Do you need to get an announcement to your students and ensure that they see it?  Consider using the announcements function in Blackboard.  You can create an announcement for your students, teaching assistant(s), or auditor(s) quickly and easily.  To ensure that the intended recipient will in fact see the announcement, check the last option on the page, “Also deliver as a pop-up message.”   This will make a new window “pop up” when a student logs in with the announcement in it.  A student must move or close this window to see their Blackboard page.  Note: Pop-up blocker settings may need to be changed to receive these messages.  However, these settings should already be set correctly in order to access Blackboard in the first place.

This semester is quickly coming to a close.  Are you preparing next semester’s classes in Blackboard yet?  Wondering how to copy content from one course to another?

If you need to copy content from a previous semester to an upcoming semester, please use the following instructions:

1. Go to MyUCA, the My Courses tab, access one of your Blackboard classes that has content.

2. In the upper right hand corner of the screen, click on the My Blackboard link

3. You will find your course in the My Blackboard list.  Make sure the term and CRN are correct for the course you want to copy content OUT OF.

4. Each course has what Blackboard calls an Instance Number.  This number will appear underneath the course title and it will look something like this

ADVANCED DEVELOP PSYCHOLOGY (30374.201030) – THIS IS THE COURSE TITLE

PSYC-6370-0 4 – THIS IS THE INSTANCE NUMBER

5. Enter the new course you want to copy the old content into and choose “Copy content from another course”.

6. You will be given a list of Instance Numbers from your courses.  You will want to select the Instance Number you found above for the course that has the content.  Make sure you click the “Select” button.

Did you know breadcrumbs refer not only to the children’s story Hansel and Gretel but also to a link navigation trail on many web pages?   Just like in this beloved childhood story, many webpages (including Blackboard and Tegrity) have a breadcrumb trail at the top of the page to allow you to navigate back to the parent page(s) of the one you are currently viewing.

For example, when you are at the page to edit the properties of a Discussion topic in Blackboard, you probably have a line of text at the top of the page that looks something like this:  Your location: Discussions > Example Topic > Edit Discussion Topic Properties.  If you decide to not edit the properties and want to go back and view that example topic, you can simply click on the “breadcrumb” Example Topic and it will take you back to that parent page.  Or you may decide you want to look at a different topic instead.  To do this, simply click on the “breadcrumb” discussions to view all of the available discussions in your class.  Using your breadcrumb trail can save you a lot of steps in navigating web pages as well as provide a quick view of where you are and how you got there.

We hope this has been a beneficial Tech Tip.  From the Instructional Development Center have a Happy Thanksgiving and Happy Trails!

Did you know?  There are two ways to reorder columns in the Blackboard Gradebook?  If you want to reorder the way you, the instructor, view the grade book then simply reorder the columns under the Grades tab.  If you want to reorder the way the student sees their grades, reorder the columns under the View All tab.  Reordering columns under the View All tab does not reorder the columns for you in the Grades tab.  We hope you have enjoyed another technical tip from the Center for Teaching Excellence.  If you have any questions or concerns feel free to contact us at IDC@uca.edu or at 501-450-5240.

Is your online course shell prepared for Spring classes?  Blackboard has a function called Date Rollover that allows you to move all of your class dates forward easily.  To learn how, visit the Tech Services portion of the IDC website: http://www.uca.edu/cte/services/techservices.php.

MyUCA Blackboard has recently had an update that now allows for new capabilities in the Discussion and Chat tools.  Available options are for the discussion board tool includes blog and journal topics, a peer review option, and the addition of the All-Topics view and My Posts view.  The new option for the Chat tool is availability for the students to view chat logs (as long as the instructor hasn’t disabled logging).

On the live (production) server, you can create new discussions that are collaborative blogs or that are journal topics.   The journal topic availability allows for students to freely express their ideas without other students viewing their writing.  (This works as long as the private option remains in place under Topic Behavior Options.)  Instructors can choose for students to peer review each others’ discussion posts as well.  This is based on either a grading form or by a scale rating scheme.

For more information on these tools, be watching the IDC Technology Services site for tutorials or call the IDC at 450-5240.