1.2 “Prepping” in the Course Management section
1.2.1 Organizing your teaching drive and uploading your syllabus and other course materials (3m33s)
Why you should do this
Blackboard provides each instructor with 750MB of space to store content. You can use this space as your in-the-cloud, dedicated teaching hard drive. Materials stored in it can be accessed from anywhere you can log in to Bb. No need to bring a flash drive to class! You can also use it as a backup, of course. Do not click the button to the right of the action bar to set up web folder as this feature does work properly.
- File and store course preparations, lesson plans, syllabi, PDFs, reading materials, rubrics, drafts of assignments and tests… for all your courses in one place
- Store your materials for as long as you have an account in Blackboard
- If you want to upload several files, instead of uploading them one-by-one, you can compress them first on your computer, then upload the compressed zip file to your teaching drive. These are tutorials on how to compress files on a Windows machine and how to do it on a Mac
- For storing videos, use Dropbox
What to have ready
Your syllabus and course materials
- Make sure that your syllabus meets the requirements in the College Standard Course Syllabus. This is an annotated sample syllabus.
- Make sure that your syllabus and course materials are ADA compliant: [ADA stands for the American with Disabilities Act]:
- For Microsoft Word docs:
Use one of Word’s 3 ADA compliant fonts: Arial, Helvetica, and Verdana. - For PDF documents:
Use Adobe Acrobat Professional to run Accessibility Checker.
To have Adobe Acrobat Professional installed on your computer, open a ticket in YConnect (click on the Faculty/Staff tab on the York College website, then on IT Self Service in the Online Services column on the left). For more resources, visit the Center for Students with Disabilities site.
- For Microsoft Word docs:
- Make sure that the font size of any power point you plan to show in the class uses the minimum font size specified in the classroom assignment email. Consult PowerPoint Guidelines to improve your presentations.
1.2.1 Organizing your teaching drive and upload your syllabus and other course materials. Access your content from your course management section: Content Collection, your teaching drive. You can create folders and upload course files here that will be posted in your courses. The text in the blue oval shapes provides information. The text in the orange rectangle shapes indicates the actions you can take.
1.2.2 Setting up your first learning activity: a syllabus quiz. Steps to create a quiz. The text in the orange rectangle shapes indicates the actions you can take.
1.2.3 Setting up a discussion forum as a FAQ or for students to introduce themselves
Learning is social. Interactions between faculty and students, among students are important factors to motivate and support student learning. Creating a discussion forum for students to introduce and greet one another can be an icebreaker to building a learning community. You can also create a discussion forum for students to post their questions about your course topics or assignments. Students may have similar questions. You answer one question on the forum, all students with similar questions can benefit.
1.2.3.1 Creating a discussion forum (34s)
1.2.4 Setting up your Grade Center
Why you should do this
Students will no longer need to ask you "where they stand" as you'll have set up the grade center in such way that weighted totals for each grading category as well as the (final) weighted total are always up to date.
What to have ready
The grading breakdown section in your syllabus.
ex.
Quizzes 30%
Participation 30%
Papers 20%
Final 20%
1.2.4.1 Simplifying the default Grade Center setup (2m38s)
What you will do
- Hide not so useful columns
- Make columns unavailable to students
- Undo mistakes you may have made in the "simplifying" process
1.2.4.1 Simplifying the default Grade Center setup. Steps you can take to hide a column in the Grade Center from student view, instructor view, show/hide your course navigation menu. The text in the blue oval shapes provides information. The text in the orange rectangle shapes indicates the actions you can take.
1.2.4.2 Setting up your grading breakdown. Steps to take to set up your grading breakdown in Blackboard Grade Center. The text in the blue oval shapes provides information. The text in the orange rectangle shapes indicates the actions you can take.
