1. Course Setup
Course setup

2. Before Courses Begin
Once content has been put into your course shell, you’ll need to do some setup to get the course ready for students. The main things you’ll need to do are:
Review the content
Create a welcome announcement
Set due dates
Limit folder availability, and
Add your instructor profile.
This video will show you how to do each of these.

3. Review Course Content NOTE
Even if you’ve taught the same course several times, it’s a good idea to go through the course, checking over both the content itself and any links within it. If you find broken links, errors in content, or other issues, let the online faculty coordinator or program director know right away so these issues can be fixed before students are in the course. To check, it’s best to go through each lesson folder, skimming the topics and clicking on any links within them. <screen capture or screenshot of clicking on a lesson folder, then a topic, and point to the links>
If you think a course needs revisions (e.g. rewriting instructions on an assignment, adding a paragraph to a topic), please keep a list and give that to the online faculty coordinator when the course ends. These changes will need to be reviewed and made in the master course. Errors and anything that’s not working will be fixed right away.
Course revisions are made in the master, between sessions, so please keep a list of these types of changes.

4. Announcements
Screen capture process of posting announcement, pause after each step.
Before a course begins, add a welcome announcement. To post an announcement:
Within the course, click Announcements in the navigation menu.
Click Create Announcement
Type in a subject and message. Set Display After and Display Until dates.
Click Submit.

5. Announcement Guidelines
Keep announcements short and use them to remind students of action items. Longer communication should be sent via .
Switch them out regularly and post at least a couple of times per week. Selecting the “send via ” link helps keep students aware
Use eye-catching images, and stick with small icons rather than large graphics.
Be consistent with images for certain types of announcements, such as a calendar for due date reminders.
Use a readable font—fancy fonts and excessively large or small text can be tough to read.

6. Instructor Profile Screen capture of posting profile
Since it’s unlikely you’ll ever meet your online students in person, the instructor profile is an important part of the course. It helps your students get to know you, and helps bring your “voice” to the course. To create your profile:
Within the course, click Instructor in the navigation menu.
Click Create Contact (middle LEFT quadrant)
Enter your name, PMI address, a brief biography, and any other relevant information such as the time of day you’ll be checking . Include a picture, and let the students know you’re on Pacific time.
Click Submit.

7. Instructor Profile Guidelines
To easily recreate your profile, create and save a Word or text document containing all the text you want to use. You can then copy and paste from that into Blackboard.
Include a photo of yourself so that students know what you look like. They connect to you better that way. The photos can simply be a head shot, or a photo that captures your spirit… hiking, sports, relaxing, gardening.
Include fun or unique facts in your bio
Inject your personality, let students see who you are

8. Content Availability Screen cap of setting a lesson to unavailable
The content in your course is initially all available. Many faculty get “trigger happy,” setting display after and until dates for assignments, quiz, and folders so that items are appearing and disappearing throughout the duration of the course. That’s a lot of work to set up. A better practice is to leave the Introduction Lesson and Lesson 1 available. Enter due dates, and leave those little drop down menus alone.
Next, make the other lessons UNAVAILABLE at the folder level.
Click the chevron next to the lesson folder and click Edit.
Scroll down to Standard Options and check Display AFter.
Enter the date and time you want the lesson folder to appear to students, and click Submit. 
The folder should now be greyed out and marked as Unavailable. Students won’t be able to see it at all until the date and time you’ve set.

9. Content Availability Guidelines
Limiting access to content is helpful for several reasons.
1.     It keeps students from doing lesson #7 before they complete Lesson #3. You’d think that a linear progression through a course would be intuitive, but sometimes it isn’t.
2.     It gives you some wiggle room with your dates. If you need to make some adjustments, it’s easier to change something that hasn’t already been marked on someone’s calendar.
3.     It buys you some time to review the content. (Especially helpful for brand-new faculty.)
There should be ONE new lesson visible at all times. Students need a chance to plan ahead just like we do. We always want to encourage them to plan ahead, but not get too far ahead. Inform students when and how future content will open up. Explain why future content is unavailable.
It’s good pedagogy to leave content available should someone want to go back to refer to an assignment or lesson later, so don’t set “display until” dates.

10. Due Dates
Screen capture of editing an assignment or discussion to add a due date
Setting due dates means entering text into the Instructions area for the evaluation. You can also put the due date on the course calendar. To do this:
Click the chevron beside the evaluation (i.e. assignment, quiz, or discussion) name and click Edit.
In the Instructions field, change the date and time to whatever you chose. Example: Monday, August 9th at 9:00 PM  MST  (Blackboard defaults to MST).  
Scroll down and click the checkbox under Due Dates. Type in the same date and time. This will put the due date on the course calendar.
Click Submit.
You should now see the updated text showing the due date under the assignment name.

11. Due Dates
Due dates
Plan out all your due dates ahead of time, taking into consideration which evaluations students will be working on at the same time and how much time they’ll need for each one.
Be consistent with which day of the week assignments are due on
Make sure you allow sufficient grading and editing time between a preview deadline and a final deadline
Allow approx. 4 days duration for a discussion assignment
The due date for the final assignment/exam should be at least 24 hours prior to the last day of class – this allows for sufficient grading time to meet final grades deadlines, as well as time for late submissions.

12. Intro Discussion and Student Lounge
Show a sample post to the intro discussion board
Show the Student Lounge and Subscribe buttons
Once you’ve got everything set up, there are a couple of other things you can do to make sure you’re connected to the course.
1. Post to the intro discussion board. This discussion is a bit more informal than the others. For first semester courses it gives everyone a chance to “meet” everyone else. You can answer the questions posted there to get the ball rolling, and add some other information about yourself to help break the ice.
As students begin to post on that intro board, it is VERY important that you acknowledge EACH and EVERY student with a reply to their post. A good way to engage them is to ask a question that encourages a follow-up response. This shows that discussions are ongoing events, and not something that you post to once and then cross off your “to do” list. EVERY student is going to be checking that you have noticed them. It keeps you hopping that first couple of days, but it helps set the tone and leads to better quality discussions down the line.
2. Subscribe to the Student Lounge Click Student Lounge and then Subscribe. The subscription sends you an when a new posting is made which saves you from having to login to Blackboard and check for new postings all of the time.

13. Summary
Once you’ve done all the tasks covered here and feel comfortable with the content, you’re ready to start teaching. If at any time you have questions, don’t hesitate to contact the online faculty coordinator.