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Morningside Blackboard (Miller Hall)

Miller Hall Quick Start for Instructors

For help with Blackboard, use the help button above, or from anywhere in Miller Hall. This button goes to a page that is aimed at students, but some of the information may be useful for instructors. Other detailed instructions for using the Blackboard Course management system (version 7.0) are available on the Web from Blackboard .

Use this checklist to get you started building a course on the Morningside College Blackboard course management system (Miller Hall). This is only an overview, for more specific help please call Robert Anderson at 712-274-5295 or Ext. 5295.

1. Get Robert Anderson to create a course shell for you. You will need the name of the course and the course number. Call also to archive, copy or delete courses.
   
2. Log on to the server. At the welcome screen you will find an area where you can change your password (Personal Information) and you will see a list of the courses available to you. Click to enter your new course.
   
3. When you enter a course in which you are an instructor, The "Control Panel" gives you control over the contents, functionality, and look of your course.
   

4. In the control panel, go to "Course Options > Settings" to change the name of the course to what you would like.
   

5. In the control panel, go to "Course Options > Manage Course Menu" to customize the buttons in the left margin of your course.
   
6. In the control panel, go to "Content Areas > ..." to upload your course documents. See below for details on how to upload various file types.
   
7. In the control panel, go to "Assessment > Gradebook" to add items to your gradebook. Although Blackboard cannot calculate grades, it is a good way to distribute student grades confidentially.
   
8. If you plan on using the Discussion Board, you will have to add a "forum". If you think of a discussion as having a main topic with several sub-topics, then the forum is the main topic. Sub-topics are called "threads" and students can create threads only after you create the forums. Discussions work best when the topics and expectations are well defined, and you the instructor participate fully.
   
9. When you are ready for students to see your course, go to "User Management > Enroll User" to add your students. All registered students are "existing users", but you want to "enroll" certain students to your course. To do this, search for the student by last name or user name (their student number), and check them in. If you have more than 15 students per course, Robert Anderson can help by batch enrolling your students--just send an electronic list of the student numbers you want enrolled. You can also "create" a user if you want to include someone from off campus. Please use a unique number for the username of new users.
   
10. To archive a course after the term is over, you can set it to "Unavailable" so that only you can get in (Course Options > Settings). To re-use a course next term, please follow the below link:
    
    Request New/Copy Existing Blackboard Course
    
11. In class, introduce your students to the web-site. See below for student log on information.

Student Log On

Students log on to Miller Hall using:

username = student number with leading zeros
password = The password you have chosen for Blackboard .

If you or they do not recall the password for Blackboard please follow the below link for instructions to reset it:

Blackboard Password Reset

If students have trouble logging into Miller Hall, please try to resolve the problem yourself by viewing their usernames and changing their passwords from your control panel under "manage users".

Adding Course Content:

When you add documents to the "Content Area" of the Blackboard server, you are presented with the option to either "add folder" or "add item". Because items are displayed in their entirety, it is usually best to put items into folders, and to put only one item in each folder. If your items are short (links for example) then several items in one folder does work well.

There are several ways to add documents (items) to your course. The procedure favored by Blackboard is to paste plain text into the text box provided (use the "Smart Text" setting). This option ensures that the information loads quickly and universally, but it is limited to simple formatting. Heavily formatted documents (MS Word .docs for example) can be uploaded in their original file format with the 'attach file' option. However, download time can be considerable and the student must have a copy of the appropriate program (MS Word for example) on their machine. A better way to display heavily formatted documents is to convert the page to HTML and insert the code into the text box provided (use the "HTML" setting). In MS Word, you can "save as a web-page" to generate the HTML code, then use Notepad to copy the code for pasting into Blackboard.