Before you start planning and designing the course, it is recommended to familiarize yourself with Blackboard environment. It will help you some ideas on how to organize the course contents, activity links, and how to customize them to fit your needs.
The Blackboard environment includes a header frame with images and buttons customized by the System Administrator and tabs that navigate to different areas. Clicking on a tab will open that area in the content frame.
The Tabs in Blackboard
Once you log in to Blackboard, you will be able to see these following tabs on the top of the page:
| My Blackboard | The My Blackboard tab contains tools and information specific to each user's preferences. Tools and information are contained in modules. Users can add and remove modules from their My Blackboard tab. The System Administrator may restrict access to or require specific modules. |
| Courses | Users click on a link from the Courses tab to access a Course. The page displays the list of all courses that the users were/are enrolled and taught/teach; and the course catalog. Please note that students will not see the unavailable courses. |
| Organizations | Users click on a link from the Organization tab to access an Organization. The page displayes the list of all available organizations that the users are managing or participating and the organization catalog. |
| Bb Support | The Bb Support tab contains several external links to:
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| Faculty e-Library | The Faculty e-Library tab contains an external website of Cal Poly Pomona's Library and Blackboard integration support. |
The Course Menu*
The course menu is the navigation links inside the course. After you click on your course, the course menu can be found on the left-hand side. The default of the course menu links from Blackboard are:
| Announcements | New update and reminder - assignment due date, test availability, virtual meetings. |
| Instructor/Faculty Information | Instructor's contact information - email, work phone, office location, office hours, personal webpage. |
| Content Areas (Syllabus, Course Documents, etc) | A wide-range of content items including: learning materials, lecture notes, presentations. |
| Assignments | Assignments listing - the due date, description for class work, links to assignments, links to tests. |
| Communication | Links to communication center- email, Discussion Boards, Collaboration Sessions, Student roster, Group pages, Messages. |
| Resources/External Links | Links to outside learning materials - outside materials, a hyperlink, brief description for each external source. |
| (Course) Tools | Student's tools - Digital Drop Box, Edit Home Page, Personal Information, Course Calendar, View Grades, Student Manual, Tasks, and The Electric Blackboard. |
| Course Map | Web site navigation map - a collapsible tree directory. |
| Control Panel | Course Control Panel area - to set up and administer a course Web site. |
*All the course menu components may be customized as you wish. For example, a faculty member might prefer the name "Course Materials" instead of "Course Documents".
Getting Started with Blackboard
Student Resources
Blackboard News
Posted on September 2, 2008
Blackboard Fall 2008 Course Creation and Quarterly Maintenance
- All Fall 2008 courses will be auto-created in Blackboard on September 6 by 11:00 am. There will be no down time required when auto-creating Fall 2008 courses.
- Blackboard will be unavailable on September 11 at 00:01 am to September 12 at 11:59 pm for a quarterly maintenance.
Posted on September 2, 2008
Blackboard Weekly Maintenance
Effective beginning April 5th, Blackboard weekly maintenance, which performs weekly course backups, will move from Sunday 2:00 a.m. to 4:15 a.m. to Saturday from 2:00 a.m. to 4:15 a.m. During this weekly scheduled time, Blackboard will not be available.
Posted on March 13, 2008
Other Possible System Maintenance
Campus networks and services may experience maintenance outages between 5:00 a.m. and 8:00 a.m. on Sundays and between 9:30 p.m. and midnight on Thursdays. These outages may affect Blackboard. For more information, see the Alerts, Status, and Maintenance. http://www.csupomona.edu/~ehelp/
alerts.html
