Course id of the course. Rename them with the date so you can have multiple archives: e.g. ArchiveFile_PHIL101_Aug21_2006.zip.
How do I restore an archived course?If you archived a file, use the command use the System tab > Restore command to bring a whole course back into Blackboard. Use the System tab > Import command if you want to specific which parts to bring back. NOTE: When you import or restore a course you will have to give it a NEW Course id. Check that the course id you want is available; if not, plan on using another Course id.
How do I remove or delete a course?
The safest way to remove a course is to send an email to Randy Thornton and tell him which course or courses you want to remove
removed from the system. The course will be added to system process that periodically removes courses as requested.
You can and should archive your courses first.
Is there an End of Term checklist?Here is an end of term checklist of the things you should do at the end of each term.
How and why do I make my course Unavailable?Do this via Control Panel > Settings > Course Availability > No Courses should be available only when actually being taught. You should keep your courses unavailable while you are preparing them before a term, and when done with them after the term. You should do this for several reasons: Ease of Searching All available courses show up when searching in the courses tab. Students can be confused when seeing old courses listed. Only courses being taught in the current term should be marked available and be searchable by students. My Courses Clutter Old but available courses still show up on the the students My Courses tab. This is a constant source of complaints by students, who should only see their current courses on the list. Copyright Compliance Materials used under the fair-use clause of copyright can ONLY be available to students during the term of the course while the material is being used. Making a course unavailable to students at the end of term keeps you in compliance with copyright. Materials for which you have permissions also often have this proviso as well. (Vid. the ALA guidelines.)
When should I archive my course?You can and should archive your course during the term, whenever you make major additions to the content, or other substantial changes. Make the final archive of your course when the students are done using it, you have entered your grades (if you use the gradebook) and you have made the course unavailable to students. See the Archiving section above for how to archive.
How long should I keep my course before removing it?
You can keep your course sitting in Blackboard as is, if you intend to use it again the next
term or year, either by recycling or copying it. If you are not going
use it again, you should archive and then remove it.
If I am leaving the University, what should I do with my courses?
How can I prepare the course to use it again next term or year?If you are planning to use a course again in a future term, be sure and check that any dates you have set in the course are unset or updated. This can be a sources of confusion when you later copy a course that have old dates set in it. Specifically check these settings:
Also, for any files you have uploaded that you set date restrictions on, be sure and take them off now, otherwise when you copy the course, the files will have the old dates on them, and you and or your future students will not be able to see them. You should uncheck any such date restrictions.
How do I deal with MS Vista Office 2007 formated files sent by students ?Unfortunately, as is their wont, Microsoft has once again created an entirely new file format for the latest version of MS Office (Word, Excel, and Powerpoint) called Office 2007. Students with new laptops with Vista will have this version on it. You will see this if you receive a file of with an extension of .docx or a zip file which contains a multitude of files with the extensions xml, res and so forth. Possible ways to deal with this are:
Tell the students you will accept non-proprietary formats (only)Use a standard format like HTML that works across operating systems and applications. Almost any word processor on any computer can save in HTML which is a world wide standard.Tell the students you will accept Office 2003 formatted files (only)
You can download a fix for this on your PC so Office 2003 can read the newer files
Note: Just a reminder that file formats and the ability to read or play files is not under Blackboard control. BB simply stores what is uploaded. Any file can be uploaded to BB and how or whether it can read, played, or used depends solely on the computer it is being used on. Office 2003 applications are the standard on all UPS desktops and lab machines. Call the HelpDesk at x8585 if you need more information about file formats.
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