Course Availability
Blackboard sites will go live one week before the semester start date to allow students access to the course syllabus and important course announcements. Please have your course syllabus, contact information, and an announcement regarding the course schedule posted by this date. If you are still working in the Blackboard course and wish to hide areas of the course from students, use these steps to reorder and manage course menu items.
If you would like to make your course available to students earlier than one week prior to the semester start date, visit the Make a Course Available to Students Blackboard Help page.
Set Up Notifications
On your activity stream's Notification Settings panel, you can choose which notifications you receive about activity in all your courses:
Activity Stream: Choose which activities appear on your Stream page.
Email: If you want to receive email notifications, add an email address to your profile page. Then, choose how often and which activities you want to receive notifications for.
Push notifications: If you want to receive push notifications, choose how often and which activities you want to receive notifications for. Messages pop up on your mobile device if you have the Blackboard Instructor mobile app installed.
See the Notification Setting help page or view the Notification Settings video for more information.
Copy and Move Course Content
Copying course materials into an existing course will add content to a course, but it won't remove existing content. You can only copy materials into a course if you have the role of instructor, teaching assistant (TA), or course builder in that course. To view instructions for copying course content and to learn about the behavior of copied content, please see the "Blackboard Ultra Creating and Managing Content for Instructors" help article.
Course Merge
Some instructors prefer to combine multiple course sites into a single merged Blackboard course. This allows them to post materials only once for all enrolled students to see, rather than posting to each separate course site.
The Course Merge copies the student enrollments from one or more "child" courses into a "parent" course. Course merge can be used to:
- Merge enrollments of two or more sections of the same course that have the same department and catalog number.
- Merge cross-listed courses that have different departments and catalog numbers.
In a merged course, students will see the name of the original course and the content from the parent course. The Course Merge Tool does not copy any content from the child courses to the parent course. If you want to copy content from any of the child courses to the parent course, you should make note of this when requesting the merge. After merging, the child course(s) will be unavailable and new content can be added to the parent course only.
Reasons Not to Merge Blackboard Courses:
- Course Merge will combine the Gradebook listing for all the students. If you require separate Gradebooks, do not use Course Merge. This may apply if you teach both undergraduate and graduate sections of a course and they are graded differently.
- If you have entered grades or collected student work in a Blackboard course, you will not be able to access the grades or submitted work after merging as a child course. Once courses are merged, we are unable to reverse this so we recommend merging Blackboard courses before any grades are recorded.
A request to combine multiple course sections into one Blackboard site may be submitted using the Blackboard Request form.
Can't See My Course
Course shells are automatically created in Blackboard for all classes that exists in Campus Connection approximately 110 days prior to the start date of the course listed in Campus Connection. Sometimes a Blackboard course is created before an instructor has been assigned to teach the class or the instructor of record changes before the start of the semester. Updates to Campus Connection flow to Blackboard within 24 hours of the change. If you don’t see your course in Blackboard, here are some steps you can take to investigate:
- If you do not see the class you are teaching in Campus Connection, we recommend contacting your department office. They can start the process to update Campus Connection. Once Campus Connection has been changed, Blackboard will automatically be updated within 24 hours.
- If you see the class in Campus Connection but do not see it in Blackboard, you can check your course list settings to see if it was hidden from view. Select the drop down menu called Filters and select Hidden from me (note: this option only shows up if you have hidden courses). Select the three dot button at the top right corner or far right side of the course tile and choose Show course. This should restore the view of a previously hidden course. You may have to change the Filter drop down menu again to show All courses.
If you need assistance finding a course site in Blackboard, please contact the UND Tech Support at 701-777-2222.
Find your Courses
Links to access your past, current, and future courses are located in the Courses menu, with the ability to filter/sort for a cleaner look and feel. There is a similar option to access organization sites.
For more information, view Blackboard's Find Your Courses help article.
Course Roles
Course roles control access to the content and tools within a course. Each user is assigned a role for each course they participate in. For example, a user with a role of Teaching Assistant in one course can have a role of Student in another course.
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Instructor - provides access to all areas of the course including the control panel for posting content, making users available/unavailable, posting grades, and making the course available/unavailable. This role is generally assigned to the person developing, teaching, or facilitating the class and is automatically populated from Campus Connection.
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Teaching Assistant provides access to everything included with the instructor role, except changing a users availability.
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Course Builder - has access to most areas of the course. This role is appropriate for an assistant who shouldn't have access to student grades. If the course is unavailable to students, a course builder can still access the course.
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Grader - The Grader role has limited access to the course. Graders can assist an instructor in the creation, management, delivery, and grading of assessments and surveys. The grader may also assist an instructor with adding manual entries. If a course is unavailable to students, the course appears in the course list for a user with the role of Grader.
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Student - this is the default course user role. A user with the role of Student submits coursework and participates in discussions. Students can't create or grade course items. This role is automatically populated from Campus Connection.
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Guest - provides access to areas in the course designated by the instructor, excluding the control panel, and is unable to view student interactions or post to blogs, wikis, or discussion boards. Currently, the guest role is not available in Ultra Course View.
For more information, view Blackboard's Course Roles help article.
Add a Teaching Assistant
All teaching assistant (TA)/graduate teaching assistant (GTA) requests will now be added to Campus Connection for automated population into the Blackboard courses. This process will be the same as adding an instructor to a Blackboard course.
When a TA/GTA or additional instructor needs to be added to a Blackboard course, instructors will need to inform their department Scheduling Assistant of this addition. The Scheduling Assistant will then email Laura Vatnsdal in the Office of the Registrar to add them in Campus Connection. The Scheduling Assistant will add the TA/GTA to the specific course in CLSS and then, the information will automatically be populated into Blackboard within 24 hours.
What you will need to give to your Scheduling Assistant:
Name
EMPL ID#
Course(s) taught and class numbers (ie MATH 103 #8018)
Will this new add be a Primary Instructor or a Teaching Assistant
Batch Edit
You can use Batch Edit to update common settings across all content such as visibility and due dates which is especially helpful when copying from a previous course. You can also use the tool to delete a group of selected course content. With Batch Edit, you can control content settings in one place and all at once.
For information on managing dates in your course, view Blackboard's Batch Edit help article or view Blackboard's Batch Edit video.
Calendar
Your global calendar is found in the left navigation bar on Blackboard's landing page. Here, you can see all of your upcoming due dates and meetings across your courses—all in one place.
In your calendar, you will find this information:
- Office hours, course schedule, and events: These appointments appear automatically on the calendar when you add them to a course.
- Due dates: When you create content with a due date, it appears automatically in the calendar.
When you access the calendar from inside a course, it shows events for that course only. Select the Calendar tab from the course's navigation bar.
The course view of the calendar displays due dates, the course schedule, office hours, and course-specific meetings and events. When you create content with a due date, it appears automatically in the calendar. All events you create within a specific course are included in the global calendar by default.
See the Calendar help article or view the Use the Calendar video for more information.
Student Preview
You want to be confident that your course is well-designed and functions as you expect—before your students see it. With student preview, you can review the course content from a student's perspective. You can also validate course behaviors. For example, you can review the conditional release of content and how grades appear.
While in student preview, you can do these student activities:
- Submit assignments
- Take tests
- Download and upload files
- Participate in conversations
- Participate in discussions and journals
- Send course messages
- View grades as a student
- Experience group membership
See the Student Preview help article or view the Student Preview video for more information.
Clean up My Blackboard Courses
As courses get copied from semester to semester, they can sometimes get cluttered with unwanted materials, duplicate items, and more. Decluttering your Blackboard site will reduce course size, improve accessibility scores, avoid potential Gradebook issues, prepare for future copying, and more.
Some ways to declutter your Blackboard Courses are:
- Clean up your course menu
- Delete hidden or unused Grade Center columns
- Remove multiple copies and outdated items from the Content Collection and course menu
Adopting a Textbook
Follett Discover is a powerful online tool that transforms the course materials discovery and adoption process for faculty and helps students obtain, organize, and instantly access the required and recommended course materials from within Blackboard.
When choosing a digital textbook, faculty have the following responsibilities to ensure that the textbook content is accessible to the students:
- Whenever possible, maintain syllabi, handouts, and other instructional materials in electronic text format.
- Provide Accessibility for Students with a list of required reading materials, course syllabus, and handouts when requested.
- Provide Accessibility for Students with any additional instructional materials assigned throughout the semester.
- Consult with Accessibility for Students when appropriate.
For additional information about digital textbook accessibility, please see the Accessibility for Students Accommodations webpage.
Many departments have a Follett Discover Concierge to assist faculty in adding textbooks and course materials into Follett Discover. Faculty should check with their department first to see if this assistance is available.
For more information about adopting your textbook with Follett Discover, please see the Follett Discover webpage.
Course Settings
Course Settings allows you to customize your course to suit your needs and those of your students. Course Settings appears at the top right corner of an Ultra course if the user has privileges to view or manage settings.
The settings that are included in the Course Settings option include:
Manage Course Duration - defines the time in which students may interact with a course. Students are always allowed to access some courses. Other courses have restrictions so students can only access them for a specific time. This is determined by Course Duration settings. The default setting for UND courses is Ongoing.
Manage Course Tools - You can manage various tools using Course Settings including Roster tool and Message tool.
- The Roster option allows the instructor to determine if students can view the course roster. This feature is turned on by default.
- The Messages option allows the instructor to determine if they would like the option for students to use the Messages tool to communicate with other students in the course and with the instructor. When turned off, copies of messages will only be sent via email. Recipients can view messages in their email inbox, but won't be able to send an email to reply.
Manage Virtual Classroom - instructors have the option to turn on access to Class for Web. By default, the option is turned off in all Ultra courses.
Course Banner
As an instructor, you and administrator users can upload an image to be the thumbnail in the Courses page at Base Navigation. It can also be the internal Course Banner inside your Ultra courses.
With course banners you:
- Improve the way your Ultra Course View landing pages appear.
- Improve student engagement and experience.
- Bring consistency among what the Base Navigation displays and the actual course.
- Help your students to differentiate between courses and locate course details.
- Make it easier for you to add a course schedule, and for your students to identify course faculty members and class meeting days, times, and location.
The Unsplash image library has been added to Blackboard Ultra. You can search their vast library of royalty-free images to use for your Course Banner as well as in Learning Modules.
See the Course Banner help article for more information.
Progress Tracking
You can enable this functionality to give your students an easy way to keep track of what they have done inside a course. When enabling progress tracking later than the beginning of the term, participatory items will be retroactively marked as complete. For example, assessments submitted previously by students will be marked as complete. Non-participatory items, like Ultra documents, will still need to be manually marked by students.
You can enable progress tracking at any time during the term.
See the Progress Tracking help article for more information.