1. DOWN ARROWS

Blackboard 8 introduced new  “contextual menus” – the down-arrows icon on the Grade Center. Don’t be afraid to click through some of these icons. You will discover many familiar features you have been used over years as well as some new ones. Mouse over a grade and a student name; you will see even more.

2. DRAG AND DROP

We all like to “Drag and Drop”  because it is so easy. For example, can you  re-arrange your Grade Center to make sense to you and to your students simply by dragging and dropping? Yes, you can. Go to Manage–>Organize Grade Center.

Watch the short movie below to see Neal Caidin shows you how to reorganize your Grade Center along with some other tricks.

3. HIDE GRADE COLUMNS

Often it is easier to enter student grades if some columns are temporarily hidden from you*. Also, you may want to hide grading columns you will never use that appear by default in Blackboard (such as Student ID, Availability status or Username columns, etc ).

*WARNING: “Hide” only affects the instructor’s view of the Grade Center, not the student’s view.  Students can still see their grades that you “Hide”.  “Hide” in this context means “to hide from my current view of the overall Grade Center.” To hide grades from students, choose Modify Column, and then choose “No” for “Show this column in My Grades”.  “My Grades” is what Blackboard calls the student view. By default, students see all grades.

4. FEWER “SUBMIT” AND “OK” CLICKS

Use the “Next” or “Previous” arrows, or “Go” at the top right to jump to an individual student or assignment column, or to navigate sequentially. This will save you a few clicks when you “Submit” and “Ok” and go back and forth between the main grade view and Grade Details.

5. SMART VIEWS

You can create subsets of grade views (so called “Smart Views”) which meet specific criteria.  For example, Smart Views enable you to look into individual users in more detail, examine specific groups to investigate, or filter students based on their performance on a specific item.  Once created and saved, a Smart View becomes an item on the Current View drop-down menu of the Grade Center page.  To create a Smart View,  go to Manage, and Add Smart View.

Bonus tip: ICON LEGEND

Many people have asked me what the symbol  or  next to grades means. I didn’t know either. So, I looked up the Icon Legend and found out what I wanted to know. The Icon Legend is located at the lower right corner of the Grade Center! Hope at least one icon (the error icon) never occurs on your Grade Center.

To learn more, see our help page for the Blackboard Grade Center and visit the Blackboard support website. If you would like more help with Blackboard, request an office visit and we will come to you.

Do you find it is tedious to read a large number of discussion threads, needing multiple clicks to read each one, reply, and read more?  Let us introduce you to an efficient way to save you from clicking, clicking, clicking…

The “Collect” feature within the discussion board places forum posts and replies into a single “flat” page view that only requires a little scrolling to read all.

To use “Collect” to view ALL posts and replies in a forum:

• Choose “Select All” from the drop-down control and then click the “Go” button.
• Click on the “Collect” button.

To use “Collect” to view selected set of threads in a forum:

• Place a check in the box next to each posting or a set of thread (using Expend or Collapse to see or hide all replies)
• Click on the “Collect” button

You can filter, and sort threads by author’s name (choosing to view only one or more author’s posts), date, subject, order, and overall rating.

Watch a video demo recorded by Neal Caidin using Jing

To learn more, see our help page for the Blackboard Discussion Board and visit the Blackboard support website. If you would like more help with Blackboard, request an office visit and we will come to you.

Guest post by Emily Daly, Instruction and Outreach Librarian

If you use Blackboard at Duke, you may have noticed an addition to your course site’s menu this past spring. The new Library Guides button automatically directs you and your students to a page of research tips and resources developed, in many cases, by a librarian who specializes in a subject area related to your course.

See a general research guide or a page that doesn’t accurately reflect the goals of your course? Feel free to contact your subject specialist, who will replace the Library Guides link with a more appropriate page or work with you to design a guide specific to your objectives and assignments like the one below, which was created for a Writing 20 course:

Librarians are also available to lead course-specific instruction sessions for your students as they begin research papers or projects – again, contact your subject specialist for more information and to schedule a session in Perkins/Bostock, Lilly or even your classroom.

Still have questions about this CIT/Libraries collaboration? Feel free to email Emily Daly, or check out Blackboard support for more info.

The H1N1 influenza virus could cause significant absences from your class sessions this Fall if an outbreak occurs on campus.  Duke administrators have set up an informational website for students, faculty and staff on flu updates and policies.  The CIT is contributing to this effort by offering a series of blog posts to help you think about contingencies in your own courses.

If you have a significant number of students absent from class or if you have suspected flu symptoms and are unable to hold a class session, there are options available at Duke to deliver your lecture session online.

Adobe Connect is an online collaboration tool that allows you to stream a live audio or video session and share your desktop, web pages and PowerPoint with students.  Adobe Connect also includes a chat tool for real time interactions with students.  OIT offers information on Adobe Connect; your local IT support staff can work with you if you need to set up an Adobe Connect license and session for your class.  (Faculty in Trinity can contact Trinity Technology Services for more information and to obtain access to a Connect license).

On OIT’s website on web collaboration, they also mention free publicly available tools – dimdim and argoo – that you can use to set up an ad-hoc collaboration session with a webcam on your computer.

Some classrooms on campus are equipped with Lectopia, a technology that allows you to automatically record a class session and have it uploaded to streaming servers, Blackboard or iTunes U for later viewing or downloading by students through a service called DukeCapture.  More information about the service is available at the OIT website and Trinity Technology Services.  If you are teaching in one of these equipped classrooms, this may be a good option for you.

If you do not wish to capture and stream a live or recorded class session, you may wish to consider recording a “mini lecture” using the Wimba voice recording tools in Blackboard.  Wimba is a plug-in that gives you an easy way to record audio directly in Blackboard using a mic attached to or built-in to your computer.  Wimba could be used to do a short lecture summary after your class session for students unable to attend, or to create a short lecture with still images if you happen to fall ill and are unable to conduct a class session.

Other options for recording presentations for later viewing include Camtasia or Jing screen recording software. Camtasia is available for instructor use in the CIT lab, and Jing is available online (free for a limited version, or for a small fee for the “pro” version).

An alternative to broadcasting or recording lectures, if you or numerous students are unable to come to class, is to substitute other types of activities for lecture, such as assigning additional readings or viewing topically-relevant online media which covers the same course content.

If you would like to talk more about course planning and options available on campus for streaming your lectures, contact the CIT for a consultation.  For more information, see the CIT’s website for a summary of resources to flu-proof your course.

New in Blackboard 8: When you post the announcement in Blackboard, you can choose to email your announcement to all of the users in the course site by clicking a check box.

Blackboard automatically adds the course ID to outgoing email messages, in the email subject field. Usually a course ID consists of Course Subject, Course Number and Suffix, and Course Term. (e.g. ECON101.01-F2009)

To learn more, see our help page for the Blackboard Email Tool and visit the Blackboard support website. If you would like more help with Blackboard, request an office visit and we will come to you.

Blackboard’s gradebook has become a Grade Center, when Blackboard was upgraded  to version 8.0 in early May.

What’s new about the grade center?  Instructors can:

• enter grades directly into grade center cells (like a spreadsheet).
• freeze panes and scroll through grades to correlate student names with grades more easily.
• automatically drop lowest quiz score(s).
• display both Score and Percentage in the same column (or Percentage and Letter Grade).
• Smart View can display only those students in a particular section of a multi-section course.
• Smart Views can be used to display students meeting a particular criteria (e.g. “Below C-” or “missed exam”).
• exempt a graded item from the grade calculations.
• easily add a comment to any grade for the student to see.
• email students directly from the Grade Center (e.g. those who have not turned in an assignment).

There’s more! See our help pages, watch a video introduction, or read a brief summary describing the new features.

If you have not used the gradebook in Blackboard before, you might like the upgraded version, the Grade Center.

Duke University will upgrade Blackboard from version 6.3 to version 8.0.  During the conversion, from Thursday, May 7 at 6 pm through Sunday, May 10 at 6 pm, Blackboard will not be available.  After that, say hello to Blackboard 8.0!  All of your materials stored on Blackboard will be transferred to the new version and will be available after the upgrade.  Course sites for Fall 2009 will be created after the upgrade, in the last week of May.  However, an instructor may request a course site (requires Duke net id) at any time.

Overall, the new version of Blackboard looks and acts similarly to our previous version, and some people may not notice any change at all.  Those who use the gradebook (renamed Grade Center to reflect changes) and the Discussion Board will notice the biggest changes.

This upgrade is to ensure that Blackboard, Inc. will continue to provide support for our system.

Where instructors can get help:

• attend a workshop at the CIT showcase
• attend a workshop in May
• contact CIT to arrange for training for a group of instructors, or an office visit to help you get started
• our Blackboard help pages will be updated with short video tutorials and more information at the same time

Duke faculty and instructors in the University Writing Program and Romance Languages talk about how they use Blackboard for their teaching in short videos. Here are some examples:

• Cary Moskovitz discusses how he uses Blackboard’s Wiki feature for collaborative writing assignments
• Vicki Russell explains how she uses the discussion board and Wimba’s voice recording tools
• Robert Kilpatrick explains how he uses Blackboard to create exciting exercises for his French students.
• Christine Beaule talks about how she uses Blackboard’s content sections to organize her course material

See all 7 videos

To explore and discover Blackboard features, see the Blackboard support website. If you would like more extensive help for Blackboard, request an office visit and we will come to you.

Peer collaborative learning enhances the value of student-to-student interaction and results in various advantageous learning outcomes.  Instructors can use the Blackboard’s built-in collaboration tools to allow students to access each others’ files within Blackboard for peer review and feedback.

Instructors can choose tools for students to share files in a number of ways:

• through the Discussion Board,
• via Group File Exchange,
• using the Blackboard Blog and Wiki Tool.

See more from the Duke Knowledge Base.

To explore and discover additional Blackboard features, see the Blackboard support website. If you would like more extensive help for Blackboard, request an office visit and we will come to you.

Have you wondered how you or your support staff can keep informed about changes to Blackboard including scheduled outages, updates, bugs, news and training opportunities? You are in luck! Sign up for the bb-alerts email group.

Q: How can I subscribe to the bb-alerts email group?

A: Method 1: go to https://lists.duke.edu/sympa/info/bb-alerts and log in with your NetID and password, and then click on  “subscribe” option within the List Operations on the left menu.

Method 2: send an email to sympa@duke.edu and in the subject line write SUBSCRIBE bb-alerts.
Should you have any questions or concerns, contact Neal Caidin (neal.caidin@duke.edu) or Lenore Ramm (lenore.ramm@duke.edu) as the list owners.

To explore and discover Blackboard features, see the Blackboard support website. If you need a tutorial for Blackboard, request an office visit and we will come to you.