Recently, there’s been a minor change in the screen where an instructor can change a person’s role to teaching assistant or course builder. The steps for adding a TA to a Blackboard course site are the same. Here’s the difference:
New, simpler, screen:
Change User Role
Screen before the change:
Old Version
Elisabeth Benfey, a lecturing fellow, and Michael Malone, a professor of the practice, both in Theater Studies wanted to collaborate by sharing one common Blackboard site accessible by the students from the two different classes they are teaching. They started by manually adding the students from one class into a Blackboard course site that was pre-populated with the roster from the other class, until they learned an easier way.
An instructor can request help from the OIT Service Desk or by phone 684-2200 and ask that course rosters from different classes be combined into one, already existing, Blackboard course site. The system will be configured to have both or all (having more than two classes combined is possible as well) class rosters populate the one Blackboard site, and automatically manage drop/add. To request a new Blackboard course site, go to our Blackboard support site, choose “Request a Site“ (Net id required) and include in the comments area your request to combine rosters from the classes.
This same principle of using one Blackboard course site to collaborate between multiple classes could be used to support any type of collaboration between instructors, including interdisciplinary work. If you would like other ideas on how to collaborate across classes or disciplines, please contact the Center for Instructional Technology at cit@duke.edu.
Ever wondered what students see when they log onto your Blackboard course? Ever asked yourself what Blackboard can do besides letting you upload your syllabus? We have constructed a sample Blackboard course site based on a past Duke course. The site provides an opportunity for you to see a student’s view of some of Blackboard’s features, such as the ability to participate in class discussion boards, comment on a course blog post, download lecture materials and view library E-Reserves. We hope the sample course site will inspire you to get the most out of Blackboard.
The site has been set up under the Self Enrollment option. Please follow the procedures below to enroll yourself:
Or you can follow Neal in the short video below to enroll yourself in the course:
Things you can do as a student within the site include:
Want suggestions for using Blackboard? Contact CIT at cit@duke.edu, or visit our Blackboard help site. Alternatively, request an office visit and we will come to you.
Blackboard can help you report final grades to Duke, and reuse your teaching materials in a new course.
Before you can export grades from the Grade Center, you must have a column with grades, with the primary display set to “Letter”. Then, from the Control Panel, select Export Official Grades. Follow the step-by-step directions on our help page.
For more ideas on managing the Blackboard Grade Center, visit the CIT blog post, Five Blackboard tips for managing grades more easily.
Find the “Copy” link/button in one of two places in your Blackboard course site.
1. To copy a single item or folder, look for the “Copy” button via the Edit view or Control Panel.
2. To copy a Content Area (e.g., Course Information, Course Documents) or an entire course, look for the “Course Copy” link in the Control Panel under Course Options.
For detailed instructions of how to copy content, visit our help page (or watch Neal demonstrate in this video)
Finally, don’t forget to make your new course site open to your students when you are ready, by going to the Control Panel –> Course Options –> Settings –> Course Availability and select “Yes”.
To learn more, visit our Blackboard help site, or request an office visit and we will come to you.
The eLearning Roadmap group at Duke is examining Duke’s needs, getting input from faculty and students, and coming up with principles to make a recommendation for Duke’s next generation Learning Management System (LMS). Support for Blackboard 8 will eventually end and Duke will be required to upgrade to Blackboard 9, featuring a significantly different interface, or explore other popular LMS options. On Tuesday, December 8th and Thursday, December 10th, you will have an opportunity to see three of the available LMSs. All presentations will be in Perkins Library on West Campus in room 217.
At 10:00 am, Thursday, Dec 10, Gabriel Keith Harris, Assistant Professor,North Carolina State University, Department of Food, Bioprocessing, and Nutrition Science, is going to demonstrate his use of Moodle. He won the Gertrude Cox Award for Innovative Technology Enhanced Courses. Please register for the Moodle demonstration.
At 1:30 pm, Thursday, Dec 10, we will have a remote demonstration of Blackboard 9 by faculty and administrators from Kettering University, focusing on how Blackboard 9 is used in real courses, with plenty of time for questions. Please register for the Blackboard 9 demonstration.
At 12:00pm, Tuesday, Dec 8 and at 3:00 pm, Thursday, Dec 10, we will have a demonstration of Sakai. Both presenters are instructors from UNC-CH. On Tuesday the presentation is by Josefa Lindquist from the Romanc Language department and on Thursday by Phillip Edwards, fromthe SILS program at UNC-CH. They will focus on how Sakai has been used in a course participating in the pilot program. Please register for the Tuesday Sakai presentation or the Thursday Sakai presentation.
As the work of the eLearning Roadmap group continues, we will schedule additional demonstrations of systems of interest in coming months.
Over 2300 Blackboard course sites have been automatically created for Spring 2010, based on data from STORM (Peoplesoft) . Certain course types, such as Independent Study and Tutorial, do not get created automatically. To see if your course site has been created, log into Blackboard and new courses will show up in your “My Courses” module.
If your course site does not show up, you can request that your course site be created by clicking “Request a Site” on our Blackboard Support web site.
By default, courses are set to “unavailable” and can only be seen by instructors and other course administrators (teaching assistants, course builders, etc.) and not by students. Make your course “available” once you are ready for students to see the content.
If you run into problems, contact the OIT Service Desk at 919-684-2200 or by clicking “Get Help” on our Blackboard Support web site. For assistance with configuring your course site to support your teaching goals, contact the Center for Instructional Technology, cit@duke.edu.
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.
In 2009-10, Duke’s elearning Roadmap Committee is actively gathering input from Duke instructors and students about tools they use for teaching and learning. The Committee will assess the needs of the campus community to identify tools, support and infrastructure that should be centrally provided. Whether you use blogs or wikis, Blackboard or VoiceThread, Micrograde or Maple TA, Second Life or Flickr, the Committee needs your insight and ideas about what’s most important for the Duke community. What works well for the kind of courses you teach? What could be improved? What’s missing? Learn about the Committee’s process, findings and ways to get involved and share your ideas at a new web site, http://elearning.duke.edu. At this site, you can…
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:
To use “Collect” to view selected set of threads in a forum:
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.
Center for Instructional Technology, Duke University Libraries | Box 90198 | Durham, NC, 27708
phone: 919.660.5806 / fax: 919.668.2578 / email: cit@duke.edu / 
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