Group “My Courses” by Term

Starting in Term 1 2012-2013, students and faculty can group the courses that appear in the My Courses box by term. To turn this feature on, click the MANAGE MY COURSES button (the gear-icon on the right side of the MY COURSES box heading).

Manage MyCourses

This opens the PERSONALIZE: MY COURSES page. At the top of this page you will see a checkbox labeled “Group By Term”. Check this box and click SUBMIT at the top or bottom of the page to group the contents of your My Courses box.

Select group by termThis space also provides additional items. Click and drag the cross arrow on the left of a term name to move that group up or down. Uncheck EXPAND TERM to have that group collapsed by default. Uncheck SHOW TERM to hide that term from view.

Options

Paste from Microsoft Word Tool

Using text pasted from Microsoft Word can produce inconsistent formatting of your in Blackboard materials. These inconsistencies can appear as misalignment, different fonts, or general unwanted visual results. This new option available in Blackboard will correct this issue allowing you to safely copy and paste from Word. The tool attempts to maintain your formatting that the applied in Word but you may see slight differences as it translates the formatted text to an Internet friendly format.

Instructions

1. From any text editor in Blackboard, click the Mashup icon (See #1).
2. Select Paste from Word (See #2) from the drop-down menu.

3. Paste any text copied from Microsoft Word in the new window that appears (See Below). You can use the keyboard shortcuts (Window, CTRL-V or MacOS CMD-V) to paste text or right click your mouse and use cut and paste menu items.
4. Click Submit. Your text now appears in the text editor. You can now review the text in the Text Box Editor for edits or any additional formatting.

Combining sections

If you are teaching a single section that has been split into multiples for billing reasons, or if you want to ensure that students from a several classes have access to one block of content, you may want to merge sections. New tools (available at the start of Term 2, 2012-2013 academic year) have streamlined the course merging process.

To have courses merged, please contact the Instructional Design Studio (313-578-0580; ids@udmercy.edu) for assistance. We’ll need to know the course ID for the parent course (i.e., the course that others will be merged into), and the course ID (or IDs) for the child courses (the courses that will be merged into the parent).

Avoiding "locked out" students in proctored Blackboard tests.

In a situation where faculty are administering a proctored Blackboard test, such as in a computer lab environment, there have been instances where students get disconnected from the test. Once the student is disconnected the test normally needs to have the attempt cleared and the student needs to restart the test, which is not ideal for the faculty or the student. The student loses all progress and time previously applied to the test.

A solution to avoid this situation, is to not choose “Force Completion” and set the presentation mode to “One at a Time” in the test settings. While “Force Completion” is used quite often to prevent student from reentering a test after reviewing it, in a proctored test environment this setting is unnecessary, due to the nature proctoring. By not enabling “Force Completion” students are allowed to reenter the test after the last question that was completed. For example, if they had completed up to question 7 and advanced to question 8, they would be returned to question 8 upon reentering that test.

Using this method should alleviate the stress of a student being “locked out” of a test after a network or computer error. If you try this method please provide any feedback that you can, positive/negative as the the effectiveness to IDS. While we have tested this method, we cannot account for all variables that students and faculty may encounter, so we appreciate your input.

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