BLACKBOARD: S TUDENT O RIENTATION Welcome to Blackboard Online courses Orientation! In this Orientation, you will find instructions for logging in, navigating and utilizing the Blackboard course management system. Think of Blackboard as a tool to help you complete your online course or class. After viewing the material presented here, we hope you will find Blackboard easy to use and intuitive.

T ABLE OF C ONTENTS Get Started Login Access your courses Announcement Faculty Information Course Documents Assignments Discussion Board Student Manual Grades Groups Student Homepage Virtual Chats

Get Started Click Blackboard on the Main Page or go to to access your Blackboard account.Main Page

Login You will need your Missouri S&T userid and password to access Blackboard Online courses.

Access Your Course  When you have successfully logged in, your homepage will come up on your screen which lists all of the courses you are enrolled in under "My Courses"

Access your courses continued....  Access your Blackboard course list by clicking the Courses tab located in the title bar of the Blackboard page.  Once you are in the Course List section, you can view a detailed list of the courses you are enrolled in. You will be able to see the course ID and instructors.

Access your courses continued....  Clicking on the link to your course name will take you to the main page of the requested course.  The navigation area of each course page consists of a series of links or buttons located along the left side of the screen.  Selecting any of these will take you to the corresponding area of the course.  Some of these links or buttons may or may not be in your course depending on how your instructor has set it up. Course Menu Options

Announcements  When you first enter a Blackboard course site, the Announcements page for that site is displayed.  You can also display the announcements for your course by clicking the Announcements button in the left-hand menu.

Announcements continued....  Like announcements in a traditional classroom, your course instructor may post announcements about assignment changes, due date reminders, etc.  Many instructors post a Welcome announcement, which welcomes you to the course, directs you to access and read the course syllabus, and points you to your first assignment.

Announcements continued....  It’s important to regularly check your course announcements.  By default, announcements are listed for seven days to avoid cluttering this page with older information.  Your instructor can override these default setting and have an announcement listed for more or less time.  You can still access older announcements by clicking the VIEW ALL tab at the top of the Announcements page.

Faculty Information  Many online instructors use the Staff Information area to introduce themselves to you by providing information about their professional backgrounds and research interests.  They can also can provide you with their contact information, such as phone numbers, mailing address, and office hours.  Students can create similar introductory pages using the Homepage tool in Blackboard. Note: Some instructors will have information here while others will not. It is important to check for this information because it can help you be successful in your course.

Course Documents  In the Course Documents area, you often will find important documents for your course, such as the course syllabus, presentation files, and electronic journal articles.  In Blackboard, a document appears as a link, similar to an attachment in many programs. By clicking the link, you can open and view the document.  Once you have opened the file, you can use it as the application allows, such as printing it or saving a copy of it on your local computer.  To open the document in a separate window, you are able to right-click on the link and select open in new window from the pop-up menu.  Remember, to open a file, you must have an application capable of opening that type of file. For example, you can’t open a Visio chart file unless you have Microsoft Visio installed on your computer.  Fortunately, many software publishers provide free viewer programs which can be downloaded from their websites and installed on your computer. These viewer programs allow you to view, but not edit, an existing file. Microsoft viewer download page: us/assistance/HA aspxhttp://office.microsoft.com/en- us/assistance/HA aspx Acrobat Reader download page:

Assignments  For many online courses, instructors use the Assignments area to organize course assignments, such as required readings, projects, term papers, discussion topics, etc.  Course assignments are frequently organized into folders. Some teachers organize their courses by timeframe, such as Week 1 or Unit 2, whereas other teachers may arrange their courses by topic.  If you find assignment folders, just click the folder name, which is a link to the assignment items within that folder. Your assignments for that week or topic will be displayed

Assignments continued…  From this area, you can write comments to the instructor or grader and upload the file.  You have three options at the bottom of the page.  Click Cancel to exit the upload assignment screen without saving any changes.  Click Save to save the information that you have entered and be able to return later to continue working.  Click Submit to submit that information to the instructor. NOTE: Once you click submit you can not make any changes unless the instructor enables you to.

Assignments continued…  Once you have submitted the assignment you can view that information.  You will also see the grade and comments from the instructor once the instructor has graded the assignment. NOTE: An exclamation point “!” indicates the item still needs to be graded by the instructor.

Discussion Board  In a traditional classroom, you have time to ask questions and also spend time answering and discussing questions posed by your teacher.  In an online class, this can be done using the Discussion Board tool in Blackboard.  You can access the Discussion Board through the Communications area.

Discussion Board continued....  You can also access the Discussion Board by clicking the Discussion Board button in the left-hand menu if your course instructor has enabled that button.  Online discussions are organized into forums, which identify an electronic space for discussing a specific question or problem. Sometimes, instructors also include a discussion forum for asking general questions about the course content or assignments. Within a forum, messages are organized into threads, which begin with one person’s answer to a question or problem and include all replies to that initial posting.  The Blackboard Discussion Board tool enables you to have asynchronous, threaded discussions. Using this tool, you can read messages posted to the discussion board by your instructor and classmates, and they can read messages posted by you, anytime and anywhere. By reading other people’s messages and replying to those messages, an electronic discussion occurs, similar to hearing what other people say in a classroom discussion and responding to those ideas.  Having a discussion in this way can be confusing at first because multiple conversations are occurring and these conversations unfold slowly over time. However, the research on asynchronous discussions shows that students like having time to read and construct thoughtful replies, and that this results in more in-depth discussions.

 Blackboard includes an tool which allows you to easily your instructor and other students. You can access the tool through the Communications area.  With the Blackboard tool, you can send an message to everyone in your class or just to selected individuals.  When you use the Blackboard tool to send e- mail, Blackboard sends your message to the address which each Blackboard user has listed for their Blackboard account.  By default, this address is their Missouri S&T e- mail address, but they can change this to another address. As the sender, Blackboard automatically sends a copy of your message to your account for your records.  To protect student privacy, you address messages by name, so addresses are not revealed to other students. Also to protect privacy, Blackboard sends messages using Blind Carbon Copy (BCC) addressing, so the other recipients do not know who has received the message.  Because of this, it is important that you include a descriptive subject line, including the course number, for your message. Otherwise, the recipients may assume your message is spam or a computer virus.

Student Manual  To help you learn more about Blackboard and how to use specific Blackboard tools, an online Student Manual is available within Blackboard.  You can access the Student Manual through the Tools area or by clicking the Bb Student Manual button in the left course navigation area if your course instructor has enabled that button.  To help you locate the information you need, the online Student Manual is organized in both a table- of-contents and index/search format, and individual help topics are often linked to related topics. Individual help topics can also be printed if needed.

Grades  Blackboard has an electronic grade book tool.  If your instructor has enabled this tool, you can check your course assignment grades and evaluate your performance.  You access your Grades through the Tools area.

Grades continued...  Individual assignment grades can be displayed as points, percents, or letters depending on your instructor’s grading policy.  Total points and class averages are automatically calculated, so you can compare your performance with the course grading scale and with other students in your class.  Additionally, grades from Blackboard quizzes/exams are linked to detailed pages of your submitted quiz/exam answers. Note: These grades are not your official course grade. Your instructor determines your final course grade at the end of the semester and submits it to the Registrar.

Groups  Blackboard has a Groups tool to assist group members as they work on their class project.  The ability to work collaboratively with others is seen as an important skill, and being able to work collaboratively online, in our global economy, is even more important.  You can access your Groups through the Communication area.

Groups continued...  In this area, you will have access only to your groups.  When you click on your group name, which is a link to your group’s electronic workspace, you will have access to a private discussion board, chat room, file exchange, and .  These tools work just like the ones available to the entire class, except only you and your group members have access to this space.

Student Homepages  With Blackboard, you can create a homepage introducing yourself to your instructor and classmates.  By completing and submitting an online form, you can talk about your educational and professional background, include a digital photograph of yourself, and share your favorite websites.  You can also learn about the other students in your class by viewing their homepages. You access the Homepage tool through the Tools area.

Virtual Chats  Using virtual chats, you can have a real-time, online conversation with your instructor and classmates, similar to Instant Messaging.  You can post messages to others in the chat session, and you can read the messages posted by others.  You access the Collaboration (Chat) tools through the Communications area.  The Blackboard collaboration tools include a whiteboard, web browser, and other useful features.  Your instructor can archive a chat session, so you can review what was discussed later.

Congratulations! You have completed the Blackboard Orientation! Get Started Login Access your courses Announcement Faculty Information Course Documents Assignments Discussion Board Student Manual Grades Groups Student Homepage Virtual Chats