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Home > Technology > All About Blackboard

All About Blackboard

The Blackboard Learning System enhances a teaching and learning environment by providing content management and sharing, online assessments, student tracking, assignment management, and virtual collaboration. An instructor can develop course sites without knowing any HTML code. At the same time UO courses that use Blackboard have a similar look and feel in order to diminish the learning curve for students using these coursesites.

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• Blackboard Inc. Quick Tutorials (NOTE: This link will open in a new browser window)
  Quick tutorials produced and provided by Blackboard Inc. These "mini-movies" tutorials provide a visual and auditory tour of many of Blackboards features.


• Getting Started with Blackboard ( PDF 593K )
  This TEP produced PDF file will help you get started working with Blackboard in your courses. Blackboard is a "web-based course management system" from Blackboard, Inc. The system allows for creating and deploying online and hybrid courses and supplemental class materials. Not only does it offer a rich set of course management tools, but it can be used without any knowledge of HTML!


• Adding Content to Your Coursesite ( PDF 210K )
  If you can have it on your computer, you can add it to Blackboard. Whether or not your students can access it, is a completely different story…and an important part of building your site! This PDF file contains information on accessibility and file formats, coursesite navigation, naming your files, Blackboard display options, getting students to your site and copyright considerations.


• Generating and Facilitating Engaging and Effective Online Discussions ( PDF 256K )
  Many experts on student-centered online learning agree that the discussion board is the place where some of the most important learning can happen. As teachers and facilitators, we have to find ways to support students in this learning environment. This PDF file is a starting point for an instructor exploring the benefits of online discussion.


• Using Blackboard for Assessment
  Go to the page linked above to find out more about what Blackboard offers in regards to two online assessment features (tests and surveys), and how instructors can use each to facilitate better discussion, assess lecture clarity, highlight key information from readings, for evaluations and more.


• Grade Center Basics ( PDF 611K )
  The Blackboard Grade Center is featured in this PDF file. The Grade Center allows for multiple grading schemes to be set up and calculated within the Blackboard interface. The feature also allows for instructors to post grades for student viewing on their individual side of Blackboard. Additionally, please feel free to use this Blackboard Inc. handout:

• The Assignment Feature ( PDF 2.6M )
  Blackboard’s Assignment Feature is highlighted in this PDF file. This feature allows students to submit an assignment through the coursesite which shows up immediately in the gradebook, ready for you to review and grade. You can skip the confusion and frustration some students experience when they try to send you an attachment. Everything happens through the coursesite and is archived for later use.

• The Collaboration Tools ( PDF 454K )
  This PDF file features Blackboard’s Collaboration tools, which allow an instructor to create and participate in real-time lessons and discussions with students. These tools have a wide variety of uses – both with students who are participating from their own machines and students engaged in work in a computer classroom.

Important Note: We are in the middle of revising the below handouts for Blackboard version 9. If you have immediate questions about using these features in the new version please contact Robert Voelker-Morris at rmorris1@uoregon.edu or 346-1934.

• (Handout in progress) Managing Groups ( PDF 458K )
  Well-designed and supported student learning teams – or, just plain groups -- can make a world of difference in the quality of the learning climate in your classroom. Likewise, poorly designed and unsupported learning teams can seem like a colossal waste of time – both to you and to your students. With this PDF file you can explore the options and strategies for group management within the Blackboard system.

 

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