Navigation, Tips and Tricks

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Blackboard Dashboard

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Blackboard Dashboard
 Navigation
Blackboard Channels / Blocks
• Tools
• My Announcements
• My Courses
 Blackboard Tabs
• My Institution
• Courses
• System Admin
Administrative Access
• System Admin
 Personalization
• Personalizing Individual Blocks
• Personalize Page

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Blackboard Dashboard Navigation:
Navigation Tabs
Tools Block Announcements
Block
My Courses Block

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Blackboard Dashboard Navigation:
The Blackboard Tools block is located
on the Dashboard / Landing page after
being logged into the Blackboard.
The Tools listed in this block can vary
per client.
The Most commonly used Tools is the
My Grades tool.
My Grades will show the student their
Grades for their all their current
courses. These can be sorted by All
Courses or Last Graded.

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Profile Picture
Blackboard Home
Discussion Posts
Updates
My Grades
Retention Center
Calendar
More Tools
Messages
People
Spaces

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 My Announcements are sorted by Course
Name
 The latest announcements posted in the
course is displayed here
 Cannot access course by clicking the course
name.
Can access full announcement by clicking the >
item name

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 My Courses can appear differently for Instructors & Students
Instructors may have 2 sections “Courses where you are: Instructor” &
“Courses where you are: Student”
 Courses where you are: Instructor are courses that they are
teaching
 Course where you are: Student are courses where they have the
student role.
 Students will show “Courses where you are: Student”
 To access courses simply click on the bolded course title.
Some clients show (not currently available) Instructors will see
this, students typically do not. If you see this next to an
instructors course, it has not been made available to the
students yet

8.  The number of Tabs we see in Blackboard depends on the level of
Access a client is willing to give us. It also depends on the schools
Blackboard setup. They may have links to other Learning Resources on
the schools website
 In this Example we have 3 Tabs:
 My Institution (aka the Home tab)
 Courses
 System Admin
My Institution, also known as Home tab,
will take a user back to the main
Blackboard Dashboard
Courses Tab – Displays a complete list
of the courses the user is enrolled in.
System Admin tab is for Blackboard
Administrators and Help Desk Agents. This tab
allows Help Desk Agents to look up users &
course enrollments.
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9. System Administration Tab
 This tab is our primary way of accessing the course information to
troubleshoot any Course issue for an Instructor or Student.
 What you see on this tab depends on what the Client gives us access to.
 Please note that even though there may be more options to click here, not all
of these will give us access to the items indicated.
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10. The primary sections of the System Admin page that we will work
with is the Users & Courses sections.
The Users Section allows us to Search the Blackboard System for
users.
The Courses section allows us to search the Blackboard System
for courses.
To search by User click “User”
within the User box
To search by Course(s) click
“Courses” within the Courses box
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 Users Search options:
 Username – you can search by all or part of the users school Username.
 First Name – you can search by all or part of the users First Name
(Caution, if the first name is a very common one you will get A LOT of results
to sift through.)
 Last Name – you can search by all or part of the users Last Name.
(Caution, if the last name is a very common one you will get A LOT of results
to sift through.)
 You can also search by Email address, Student ID and the Data Source
ID. The most common ways to search for a user in Blackboard is by their
name or username.
Enter your search criteria
here and press Enter or
click Go when ready.
Select the criteria you wish to
search by

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Course Search Options:
 Course ID – you can search by all or part of the course ID (Course ID’s usually do
not have any spaces separating the characters, fillers are usually used such as _ or -
.)
 Course Name – you can search by All or part of the Course Name
 Course Description – you can search by all or part of the Course Description.
 Instructor – you can search by all or part of the instructors name
 Data Source Key – if you or the user knows this information, it is a viable search
option.
 Term – you can use the Term search to narrow down your results
Enter your search criteria here,
Click Go or press enter to submit.
Select the criteria you wish to
search by

13. BlackBeltHelp
Users can personalize their Blackboard interface to some limits.
Hover over the
block header.
Click the cross
arrows and drag
the selected
block to another
location on the
page. Unclick to
drop in new
location.
Click the down
arrow to
collapse the box
to display only
the box header.
Click the arrow
pointing to the
right to expand
the box to show
everything in
that box.
Hover over the
block header.
Click the gear
icon. To select
which content is
displayed in the
box.

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Hover over the
block header.
Click the gear
icon. To select
which content is
displayed in the
box.
Anything Checked
here, will display in
the My Courses Box
Selecting the Select All box to the left of
the course – will select all the check boxes
on the right.
Deselecting the Select All will remove All
check marks to the right for that course.
Select All checked
Select All unchecked
Click Submit at either the top right or bottom right
corner to Save changes.

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From the Blackboard Dashboard click the
Personalize Page button to Adjust the theme
used in the way the Home tab is displayed.
Click on the desired theme and click Submit to save changes.

16. Blackboard Dashboard
Thank you for reviewing the presentation.
Review:
Blackboard Dashboard Navigation
Blackboard Channels / Blocks
Tools, Announcements & My Courses
Blackboard Tabs
My Institution, Courses, System Admin
Administrative Access
Users and Courses search options
Personalization
Personalizing individual Channels / Blocks
Personalizing the My Institution Tab theme & layout
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