Bb 9.1 October 2014
Here is a Bb tip that will help to ensure that your students have a stress-free experience when they gain access to Blackboard on Jan. 19 and begin to navigate through the Blackboard courses in which they are enrolled.
Simply put, whether you adjust dates manually in your Blackboard course(s) or use the new Date Management tool to do so (Using Date Management), you will want to make sure that: 1) Any due dates that you have in your Spring course(s) are updated for the new semester; and 2) You have due dates set for any item in your course(s) — tests, assignments, discussion forums, etc. — for which you have the option to set due dates (How do I set Due Dates?).
The reason for this is simple. In versions of Blackboard prior to Bb 9.1 Learn, the due-dates that you set in a course were only visible to users while they were in your course, and those due-dates did not carry over when you did an export/import from that course into a new course shell. By contrast, in our most recent versions of Blackboard, including the version that we currently use (Bb 9.1 October 2014), course due-dates are inextricably tied to Global Navigation, a tool based on the model of social media such as Facebook. Through Global Navigation, you and your students automatically receive notifications about a wide range of “events” (for example, a newly posted announcement or discussion board thread, a newly graded assessment, etc.), including upcoming or expired due dates, for any Blackboard course in which you or they are enrolled. Moreover, your course due dates will now carry over when you do an export/import into a new course shell!
What does this mean for your students? If the due dates for items in your course are not updated, or if due-dates are not assigned to items for which the due-date option is available, Blackboard will identify those items as being past their due dates, and via Global Navigation, will send “false alarm” alerts to your students. Such alerts are inaccurate and cause unnecessary concern for students, an outcome that faculty can easily prevent by making sure that they have due-dates set for all eligible items in their courses, and that those due dates are, well, up to date!
Important note about Blackboard Date Management: If you plan to use the Use Course Start Date option in the Date Management tool in Blackboard (How do I do that?), be sure to do so before you export your course. If you try to use it after exporting, there will be no way to put the old start date in the dialog box, which will have been auto-filled through system programming and can’t be changed.
In addition, you should only run the Date Management tool after archiving your course (How to archive your course). Why? Running the tool will change your course due-dates, display dates, etc., which would cause issues, for example, were a student subsequently to dispute a grade in your course that s(he) received based on having missed due-dates for assigned work. In a case like this, you would want to have the original due-dates, display dates, etc., preserved for purposes of documentation, and the only way that you could do that would be by archiving your course before running the Date Management tool.
Use the following link to download a printable version of this Bb tip of the week: Download the Tip
Use the following link to view previous Bb tips of the week: BBTOTW-Archive
As always, please feel free to contact the Distance Learning Office (629-7070/DLHelp@hvcc.edu) if you have any questions about this, or if you would like training on this subject!
Published: Mon, 11 Jan 2016 13:03:23 +0000 by m.petersen