Frequently Asked Questions

for Faculty about Blackboard at Hunter

*Training in Blackboard*
(Adobe Acrobat Reader File)

Q: I want to use Blackboard for my class. What do I do?
Q: How can I get training for Blackboard ?
Q: How are students enrolled into my Bb course?
Q: How do I enroll (ADD) a new student who wasn't registered initially?
Q: How do I change a student's password?
Q: What if I forgot my password?
Q: How do I get my grades into Blackboard ?
Q: How do I get my grades out of Blackboard ?
Q: How do I upload materials to Blackboard ?
Q: How do I allow a student to take a quiz that (s)he has already taken?
Q: A student says (s)he took a quiz or turned in an assignment but had problems. Is there any way I can verify this?
Q: What happens to my Blackboard site at the end of the semester?
Q: My students are having problems. Can you help?
Q: The Blackboard server seems to be down, what should I do?

Please let us know if you had an important question about Blackboard not covered in this document.

Also see the Student FAQ !

Note: The Student FAQ covers questions instructors and TAs should expect to get from their students. Familiarity with these most common problems will help alleviate the load on the Blackboard administrators and allow them to respond to faculty requests in a more timely manner. Your help is greatly appreciated. Some of those questions may also apply to you yourself, e.g. if you are having trouble up- or downloading documents. The Student FAQ is intended to cover general user-level questions, rather than administrative tasks.

The Questions and Answers in detail:

Q: I want to use Blackboard for my class. What do I do?

A: Instructors interested in using Blackboard for their courses need to fill out the Blackboard Course Site Request Form.

Q: How can I get training for Blackboard ?

A: Group workshops on how to use various Bb attributes are given three times a year. Upon request, we will be happy to customize a workshop designed to suit individual/group needs. A minimum of 4 participants is required for a customized workshop. We also welcome you to set up an appointment for personalized help with one of our staff in the Technology Resource (TRC), Room C104 HN. To request in Bb, please call 650-3062 or email: bb@hunter.cuny.edu

Learn more about the free seminars offered by the ICIT.

Q: How are students enrolled into my Bb course?

A: Once your Bb course is created, we (TRC) will batch-enroll your students into your Bb course.

To request for this service after the first three weeks of classes, e-mail the following information to bb@hunter.cuny.edu:

Instructor name
Four-digit registration code for your course
Course Name and Section

The ICIT will update the current enrollment every day, during the first week of classes (every morning). On the second week we will update your roster on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. A final update to your roster will be done at the end of the third week.

Q: How do I enroll (ADD) a new student who wasn't registered initially?

A: To add a new student:

Go to the CONTROL PANEL
In the USER MANAGEMENT area
Click on ADD USER
Click on ADD EXISTING USER
Search by: LAST NAME
In the Add column, check the box that corresponds to the correct student;
Click on SUBMIT

Q: How do I remove a student who has dropped the course?

A: To remove a student:

Go to the CONTROL PANEL
In the USER MANAGEMENT area
Click on REMOVE USER
Search by: LAST NAME
In the Remove column, check the box that corresponds to the correct student
Type "Yes" (exactly as shown) in the box on the right
Click SUBMIT
Confirm removal (you will be warned twice that this is final)

Q: How do I change a student's password?

A: At present, the password can be changed only by the students.

Q: What if I forgot my password?

A: Click on the "Forgot your password" located on the Bb login screen and enter the required information along with the e-mail address that you are using for Bb.



		Enter Account Information

If you have forgotten your password, enter your First Name, Last Name and User Name or your First Name, Last Name and e-mail below. In order to change your password, you must have provided an active e-mail address when registering for your account. You will receive an e-mail message with instructions to make the password change. Your current password will remain active until you respond to the e-mail.


First Name:
Last Name:
User Name:
or
First Name:
Last Name:
E-Mail Address:

Q: How do I get my grades into Blackboard ?

A: Blackboard has no grade-import feature. You can use it for online gradekeeping, but you have to enter all grades manually (add a column via "Add Entry" in spreadsheet view), this becomes a rather tedious procedure. Grades for online quizzes are kept automatically by Blackboard, no need to make columns for those.

Even if you don't offer online quizzes with Blackboard, you should seriously consider maintaining all other student grades in Blackboard online gradebook. Students really like being able to securely check their grades online, anytime and anywhere.

To add a grade from a paper assignment, for example, go into Control Panel| Online Gradebook | Spreadsheet View, click the Add Item button, name the gradebook entry and enter the grades. Each student will be able to see his or her grades only, class averages, and so forth.

Q: How do I get my grades out of Blackboard ?

A: Blackboard can export your online grades to a comma-delimited file, readable by all spreadsheet programs, for statistical analysis, reordering or further processing in a spreadsheet or statistical application, or submission. To do this go into Control Panel | Online Gradebook | Export Gradebook. There is no way to re-import those files into Blackboard, however.

Q: How do I upload materials to Blackboard ?

A: Blackboard gives you several options for uploading course documents or simply linking to existing materials on the web.

From your Blackboard Course Info main page, click Control Panel (you must have instructor or course builder privileges to see the Control Panel), then click Course Documents. Here you should see a list of your current course documents and at the top a button labeled Add Item and another labeled Add Folder. Click the button Add Item.

Select a specified name from the drop down menu, or if none of the names available suit your needs type in your own title for your document.
Type your text or copy-and-paste from a document on your computer.

Select HTML if the document consists of HTML code (make sure to put here only the body of an HTML document, not the enclosing tags!).
Select SmartText if you want the document to preserve line breaks in the entered text, while still interpreting HTML tags.
Otherwise choose Plain Text (that will preserve line breaks, but display HTML codes as-is).
You can link to external webpages by typing HTML hyperlinks into this area. Or simply place those links in the External Links section.

Attaching a document using Item Attachments option

Click Browse...

In the file dialog box set Files of Type to All Files *.*

Enter a meaningful name in the field labeled Name of Link to File (e.g. you may wish to say here what type of document this is, something quite useful for users on different platforms).

For Special Action

Choose Create a link to this file to simply create a link to the uploaded document. This is the default action.
Choose Display this file within the Page to incorporate the uploaded document in the page without linking to it. This is ideal for displaying images in your Document Folders.
Choose Unpackage these files to unzip a zipped (packaged) file. This is used for uploading existing web pages with graphics and media, for slide presentations converted to HTML format, or even for entire websites. You will first need to zip the files using a tool such as WinZip, PKZip, or ZipMagic.

Q: How do I allow a student to take a quiz that he/she has already taken?

A: If a student takes a quiz once, or starts to take the quiz but does not finish for whatever reason, he/she will not be allowed to take the quiz a second time, unless you have allowed multiple attempts when creating the quiz (Note: quizzes with multiple attempts are now recorded in the gradebook).

To clear an attempt on a quiz made by a student, go to the Control Panel, then Online Gradebook, then Spreadsheet View. This displays a list of all the students in your class with the results of their quizzes and surveys. Click on the exclamation mark corresponding to the student and quiz in question. On the page that appears, click the Clear Attempt button. The student is now able to take the quiz again.

Be sure to emphasize to your students that they only need to click on the submit button ONE time. If your quiz or assessment is password protected and a student clicks the submit button more than once on the submit password screen they will cause the system to block them out. Clicking the button multiple times does not make things go any faster, and in most cases the submissions will fail; the system will block access to the affected assessment for that student for all subsequent attempts.

Q: A student says she took a quiz or turned in an assignment but had problems. Is there any way I can verify this?

A: If there is ever a dispute about a quiz having been taken or not, a term paper submission, etc., the Blackboard administrators could inspect the server logs and find out what really happened. Doing this, however, is a lot of work, so we would only do it upon request and on rare occasions. Often, the fact that students know that everything in Blackboard is logged and that you have access to these logs can preempt many possible claims or arguments.

Q: What happens to my Blackboard site at the end of the semester?

A: All Bb courses will be deleted from the system two semesters after it has been offered (i.e. a course created for Spring 2002 will remain on our system through Spring 2003). You should keep the site available to students for at least two weeks after you have posted the final grades so they have a chance to view them. Then you may make the course site unavailable by going to CONTROL PANEL > COURSE SETTINGS > COURSE AVAILABILITY > choose "No" to make the course unavailable.

If you want the course site to be deleted at the end of the semester, please e-mail us with that request.

If you want to reuse the site for the next semester, please fill our the Course Site Request Form with all the appropriate info for the new semester, check the box to "Yes" in the "Re-use of old site" request field. Also provide the old Bb Course ID. This needs to be done in order to successfully carry over your site into the new semester.

If you will not use the site for more than 2 semesters after the end of the semester, you may archive the course for future use. To do this:

Go to CONTROL PANEL
Under COURSE OPTIONS area
Click COURSE UTILITIES
Click ARCHIVE COURSE
Select the areas you want to archive and select to save it in the Bb 5.5 format
Click SUBMIT
Follow the instructions on how to save the file

Q: My students are having problems at using Blackboard. Can you help?

A: The Blackboard administrators provide support to faculty and developers working on Blackboard . Students should direct their questions to their instructors/TA's, who may contact the Blackboard administrators if they cannot solve the problem themselves. Problems of a general nature not directly related to Blackboard , such as dial-up issues, web browser problems etc., should be directed to the bb@hunter.cuny.edu.

If you need help with a student's problem, please get all relevant information from the student before contacting the TRC Blackboard administrators for help. That includes all of the following:

What exactly he was trying to do when the error occurred.
Any error messages he got. Literally!
When exactly this occurred.
What browser he was using, what version, and what operating system.
How he was accessing the Internet (what ISP, or is he behind a firewall?).
Any other clues related to the problem

Most frequent cause for problems is the use of old browsers, such as oldish AOL internal browsers or Netscape 3.01 Gold. Both faculty and students need to use modern browsers.

Q: The Blackboard server seems to be down, what should I do?

A: Blackboard is monitored by ICIT software and people, but if you suspect any problems with the service, please check on the web at http://icit.hunter.cuny.edu/outages. This webpage has a listing of all important servers and services at Hunter, and their current status.

Last Updated: Tuesday April 23, 2002 02:58 PM