Technology Manual for Law Faculty and Staff

Courses will be available to registered students at a pre-defined date before the beginning of the semester Note: faculty are able to make their courses available to the learners enrolled in their courses up to two weeks prior to the first day of the semester.Until courses are made available to students, the course will display as not available, but you will be able to access it.

Once you access Blackboard Ultra, you will see a side panel that has ten menu options:

Institution Page

• UDC Blackboard Institution page offers daily announcements, help desk information, and helpful links and resources.

Your Profile

• On the menu, this tab will have your first and last name. On this page you can edit your information on Blackboard, add a profile photo, and change your system settings.

Activity Stream

• Here you can view any and all recent activity on Blackboard you might have missed.

Courses

• This is where all courses in which you are an instructor or student live. Click on each course to view more.

Organizations

• Organizations is where courses like orientation live.

Calendar

• Your calendar shows you all important upcoming appointments, assignments, readings, etc. This is contained to Blackboard so only events created in Blackboard will be shown.

Messages

• Any messages that you have sent or received through Blackboard can be viewed here. You can also view messages on individual course pages.

Grades

• Assignments requiring grading will show up under this tab. Simply click on a submitted assignment in order to grade it.

Tools

• Various other tools live here.

Sign-Out

• Clicking this tab will sign you out of your Blackboard account.

For an informative video on how to navigate Blackboard Ultra, please click here.

When you send email from your course, the students receive it in their UDC email accounts, such as firstname.lastname@udc.edu. Replies go to your UDC email account, not to the course.

Blackboard keeps no record of sent or received emails. Keep a copy of important messages in your inbox in case you need them later.

You can send email to these users or groups in a course:

• All Users: Sends email to all users in the course.
• All Groups: Sends email to all of the groups in a specified course.
• All Teaching Assistant Users: Sends email to all of the Teaching Assistants in a specified course.
• All Student Users: Sends an email to all students in the course.
• All Instructor Users: Sends email to all individuals designated as instructors for a specified course.
• Select Users: Sends email to select users.
• Select Groups: Sends email to select groups.

Don't send email through Blackboard Learn without a subject line. A blank subject line blank can prevent the message from being delivered.

To Send an Email:

Please watch this video from UDC CAL to learn how to send an email, add content to the email, and more.

*NOTE: instead of the course menu resembling icons in the upper right corner, they are now along the top of the course page with written names. 

To Post an Announcement:

1. Select "Announcements" from the menu bar along the top of the course content page.
2. Click the circled plus symbol in the upper right hand corner.
3. Add a title to the announcement, select recipients, and type the message for the announcement in the fields provided.
4. Then you can choose to send a copy of the announcement in an email to all recipients (this is highly encouraged) by checking the box at the bottom next to "Send an email copy to recipients".
5. Schedule the posting of the announcement by clicking the box next to "Schedule Announcement".
   • Once selected, scroll down and you will see two more check boxes that indicate when the message will be posted and then hidden.
   • To post the message right away, simply select the current date and time. Alternatively, you can skip this step and click save, but you will then need to find the announcement and click "Post Now".
   • To post messages in the future, select the date and time you wish and the announcement will be posted then. With this option you cannot send an email copy of the announcement.
   • If you wish the announcement to hidden to students after a certain date, check the box labeled "Hide On" and then choose the date on which you wish the announcement to be hidden. With this option you cannot send an email copy of the announcement.
6. Your last step should be to save the announcement. Depending on if you choose to schedule to announcement or not you might have to perform the additional step of posting the announcement.

For more information please watch this video on posting announcements in Blackboard.

You can use the course calendar to provide students with dates for course-related events. Course calendar events appear to all members of the course. Common entries include upcoming exams, due dates for assignments, or links to scheduled online lectures. Course items with due dates appear automatically in the course calendar. Only instructors can create course calendar events.

Find and Navigate the Calendar:

You can access the calendar from your course, from the calendar tab at the top of the course content page.

1. View events by day or month.
2. Use the arrows to navigate to another day/month.
3. Select the plus (+) to create a new event, alter the course schedule, or add office hours.

   NOTE: Students can't create an event on a course and institution calendar.

4. Select an event to manage it. You can also select and drag an event to change the date.
5. Select the calendars you want to show, such as institution, personal, or course. By default, all calendars are visible. You can change the color of each calendar to suit your preference and to easily determine which events correspond with each calendar.

For more information please watch this video on calendars on Blackboard.