Blackboard Support for Faculty

Click the links below to find a quick write-up and/or short video on each topic:

• Adding or Removing Students from Course
• Attendance
• Calendar
• Copying Your Course from Term to Term
• Course Template
• Date Management Tool to Update Course Dates
• How-To Videos for Students
• Including Banners in Your Blackboard Courses
• Linking to the New SOI System
• Making Course Available to Students
• Perusall
• ReadSpeaker: A Text-to-Speech Tool for Students
• Retention Center
  
• Running Course Reports
• Support for Faculty vs. Students

Online instruction at Harper College is facilitated through Blackboard Learn. If you are reviewing documentation for Blackboard on the web, be sure to look only at Learn tutorials (not Ultra). Blackboard works best with Firefox, Chrome, and Safari browsers. Collaborate Ultra is Blackboard’s tool for live lecture/synchronous communication and works best with Google Chrome. As you prepare to transition to online instruction, please test your browsers to ensure they are up to date. If they are not, you can update from within the browser.

To access Blackboard:

• Go to: harper.blackboard.com
• Click on “Credit”
• Use your Harper credentials to log-in

Content for your course, such as documents and slides, can be created using Microsoft Office 365. Content created in the web version of Office 365 should be saved to your computer and then uploaded to Blackboard.

• Office 365 (use your Harper credentials to log-in)
• Harper’s Office 365 Help Page (use your Harper credentials to log-in)
• Blackboard Help: Course Content

The Blackboard Assignment tool is a secure place to provide assignment information and collect student work for feedback and grading. Assignments can also be collected from students via email.

• Blackboard Help: Assignments

The Blackboard Discussion tool can be used to create community and foster collaboration in an online course. Students can share documents, links, videos, and interact with each other’s ideas.

• Blackboard Help: Discussions

The following tools can be used to help facilitate small group collaboration:

Breakout Groups within a Collaborate Ultra Session or Room – During a synchronous session you can separate out the attendees into breakout groups to allow for small group collaboration.

• Using Breakout Groups in Collaborate Ultra

A Collaborate Ultra Session for Each Group – As an instructor you can create an individual session for each group, giving them a collaborative space “on standby”.

• Blackboard Help: Create and Edit Sessions

Blackboard Groups – When you create groups inside your Blackboard course, you can decide which tools to give students for their group collaboration process, including discussion boards, file exchange, and wikis.

• Blackboard Help: Breakout Groups

Google – Google works great for collaborative work and all Harper students have access to it with their college email. Faculty can create Google accounts with their Harper accounts (without Gmail (instructions for how to do this; this video mentions YouTube – you can still follow the directions through 2:58 for Google account creation). Once you create an account, you can then use one of the Collaborative tools within Google: Google Docs, Google Slides, Google Hangouts, etc.

Please note: Faculty should consider being flexible on how the students are best able to communicate. Keeping groups somewhat small can help students from getting too overwhelmed with trying to establish regular meeting times/virtual spaces.

There are four tools available in every Blackboard course that you can use to track student participation and attendance: Statistics Tracking, Collaborate Attendance Reports, the Attendance Tool, and Course Reports.

• Tracking Participation and Attendance in an Online Course

The Blackboard Tests, Pools, and Surveys tool can be used to create and administer tests to students from within Blackboard.

• Step 1: Create a test or survey and add questions
  • Uploading Tests (or Test Pools) in Blackboard Using Excel
  • How to Create a Test from an Existing Pool
  • Using a Blackboard Test Generator for Creating Blackboard Tests
• Step 2: Make test available to students

Proctored Testing – Verification of student identity and academic integrity can be challenges in the online environment. If your exam needs to be proctored, consider the following options:

1. Redesign the exam into an alternative assessment format that does not need testing. Please fill out the Academy Request Form and an instructional designer can explore possibilities with you.
2. Respondus Lockdown Browser and Monitor: The test is created and administered in Blackboard. Students are unable to open additional browsers on their machine and students with webcams/mics are recorded during the exam. Instructor Live Proctoring also enables instructors to watch students during exams in real-time with Zoom/Teams/Collaborate/etc. while LockDown Browser prevents cheating on the computer itself. Learn more about this option.
3. Honorlock: This is a tool that can be enabled when creating Blackboard exams that provides a virtual test proctoring experience while maintaining a high-level of exam security. For students, Honorlock provides a flexible, 24/7 (if you allow it) testing experience that doesn’t require appointments and is compatible with all computers, including Chromebooks. Honorlock is not compatible with tablets or mobile phones. Learn more about this option.

Administering exams in a fully online class can present challenges around academic integrity, student accommodations, and limits how students show their work. This can lead to test anxiety for both the student and instructor. Learn more about Assessment and Proctoring options.