For years faculty just starting out using Blackboard, or faculty deciding to overhaul their course content, have asked for some sort of template to use for course organization. Unfortunately that isn’t a “one size fits all” sort of thing, so there really hasn’t been any good template that we can recommend for faculty to use. Clearly we aren’t the only institution with that situation, and in response Blackboard has produced the new Course Structures component. Course Structures allow an instructor to choose from a list of different organizational methods, and then add...

So you’ve been entering your student grades into the Blackboard Grade Center all semester long, and now it’s time to post their final grades for the semester. However, you’d prefer to pull the grades out of Blackboard and into a spreadsheet program like Excel. (Perhaps you are more comfortable in Excel, or perhaps you want to use more complex grade weighting then the Grade Center can provide.) It’s actually very simple to get your student grades out of the Grade Center. First, of course, go into your course and navigate to the Full Grade Center. Then, in the upper right corner...

There are a few significant changes coming in the next updated version, which (for those version watchers out there) will be Blackboard Learn 9.1 Service Pack 8. For details on all those changes you may want to refer to a previous blog post from back in February. However, there are a few less technical and more visual changes coming that merit special attention. This time around let’s look at the highly visible Course Themes. The controls for the Course Themes may be found on the Quick Setup Guide I previously wrote about, should you know what you want the course to look like before you have...

As all Palomar faculty should be aware, we take the Palomar Blackboard system offline shortly after each term to run system maintenance and install upgrades to the software. The next maintenance window is planned for June 4th through the 7th, starting at 6 AM on that Monday and keeping the Blackboard system offline until all the upgrades and system changes are complete. There are a few significant changes coming in the next updated version, which (for those version watchers out there) will be Blackboard Learn 9.1 Service Pack 8. For details on all those changes you may want to refer to a previous blog...

While doing the faculty Blackboard training, I’m frequently asked “how often should I back up my course?” (Okay, really I’m almost never asked that, but I ought to be asked that a whole lot!) As such I presented a brief webinar on the twin components that need backing up – archiving the whole Blackboard course, and backing up the grades from the Grade Center. You can view the recording of the course archive webinar, or take a look at the archives of other webinars we’ve presented on this semester. But, just to hit the high points: A course archive file will always...