Your Blackboard course provides a central location for uploading course content, communicating with students, and assessing student progress. This guide will demonstrate how to navigate the course homepage, course menu and the control panel.
Step 1: Navigating the Course Homepage
The first page that users usually encounter when logging into Blackboard is the Course News page. This page displays information about new course content, announcements, and due dates. The following modules will appear in your course by default:
- To Do: This module displays due dates, past and future activities.
- My Announcements: This module displays the most recent course announcements.
NOTE: Your instructor may have other module that shows students upcoming alerts, calculator etc.
Step 2: Navigating the Course Menu
On the upper left side of the screen is the course menu. Students will use the course menu to access their course content, communication tools, and assessment tools within the course. The default course menu has the following links:
- Homepage: This is a link to the first page that appears on your course. The area contains basic modules (Announcements, To Do, other modules) that give information to users based on their enrollment and their role in the system. Students can navigate to individual items to take action
- Announcements: This module displays the most recent course announcements.
- Course Information: This area contains course information that may include, for example, instructor contact information, course outline, or other relevant information that Students can review.
- Course Document: This area may contain course material, supplements, assignments, exams, videos or any other material covered in the course.
- Assignments: This area can be listed on the menu individually or within the Course Documents area. The assignment area provides students a way to access assignments and upload digital documents or write within the Assignment feature to submit automatically.
- Discussion Board: This area can contain one or more Forums. A Forum is an area where a topic or a group of related topics are discussed. For each Forum, the page displays the total number of posts, the number of unread posts, and the total number of participants.
- Blackboard Collaborate: This area is a virtual meeting place.
- My Grades: This link allows students to view grades within their course. Grades entered by the instructor in Blackboard’s Grade Center are visible to the student here
- Help: This area contains a list of tutorials on how to use Blackboard tools and how-to tutorials on some other features
Step 3: Navigating the Control Panel (ONLY FOR INSTRUCTORS)
This area is only visible to instructors and it contains a list of Controls, Blackboard tools and other resources such as Evaluation, Grade Center, Users and Groups, Customization (templates), Packages and Utilities and Help.
- Content Collection: This link provides access to all the course files.
- Course Tools: This link provides instructor access to course tools: Note: Students need to be provided with a link in the course menu in order to access communication tools within the course.
- Evaluation: This link provides access to course reports, user activity summaries, and the Retention Center.
- Grade Center: This link allows instructors to view, assign, and manage students’ grades.
- Users and Groups: This link allows instructors to manage course users and groups.
- Customization: This link allows instructors to change the course appearance and overall availability.
- Packages and Utilities: This link allows instructors to access course archive and copy functions.
- Help: This link provides access to additional help resources in Blackboard.
Some symbols may show next to certain links
- A gray square indicates the link has no content
2. A square with a slash indicates the link is hidden from students
