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Blackboard

Frequently Asked Questions - Faculty

Getting started

How do I get to Blackboard?

There are a few ways to get to Blackboard. You can get to it directly by typing http://blackboard.noctrl.edu into your browser window. You will also find a link to Blackboard under Faculty & Staff, Online Course Resources on the intranet home page (this link only works if you are on campus). There is also a link to Blackboard from any page here on the ITS site. (click Course Resources, Blackboard.)

What is my username and password?

Your username is the campus standard . Your initial password is set to your seven-digit ID number. It is important that you change your password as soon as possible.

How do I get my courses into Blackboard?

All courses are automatically uploaded to Blackboard five weeks before the start of the term. You can begin entering your data into your Blackboard at this time. Students will be uploaded closer to the start of the term, as to catch late registers.

Why can't students see my class?

You have to make your course available to students. The Course Availability page is used to control access to your course. All courses are set to unavailable by default.

If this is a course which has been restored from an archive, please also check the Course Duration page under Control Panel -> Course Settings. If you had changed the start and end date the previous time you taught the course, those settings will be preserved in the archive and will most likely not still be valid when the archive is restored.All courses are configured for "continuous" duration when they are initially created.

How do I make my course available to my students?

  1. From your Course Website, click on Control Panel.
  2. Choose Settings (under Course Options), then Course Availability.
  3. Choose Yes.
  4. Click Submit.

Managing and configuring your course

How do I reuse the materials in my Blackboard course?

You have to "export" the course. This creates a file that you can then "import" into future courses.

To export a course:

  1. In your course's Control Panel, click on "Export Course" or "Archive Course." This will bring you to the Export/Archive Manager, where you can either export or archive your course. Click on either the "Export" or "Archive" icon.
  2. Choose the areas you would like to save for future use.
  3. Click Submit.
  4. You will receive an email when the course is available for download.
  5. Once the file is available for download, return to the "Export/Archive Manager". The file can be downloaded from there -- just click on the file name.

*Note: Exporting a course does not remove it from the system.
Please be sure to doublecheck the Course Availability and Course
Duration setting pages when you import the course. These pages are located under Control Panel -> Course Options -> Settings.

How do I import a course I've previously exported?

  1. Go to the Control Panel.
  2. Click on "Import Package" under the heading "Course Options".
  3. Click on "Browse" to find the course that you previously exported and saved on your network drive.
  4. Select the course materials you'd like to load from the packaged
    course.
  5. Click on Submit to begin loading the package in place.

What's the difference between "Archive Course" and "Export Course"?

"Export Course" is designed to save materials you wish to reuse in the future (via the "Import Package" tool).

"Archive Course" is intended to serve as a record of a particular course as it took place.

Who is responsible for adding students to my courses?

All students who are enrolled for your courses prior to the Friday before the term starts should already be added to your Blackboard courses.

However, you will need to add students who register late to your courses yourself. This can be done by going to your course's Control Panel and selecting Enroll User under the heading User Management.

I'm assigned to a course in Blackboard I'm no longer teaching!/I'm teaching a course but someone else has it in Blackboard!

With a little coordination with the other instructor, you can make this change yourself, by following these steps:

  1. Add the new instructor as a student. (Control Panel -> Enroll User)
  2. Change the status of the new instructor from "Student" to "Instructor":
    (Control Panel -> List/Modify Users).
  3. Change the status of the old instructor from "Instructor" to "Student":
    (Control Panel -> List/Modify Users).
  4. Delete the old instructor from the course.
    (Control Panel -> Remove Users from the Course).

Steps 1 and 2 must be done by the old instructor. Step 3 can be done by either instructor. Step 4 must be done by the new instructor.

Step 3 is necessary because Blackboard does not allow instructors to remove other instructors from a course.

If you run into problems doing this yourself, please contact the ITS Helpdesk.

How do I configure live discussion ("chat") in Blackboard?

There are two different collaboration functions: "Chat" and "Virtual Classroom". Both are accessible to users under "Collaboration," a subcategory of the "Communication" menu item.

You can change how the Collaboration functions are configured by going to the Control Panel for your course and clicking on "Collaboration," located under the "Course Tools" heading.

We recommend using the "Chat" rather than the "Virtual Classroom" in most cases.

My Blackboard is cluttered with courses, and it's really confusing! What can I do?

It's pretty easy to only display the courses you want on the main Blackboard page ("My Institution"). Just click on the little yellow pencil icon in the upper right hand corner of the "My Courses" box. This takes you to a screen where you can change which courses will be displayed. (Regardless of what you do here, all courses will still be visible on the "Courses" tab.)

I have a student who is assisting me in class, and I'd like to give him additional privileges within my Blackboard course. How can I do this?

You are able to assign a variety of different "roles" to students in your course. Before you make this sort of change, however, please make sure you know what sort of access each role will give your student within your course. There is a detailed description of the different roles and their abilities in the Instructor Manual (pdf, 4,003KB), pages 17 - 19.

Note specifically that all of these enhanced roles will allow your helpers to see other students' seven digit IDs, and some will allow them to see other students' grades within the class.

Assuming the student is already enrolled in the course, go to your course's Control Panel, and click on "List/Modify Users." This brings up a screen where you can search for the student's account. Once you've done that, click on the oval "Properties" button next to his name.

This will bring up a screen where you can modify the student's role in the course (under "Role and Availability" towards the bottom of the page). Once you've selected the new role, click on the oval "Submit" button.

Roles quick reference:

Course Builder
Able to create and modify content (including surveys and assessments). No access to grades.
Grader
Access to the gradebook, surveys, and assessments. Not able to create or modify other content.
Teacher's Assistant
Nearly as much power within a course as an Instructor.

I'd like to give someone guest access to my Blackboard course. How do I do it?

Guest access allows you to be very specific about what you'd like to let your guest see; however, that makes configuring guest access a little complicated.

First, the person needs to have an NCC account. You won't be able to grant guest access without it.

There are three places to configure aspects of guest access.

  1. Your course globally (Control Panel -> Settings -> Guest Access)
  2. Each left-hand menu item (Control Panel -> Manage Course Menu)
  3. Each course "tool" (Control Panel -> Manage Tools -> Tool Availability)

Note that the "Content Area" tool must be enabled if you want your guest to see any posted documents.

Grading and assessments

How do I make tests and quizzes available to my students in Blackboard?

Tests and surveys are created in the "Test Manager" and "Survey Manager" components in your course's Control Panel.

Once created, you can add them to a "content area" (basically, one of the navigation buttons on the left hand side of the screen). Once added to a particular content area, you can then edit availability, generate announcements, etc.

To add a test or survey to a content area:

  1. Navigate to the content area and click on "edit view" (located on the far right-hand side of the navigation banner).
  2. You can now add one or more of the following to the content areas.
    Item, Folder, External Link, Course Link, Test
  3. Once you've added the test, click on the oval "modify" button. Under "Options" you can determine how the test is to be administered (when and for how long the test will be available, whether it's timed, and the like). This is also the place to generate a course announcement.

I'd like to use letter grades in the Gradebook, but the percentage ranges for letter grades there don't match the College standard. Why? What can I do to fix it?

Blackboard comes with predefined percentage ranges for the traditional letter grades, and as you've noticed, these ranges don't match the College standard.

Unfortunately, Blackboard doesn't allow us to customize those on a system-wide basis.

However, if you'd like to grade using letter grades that match the College standard, we've prepared a Blackboard archive containing a preconfigured gradebook.

Steps

  1. Download this archive to your F: drive.
  2. From the Control Panel in your Blackboard course, click on "Import Package."
  3. On this screen, choose the downloaded file (section 2), and check the "Gradebook Items and Settings" checkbox (section 3). Hit the "Submit" button.

You will now have "NCC Letter Grade" as a display option for items in your gradebook.

Please note: You should only import this archive if you haven't configured anything in your Gradebook. Importing the archive will overwrite anything currently configured in your Gradebook.

A student has tried to take an online quiz, but was unable to finish because his computer crashed (or some other reason). How do I clear that attempt so he can take it again?

To clear a student's exam attempt, please follow the instructions below:

  1. Within your course, click the Control Panel button.
  2. Under Assessment, click Gradebook.
  3. Under the quiz in question, there should be a padlock or exclamation point icon displayed instead of a grade for the affected student. Click on that to display further options.
  4. Now, click on the "Clear Attempt" button. A window will pop up asking you to confirm that you want to clear this attempt to take the quiz.

Troubleshooting

When I try to log in, I get the error message "No authentication credentials were provided with the request".

Blackboard uses Javascript (a.k.a. "Active Scripting") to encrypt your password when it is sent to the Blackboard server. If Javascript is turned off in your browser, you'll get this error.

To turn this back on in Internet Explorer:

  1. Go to Tools > Internet Options > Security Tab
  2. Click on the "Internet Zone" icon (the globe)
  3. Click on the "Custom Level" button at the bottom of the screen
  4. Scroll down the page until you see the "Scripting" section
  5. Be sure that "Active Scripting" is enabled

When I try to log in, I get the error message "There was a problem with this login request. Contact the system administrator."

Usually this is a result of having bookmarked the login page (the page that prompts you for your username and password), rather than the top-level page (the page with the oval "Login" button on it).

The only page you should bookmark for Blackboard is the top-level page (http://blackboard.noctrl.edu/).

I tried to post a Word/Powerpoint/Access/PDF file on Blackboard. When I clicked on it to test it, the file came up as gobbledygook. What happened?

Check to make sure that the file extension (.doc/.ppt/.xls/.pdf) on the file is lower-case.

Unfortunately, Blackboard is case-sensitive, so it treats a file with a ".DOC" extension differently from a file with a ".doc" extension, and instructs the browser to display the content as plain text.

Not all browsers obey these instructions, however. In particular, Internet Explorer will ignore them and base how it displays the file solely on the file extension. IE isn't case-sensitive, so the file will display correctly.

We have contacted Blackboard to see if there's some workaround we can put in place to make this work on all browsers.

Until then, however, renaming the file to have a lower-case file extension and reuploading it should solve the problem.

If you can't see the file extensions, choose Tools -> Folder Options from the folder's menubar.

Go to the View tab, and uncheck "Hide file extensions for known file types."

When I look at my course statistics, I see accesses from a "guest" user, even though I don't have guest access turned on for my course. Is there an explanation?

While perhaps a little confusing, seeing guest accesses listed in your course statistics is nothing to be concerned about.

Generally this indicates that someone from ITS needed to take a look inside your course, usually in response to a request for help from a student. For the purposes of calculating course statistics, that administrator would have been a guest to your course, rather than an enrolled student.

I'm trying to post a message on Blackboard, but the text box doesn't appear! What's wrong?

Sounds like you're using Internet Explorer 7, either on Windows XP or Windows Vista.

We very strongly recommend using Mozilla Firefox as your browser: this will work correctly with Blackboard. We have heard reports of online tests and quizzes malfunctioning using the new Internet Explorer, whether on XP or Vista -- so we recommend that you NOT use it for accessing Blackboard. Firefox can be downloaded here.

If for some reason you're unwilling to run Firefox, you have the following options:

Add blackboard.noctrl.edu to your list of Trusted Sites (XP only)

  1. From Internet Explorer 7, click on the "Tools" menu option on the right-hand side of the screen.
  2. Select "Internet Options", then the "Security" tab.
  3. Click on the "Trusted Sites" icon (a checkmark).
  4. Click on the "Sites" button.
  5. Uncheck the "Require server verification (https:) for all sites in this zone" checkbox.
  6. In the text entry box under the phrase "Add this website to the zone", type (without the quotes) "blackboard.noctrl.edu". Click "Add".
  7. Click the "Close" button on this screen, then "OK" on the next.

Disable the Visual Text Box Editor (XP or Vista)

  1. Log into Blackboard (http://blackboard.noctrl.edu/). From the main screen, click on "Personal Information" (on the left-hand side of the screen, under the heading "Tools").
  2. On the next screen, click on "Set Text Box Editor Options."
  3. Click on the "Unavailable" radio button, then click "Submit" to save the change.

I've uploaded a document to my Blackboard course, and my students are having trouble downloading it. What can I do?

The first thing to check is whether the file you're attempting to upload has a short, simple name. If your file's name has spaces or other special characters in it, Blackboard has to take special precautions to encode it for the web, and that can cause subsequent other problems.

To avoid this, file names should only use letters, digits, dashes, periods, and underscores, and should NOT have spaces or special characters, such as but not limited to commas, colons, semicolons, ampersands, octothorpes, brackets, brokets, or braces.

Another thing to check is whether your file has a lower-case "extension" (.doc, .xls, .pdf, .ppt). You can read more about this problem here.

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This file was last updated: Wednesday, 10-Dec-2008 10:42:51 CST