Jump to:

Course Activation:

The default status for blended/hybrid (sections -01, -60, -90, etc) course shells is "unavilable" in order not to confuse students by listing courses that do not have content. Faculty who are taking advantage of Bb need to activate (make available) all the course shells they intend to use.

1. Get online and access Bb, then enter your course
2. Access the Control Panel and select Settings (lower left corner)
3. From within Settings select Course Availability, click the Yes radio Button, then Submit.

[top]
Student Rosters:

Students are loaded into (and removed from) course shells daily using the an extract from the Registrar's database. Transactions are not made in real time; a student who adds or drops a course on Wednesday morning will not be added to or withdrawn from the Bb shell until Thursday morning. If you note any anomalies please contact us using the Bb Support Center -- see the red link at the top of Bb Home.

The same process that handles student rosters creates course shells and matches faculty with the sections you are teaching. In some cases faculty are not matched with the correct courses, usually as a result of communication timing between the departments and the office of the Registrar. If you don't see the correct courses on your site please contact us using the Bb Support Center.

[top]
Transfer content from previous courses:

Two academic years are kept current on Bb at any given time. In Fall 2007 you should see all your courses going back to Fall of 2005. Course shells from earlier semester are stored off-site. Whether you can see your course shell or not you can request all or part of a course be transferred into a new shell by filling out the form at http://euphrates.wpunj.edu/bb/. Be sure to include the section numbers for both the course of origin and the destination course.

[top]
Getting Support:

The most efficient means of getting support for Blackboard-related issues is to use the Bb Support Center:
http://euphrates.wpunj.edu/bb/sc/

The Bb Support Center can also be reached by clicking the red link at the top of Bb Home, http://bb.wpunj.edu

When you are filling out the form please be as specific as possible; tell us your class number and section and leave a detailed descrition of the problem you are experiencing. One of the benefits of the form is that it asks for the kind of information we need to resolved your problems quickly and efficiently.

The Bb Support Center is staffed 12 hours a day during the semester and throughout the weekends. We promise a response within 24 hours during the week and 48 hours during the weekends, but response times are usually within minutes or hours.

Issues external to Blackboard, including anything to do with student email or WPConnect should be directed to the Help Desk, help@wpunj.edu or (973) 720-help

[top]
Course Shells:

Two academic years are kept current on Bb at any given time. In Fall 2007 you should see all your courses going back to Fall of 2005. Course shells from earlier semester are stored off-site. Faculty can Archive entire courses to their local drives. Archiving entails saving a course in .zip format for re-incorporation into a different shell.

1. Get online, access Bb, then enter your course.
2. Access the Control Panel and select Archive Course (lower left corner)
3. Click on the Archive Button then click Submit.
4. The dialogue box will tell you to wait for an email confirmation that the process is underway. When you get that email click OK and you'll be shunted to a page that will allow you to right-click and save the .zip file
   

   

Students do not have to do anything to add sections to their Bb sites. Courses are uptated in the Bb database daily using an extract from the Registrar's database. There is a one-day lag between databases; a student who adds a course on Wednesday morning you will not see it on their Bb site until Thursday morning.

[top]
Modifying Course Lists:

You may find that your course lists (one appears in your main "WPUNJ" tab and another in your "Courses" tab) are growing so much that they are getting harder to sort through and/or that old courses are appearing that you no longer need immediate access to. The good news is that modifying those lists to hide the courses you no longer want to see is as simple as going through the following steps:

1. Get online and access Bb so that you're seeing your welcome page.
2. On the top right-hand side of your welcome page, where your "My Courses" box appears, locate and click on the "Modify the Module: My Courses" icon, which looks like a pencil inside a circle, as illustrated below:
   
   
3. On the resulting "Customize: My Course" page, locate the course that you want to stop showing on your list and uncheck the first box, which lines up with the "Display Course Name" column.
   
   
4. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the "Submit" button."

That's all there is to it. And you can follow this same procedure to modify the list that appears in your "Courses" tab, in the "Course List" section, on the right.