Administrator

Blackboard Learn Administrator Training Resources
April 2014 Release

Table of Contents

Blackboard Learn for Staff/Administrators

This document details the Course Management, User Management, and Tools Management help offered to Administrators by Blackboard Learn. A majority of the links are to webpages, but there are some videos also offered.

Source site https://help.blackboard.com/en-us/Learn/9.1_2014_04/Administrator

Course Management

Course management in Blackboard Learn includes the following responsibilities:

  • Creating and editing courses
  • Setting default course properties to use as a basis for new courses
  • Enrolling and removing users from courses
  • Creating the course catalog
  • Managing course files
  • Backing up, archiving, and restoring courses

Create Courses

Create Courses: Blackboard Learn provides several methods for creating courses. The privileges assigned to your user account determine which methods are available to you.

  • How to Create a Course
  • Course Creation Wizard

Create Courses by Copying Existing Courses: If you are creating a course that has many of the same features as an existing course, you can copy the existing course to create a new course.

  • How to Use the Copy Course Button
  • How to Add Course Materials to an Existing Course
  • How to Move Users to Another Course
  • Create a New Course with Existing Materials
  • How to Copy a Complete Course, Including Users (Make an Exact Copy)

Create Courses by Using the Wizard: The course creation wizard guides you through the process of creating courses.

  • How to Create a Course by Using the Wizard

Create Courses by Using Batch Files: Batch files are delimited files that allow you to create or copy as many as 500 courses at one time.

  • How to Create Course in Batch
  • How to Copy Courses in Batch
  • How to Create a Batch File

Batch File Guidelines for Courses

Create Courses from Template and Export Packages (Import Courses): New courses based on templates include the design and settings defined in the template. They do not include course content or materials.
New courses based on course packages include course content and materials. They do not include any user interactions from the original course.

  • How to Create a Course Template
  • How to Create a Course from a Template
  • How to Import a Course

Manage Courses

Manage Courses: (webpage) When creating a course, Blackboard Learn requires only two course properties: a course name and a course ID. However, several other course properties control important aspects of courses, such as when they are available, whether guest users are permitted, and where the course appears in the course catalog.

  • How to View or Edit Course Properties
  • How to Merge and Seperate Child Courses
  • How to Enable or Disable Course Structures
  • How to Enable or Disable Course Themes
  • How to Enable or Disable the Quick Setup Guide
  • Make a Course Available or Unavailable
  • How to Add a Course to the Course Catalog
  • How to View Reports for a course
  • How to Add File Types for Use with Course Content Items
  • How to Delete Information From a Course
  • How to Delete Courses

Default Settings for Courses: You can create a new course in Blackboard Learn by defining just the course ID and the course name. However, courses have several other settings that control guest access, enrollment options, menu names, button styles, and other components. When you create a new course, Blackboard Learn uses default values for any settings that you do not define.

  • How to Set Default Availability, Enrollment, Duration, Linking to Course Files
  • How to Set Default Course Menus
  • How to Set Default Course Tools
  • How to Set Default Images
  • How to Set the Default Icon Theme
  • How to Add Default Content Areas
  • How to Add Default Tool Links
  • How to Add Default Web Links
  • How to Set the Default Course Size Limits
  • How to set Default Notifications
  • How to Set Default Grade Center History Availability
  • How to Set Default Grading Scheme Display and Calculations

Individual Course Quotas: Quotas keep courses from exceeding acceptable disk space limits and warn instructors when a course is approaching the limit. You can grant additional disk space to individual courses, if necessary.

  • How to Set Individual Course Quotas

Course Terms: Course terms are used to define the beginning and end of a period of study. You can make courses available during a specific course term.

  • How to Create or Edit a Term
  • How to Delete Terms
  • How to View Courses Associated with Terms

Course Catalog: The course catalog groups courses into categories. When a course is assigned to a category, it automatically appears in the course catalog. Courses that are set to Unavailable do not appear in the course catalog.

  • How to View Subcategories
  • How to Create or Edit a Category
  • How to Enable or Disable the Course Catalog Link on the Start Page

Export, Archive, and Restore Courses: Exporting and archiving courses have two distinct purposes in Blackboard Learn: Export a course when course materials will be reused at a later time to teach a new set of student and archive a course to maintain a record of a course.

  • How to Archive a Course
  • How to Export a Course
  • How to Restore a Course
  • How to View Export and Archive Logs
  • How to Export, Archive, and Restore Courses in Batch
  • Creating the Batch File for Export/Archive and Import/Restore
  • How to Run the Batch Tool
  • How to Customize the JVM Heap Size for the batch_ImportExport Tool
  • Supporting Paths for Importing and Restoring Courses

Search for Courses: How to search for courses.

Enrollments: You can enroll users individually through a course’s contextual menu or using a batch file to enroll large groups of users.

  • How to Enroll Users in a Course
  • How to Change a User’s Role for a Course
  • How to List the Users Enrolled in a Course
  • How to Enroll Users in Batch
  • How to Delete Users From a Course

User Management

Administrators create user accounts and assign user privileges by using various types of roles.

User Accounts: What you can do in Blackboard Learn depends upon the security privileges granted to your user account. Administrators grant security privileges to users by creating roles and assigning those roles to user accounts. You have access to all of the features in Blackboard Learn that your roles allow.

  • How to Create User Accounts
  • How to Create User Accounts in Batch
  • How to View or Edit User Accounts
  • How to View User Enrollments or Memberships
  • How to Change Privileges and Access for User Accounts
  • How to Change User Passwords
  • How to Make User Accounts Available or Unavailable
  • How to Delete User Accounts

Avatars: Two sets of avatars can be used together, separately, or not at all:

  1. Local Learn User Account Avatars: These avatars are stored locally and are displayed throughout Blackboard Learn.
  2. Cloud User Profile Avatars: If the cloud is turned on, these avatars are stored in the cloud and overwrite the Local Learn User Account Avatars.
  • How to Enable Local Learn User Account Avatars

Search for Users: Searching for users

  • How to Search for All Users You Have Permission to View
  • How to Search by User Profile Information
  • How to Search by Course or Organization Enrollment
  • How to Search by Login Date

User Profiles: When Cloud is enabled, user profiles are created automatically for users. All data associated with Blackboard’s Cloud Services, including Social Profiles and other Social tools, is hosted in Blackboard’s Cloud infrastructure

  • How to Integrate Facebook and Twitter
  • How to Make the Most of Your Profile
  • Post and Comment on Profile Walls
  • Find and View User Profiles
  • How to Delete a Profile

Tools Management

Announcements: Administrators add, edit, and delete important messages from the institution on the Announcements page. These announcements can be set to appear in:

  • The Announcements section of every course and organization.
  • The My Announcements portal module.
  • The Announcements tool in the portal tool panel.
  • How to Create or Edit an Announcement
  • Announcement Video

Calendar: The calendar tool allows users to view events by day, week, month, or year. They can view and organize upcoming and past events into categories.

  • How to Manage the Institution Calendar
  • How to Create or Edit a Calendar Event
  • Create a Recurring Event
  • How to Use the Calendar Quick Jump
  • Calendar Video 1
  • Calendar Video 2

Groups Management: The Groups Management Building Block provides the ability to:

  • Easily see which students are in which groups, including which students are not in any groups.
  • Easily see and modify group memberships. Avatars are now available to distinguish among users.
  • Choose and manage membership for groups sets with an improved workflow.
  • Import and export groups and group memberships.
  • Sort columns, perform bulk actions for deleting groups, and create Grade Center smart views for one or more groups on the All Groups page.
  • Optionally, manage tool availability for all groups on the All Groups page.
    • How to Add a Group
    • How to Select Group Members
    • How to Import and Export Groups
    • Enable and Disable Groups Management

Groups Management Video

Inline Grading: Instructors can view student-submitted files “inline,” meaning in the web browser, without requiring any plug-ins, applets, or client-side applications. Additionally, annotations tools are available as part of the inline viewer, enabling instructors to provide feedback—comments, highlights, and even drawing/annotation—directly on the inline view of the document.

New Features in April 2014

Student Preview: With the student preview feature, instructors can see their courses and interact with them exactly how students do. An instructor is allowed to easily transition into and out of a system-managed preview account that is automatically enrolled in the course as a student