BlackBoard Question of the Week

This is the last post for the Blackboard Question of the Week blog.

Thanks for reading our blog and we encourage you to check out the Sakai Question of the Week at http://blogs.luc.edu/sakai-qow/ as Loyola moves from the Blackboard Course Management System to the Sakai Collaborative Learning Environment.

Questions about Sakai? Email sakai@luc.edu.

Q. How do I go about changing the settings so I no longer see courses from the Fall showing up in my course list? Please advise.

A. Student access to courses is normally scheduled to take place just after the last date for undergraduate students to complete their “incomplete” courses – in this case, that date is Tuesday, Feb 26th.

But you can remove old courses from your view whenever you like; you can find instructions for that at Removing Old Courses from View.

Q. Is there a way to post audio files on Blackboard so that they can be streamed, but not downloaded?

A. The best way to post audio files so they can be streamed is to upload them to Ignation https://webapps.luc.edu/ignation/index.cfm .  Login in the upper right corner and then choose Upload a Video under My Tools.  After about 24 hours, you will receive a link  that you can post in Blackboard.

Q. I would like to delete a previous assignment I submitted, since I just submitted another copy with new edits. Can I do that?

 A. It is not possible for a student to delete an assignment that has already been submitted. You’ll need to contact your professor to request to have your first assignment attempt cleared.

Q. I have an outline in Word that I would like to copy and paste into the text box so that it comes up as a page within a wiki, but each time I do it, the format is changed drastically.  Is there any way to copy text from Word and keep the formatting the same when it is pasted into the wiki text box?

A. You can use the Paste from Word Mashup tool in the text box editor to paste from Word into a wiki page and keep your formatting; here is a link to instructions: Paste from Word .

Q. I recorded a lecture in Adobe Connect and told my students to access it by clicking on Tools in the course menu, clicking on “Adobe Connect Pro,” clicking on the chevron next to the meeting name and selecting View Information. They could then click the Recordings link and select the recording to play it. The problem is my students are not seeing the chevron icon to select View Information.

A. If your meeting and recording were created in Blackboard, any student who was enrolled and added to the meeting would see the link and the chevron. If you don’t add your students to the meeting when you create it, they will not see the meeting or the recording.  A solution for the future is to add your students to the meeting when you create it – then they can see the recording using the instructions you gave them.

For now, to allow your students to see the recording you have already done, you can make it public and then post a link to it in your Blackboard course.

1. Log into Connect.luc.edu.
2. Click on Meetings in the toolbar at the top of the page.
3. Click on the meeting whose recording you want to make public.
4. Click on the Recordings link in the toolbar just above the red bar.
5. Click in the box to the left of the recording you want to make public and select the Make Public button just above the red bar.
6. To get the link for your students, click on the name of the recording and copy the “URL for Viewing.”
7. Paste that URL into your Blackboard course.

Q. I commented on my students’ papers for a Turnitin assignment. Unfortunately, the students cannot see the comments I posted. Is there something else I need to do to help them see these comments?

A. There are two ways to comment on Turnitin Assignment submissions: Grademark in Turnitin and Grade Details in the Grade Center. In order for your students to view any comments you posted using GradeMark, students will need to go to the Turnitin Assignment, choose “View/Complete Assignment,” then select the View button.  You will be able to check which students accessed the graded paper by the names listed in the “Response” column in the Turnitin Assignments assignment inbox.

For students to see any comments you posted using Grade Details in the Grade Center, they should click on Tools in the course menu, then on My Grades and they will see your comments in the Comments column.

Q. I have embedded an IgNation video in Blackboard. It starts to play, then stops right away and I see the Pause button instead of the Play button. How can I play this video?

A. Videos in Blackboard may take a very long time to download, during which time you will see the Pause button. To speed up viewing of videos, instead of embedding, add a link to the video:

1. Go to the content area when you want to post the video.
2. Click the Build Content tab, then Create > URL.
3. Enter the name of the video and the URL.
4. Select Yes for Open in New Window.
5. Click Submit.

Q. Is there a way for me to export the names and email addresses of the student users in my course from Blackboard to Excel or anything else?

A. You can download your Grade Center to Excel and choose “User Information Only” as the information to download. That will download First Name, Last Name, and Username to Excel. Then, you could use an Excel function to add @luc.edu to the username, which gives you the email address. For a tutorial on downloading your Grade Center, please visit  Backing up Grades .

Q. I sent an email to my class through Blackboard – it looked fine when I sent it, but when I got the copy, it was garbled, with characters like <br> and &#39. What can I do to be sure students will not see those extra characters?

A. Please check your Groupwise email settings to see if you have selected plain text for viewing messages instead of html:

1. Open Groupwise.
2. Click on the little arrow to the left of Home at the top of the screen and select Tools > Options.
3. Double-click on Environment.
4. Click on the Views tab.
5. Look under Default Read view & Font at the bottom right. If “Plain Text” is selected, select “html” and click OK.