Why use Blackboard?  Reason #1 –
You can save some time with the organization and management of your class.

Blackboard isn’t just an electronic course delivery system for your students; it’s a course management system for you. 
 
• Blackboard can help you organize your course materials and files in one central place that you can access anywhere in the world with a computer connected to the Internet. 

Your course notes and overviews can be hidden from your students’ view.  
• Start using the Blackboard Announcement area to remind your students about upcoming deadlines or recap your class lectures and assignments.
• If you have to miss a class at the last moment, you can post it on your Announcements and let them know that class is cancelled.  Send them to the discussion board and hold an asynchronous class for that week. 
• Tired of keeping track of emails, phone calls and messages hung on your office door from students?  Use the Blackboard Messages feature for your class communication.  Students communicate with you and other classmates through the messages tool within the course site.  You also eliminate the frustration of trying to get all your students to update their email address in the system.  The Messages tool doesn’t require email addresses. 

These are a few of the reasons to use Blackboard that boil down to one valuable fact – Blackboard can save you administrative time with the management of your course. 

 

Blackboard Tip of the Month

You may want to consider using the Blackboard Messages tool to communicate with your students as a way of supplementing or replacing email communication. On strength of this option is that your students do not need to have their current email address on the college system because Blackboard is not dependant on the email system.  In addition, you can send private and public messages with attachments to your students and your students can do the same.  It's all contained in your Blackboard course site.  Your communications and file attachments are easily accessible and organized   Here's how to do it: 

 

Creating a new message
1.  Click on the Messages button or Communication > Messages in the left navigation bar.
2.  Click the New Message button.
3.  Click the To button.
4.  Select a recipient in the Select Recipients box, and click the Add Recipient bottom.
     Repeat for each recipients.
5.  Click the Submit button.
6.  (Click the Cc and Bcc buttons to send copies to additional users)
7.  Enter a message subject in the Subject box. 
8.  Enter a message text in the Body box. 
9.  Click the Submt button. > Click the OK button.

Reading a message
1.  Click on the Messages button or Communication > Messages in the left navigation bar.
2.  Click on Inbox.
3.  Click the subject name to open the message.
4.  Optional Reply: Click Reply, Reply All, or Forward.  Select recipients and click Submit.
5.  Click the OK button when you are finished reading and/or replying to message.


 For more information on messaging through Blackboard, contact the TLC at 8959 (Press 2)

Check back each week for more BB Tips.