Blackboard - Technology Enhanced Learning and Design

We have broken up our Blackboard training into several key areas – please choose which you feel best suits your needs:

Basics of Using Blackboard

For new users of the system who want to learn about navigation, adding basic text and how to get started.

Using Blackboard to Create Content: Making Your Course Look Good

Once you know the basics of Blackboard, this training shows you a few simple tricks for upgrading the visual quality of your course.

Creation of Blackboard Summative and Formative Assessments

Learn how to add Blackboard Tests into courses for both Summative and Formative learning activities.

Blackboard Assignments

Blackboard has its own Assignments tool which allows you to collect files from students, mark them, check them for Plagiarism and distribute them back to the students. If you are collecting posters or videos from your students, this may be a preferrable tool over TurnItIn.

Live and Asynchronous Lectures, Seminars and Small Group Teaching (Tutorials) via Blackboard Collaborate

Online lectures may be run either live or recorded using inbuilt Blackboard Collaborate. Likewise, the system can help with your small group teaching.

Using the Preview User

The Blackboard system allows you to test almost all parts of your content via the use of a “Preview User” which you can activate on your course. The 2 minute video here goes through how to use this part of the system.

Personalising the Student Experience: Adaptive Release of Content

Adaptive Release Tools in Blackboard can allow you to set up courses to release content under certain pre-set circumstances (rules), allowing you to personalise student learning.

Reading Lists and Blackboard

To create or edit your reading list, please visit https://www.library.manchester.ac.uk/using-the-library/staff/reading-lists/.

If your Reading List is not available in the Blackboard Left-Hand menu, add it by following the guide created by the University of Manchester’s Library team, which you can find here.

Groups for Collaboration, Group work and Administration

This training is designed to introduce to you the “Groups” tools in Blackboard. These tools enable you to separate your students into “groups” in order to:

– Allow students to work together collaboratively OR
– Allow you to administer students on your course OR
– Allow you to personalise the learning of your students using adaptive release settings.

Using the Grade Centre to Access Student Grades

The Blackboard Grade Centre stores all student grades and submission data for Blackboard assignments and tests in a course. It is possible to manually mark submissions from the Grade Centre, and it can be used to calculate overall weighted grades or averages for multiple assessments.

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