Connecting to Blackboard 6 through the CUNY portal
In order to connect to Blackboard 6, you must create a CUNY portal account. Blackboard 6 can then be accessed through the Cuny Portal or the Blackboard doorway.

Accessing your course site
Hunter no longer requires course request forms for Blackboard sites. All instructors are provided with Blackboard course sites. You need to be listed by name as an instructor. If you are listed as "Staff," please refer to your department and ask them to make the necessary changes.

Making your course available
By default, your Blackboard site is made unavailable. For your students to be able to access your course site, you will need to make your course site available. You can do this by following these instructions.

Enrolling a user
Sometimes students will need to be enrolled by an instructor to gain access to a Blackboard course site. This can happen when students register late for a course and are not automatically updated into the system. Most students are listed as users in the Hunter database. You can select the student you wish to enroll into your course site by following these instructions.

Managing courses with multiple sections
In the past, merging multiple course sections required making a request to the Blackboard administrator. Now you can manage your course sections yourself. This link will explain how to merge the rosters of multiple sections into one, so that you do not have to post the same course material multiple times.

Setting guest access to your courses
The method for setting guest access to your courses has changed in Blackboard 6. Be aware that simply checking the Guest Access option under Settings in the Control Panel will not give guests access to your course content as it did in Blackboard 5. In addition to turning on guest access for the course as a whole, you need to turn on guest access for each content area to which you wish to provide guest access. This handout describes how to grant guest access to specific parts of your course.

Managing online submission of assignments
In Blackboard 5, students submitted their assignments through the Digital Drop Box. Blackboard 6 has a greatly improved way for students to submit assignments. The assignment manager enables you to place an assignment in any content area. When students submit their assignment, it will automatically appear in the grade book. You can read more about the assignment manager in this handout.

Making your classes accessible for students with disabilities
Blackboard 6 has many features that address accessibility issues for users with disabilities. However, Blackboard's new text editor is not compatible with screen readers such as JAWS. Students who use JAWS should turn off the new text editor (Tools/Personal Options/Set Text Box Editor Options) so that Blackboard will work with JAWS. You can read more about accessibility and Blackboard 6 by following this link.

Keeping a copy of your Blackboard 6 courses
In the past, courses have remained on the Blackboard server indefinitely. In Blackboard 6, this will no longer be the case. Courses will remain on Blackboard for one year after the end of the semester in which they are taught. If you wish to have access to your Blackboard 6 course after that time, it will be your responsibility to save a copy of your course on your local computer using Blackboard's archiving feature. The course can then be restored to Blackboard should you need to access the content at a later date. This handout describes how to archive your Blackboard 6 courses.

Copying course material from one course to another
In Blackboard 5, it was not easy to copy course material, such as files or assessments, from one Blackboard course to another. In Blackboard 6, you can easily copy specific folders or entire content areas between any two courses for which you are an instructor without downloading and uploading. This feature is useful if you use the same course materials from one semester to the next, or if you have content that you use in more than one course.