How do I use Announcements?

Students can be kept informed about course happenings via the Announcements feature in Blackboard.

Use this area to post important dates, times and events that are happening in your Blackboard course.

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How do I Send Email?

There are several differences between Blackboard e-mail and your regular e-mail. The most significant is that you don't have to know someone's e-mail address to send e-mail through Blackboard. The e-mail function allows you to simply check the person's name and the message will be sent to the e-mail associated with their User Account. In addition, Blackboard e-mail has the ability to send e-mail to every student in your class without having to create a mailing list. By simply using the All Students link, you can immediately send e-mail messages to your entire class. The final difference is that you can only send e-mail to Blackboard users and only to users associated with your course. There is no read mail function within Blackboard. Finally, there is no notification that you have received e-mail within Blackboard.

You can use Blackboard to send and receive email to and from your students in the course.

This option allows you send emails to individual students and the whole class.

Note: Your, nor your students will receive notification when an email is coming into the students' "inbox."

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How do I add students?

Students are enrolled automatically via a batch upload process using the student information in Datatel. This process is done four times at the beginning of each semeser: one week before classes begin, the day before classes begin, the end of the first week of classes, and the end of the third week of classes.

If a student joins your class between student enrollments or after the last enrollment, you may add the student to your Blackboard course manually.

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How do I remove students?

If a student is no longer in your course, you can remove them from your course roster. You will need to do this manually, as we do not currently have the capabilities to do this automatically, as we do with the enrollment process.

WARNING!! Once a student has been removed from a course, so is any material that s/he has posted to the course site (e.g., graded quizzes, drop box items, discussion contributions).

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How do I use the Calendar?

Blackboard provides you with the option of setting up a course calendar and a personal calendar.

Q: How can I modify or delete a Calendar Event?
A: Find the event you want to modify, and click either the Modify button or the Remove button, depending on which function you wish to perform.

Q: How can I see more events at a time?
A: Use the tabs across the top of the Course Calendar page to see more events. Click on View Week, View Month, or View Year tab. The dates that have calendar events will be highlighted.

Q: Can I add my own personal calendar items?
A: Yes, you can have Blackboard track your personal calendar items as well. However, you do not want to put these into a course calendar.

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Similar to the Task section of Microsoft Outlook, Blackboard allows you to set up personal tasks and course tasks.

Q: Why would I want to use the Tasks tool?
A: You may find that the Tasks tool is a great asset when working on a large course project. It does a great job of separating all the tasks needed to complete a project and you can assign the task to students by listing them in the Description.

Q: Can I add my own personal tasks items?
A: Yes, you can have Blackboard track your personal tasks items as well. However, you do not want to put these into a course.

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Blackboard provides you with the tools to keep track of the frequency with which students are accessing material. You can gain statistics on usage from a classwide perspective or you can get statistics on particular students.

For a video demonstration on using Blackboard statistics, click here. (Courtesy of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University)

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